Six Nations 2023: Dan Sheehan and Johnny Sexton in line for Ireland’s trip to Italy

While Tadgh Beirne has been ruled out for 10 to 12 weeks, Dan Sheehan could well be fit for Ireland’s third-round Guinness Six Nations game against Italy in Rome on Saturday week and Johnny Sexton is expected to resume training next Monday.

Iain Henderson looks set to start his first Text since last year’s Championship in place of Beirne, with Ryan Baird coming into the replacements. And with Rob Herring likely to complete his return to play protocols in time for the Italian game, Sheehan could be back in the mix in an otherwise largely unchanged side.

“Dan is one that’s coming back to recovery and we’re hoping he’s available next week,” said defence coach Simon Easterby during the first day of a two-day get-together for a reduced 25-man squad at the IRFU HPC on Thursday.

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“We called Tom Stewart in at the back end of last week partly because we were unsure a little bit about the guys,” added Easterby. “Again, we’re probably fortunate we have a number of good hookers, hookers who missed out on selection as well. There’s real confidence that the three of the hookers [named] will be available for selection next week – Dan, Rob, and Rónan [Kelleher] all together.”

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Regarding Sexton, Easterby said: “Johnny is like other players who have little niggles, he’s just trying to put himself in a position to be ready to go on Monday.”

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The Italian game may come too soon for Ireland’s other injured players, Robbie Henshaw (wrist), Cian Healy (hamstring), Jamison Gibson-Park (hamstring) and Tadhg Furlong (calf), although most, and possibly all of them, look like coming back into the equation for the round four game away to Scotland a fortnight later. All are continuing their rehab in the HPC.

“They’re dipping in and out of doing their rehab and I guess keeping on top of their own individual work along with staying connected to the group. We’re hopeful that they’ll all come back into contention over the next couple of weeks.”

Furlong hasn’t played since an appearance as a replacement for Leinster against Ulster on December 3rd due to a troublesome groin issue.

“He had awareness of his calf and how that was responding. He’s in a really good place, he knows his own body and understands how that works. We’re very hopeful, and so is he, that he’s going to be involved at some point in the Six Nations,” said Easterby.

“It’s the sort of injury, like a lot of soft-tissue injuries, that you want to make sure you don’t get wrong. You want to make sure you get it right and they feel like they’ve got enough in the bank in terms of exposure to the high intensity of the game. How can we do that? We can do that as much as we can in terms of training but at some point, you have to expose yourself to a game and hopefully that will be over the next few weeks.”

The timing of Beirne’s ankle injury, which will sideline him for 10 to 12 weeks is particularly cruel for the player himself after a run of 14 consecutive Tests.

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Confirming that the player was undergoing surgery today, Easterby said: “Tadhg has been phenomenal, hasn’t he, over the last couple of seasons. But like we’ve already had to do over the course of this Championship – we lost players before the game against Wales – we’ve had to adapt. That’s testament to the squad and the players within, even those guys who might not expect to be involved. They come in and the standard of performance doesn’t drop.

“It’s really unfortunate that we’ve lost Tadhg but we’ve very fortunate with the stocks that we have available to us in his position and other players have done that, they’ve stepped in and the performance hasn’t dipped. It’s part and parcel of the game.

“In the World Cup you could be without a player for a few weeks and we might keep over a player and someone else has got to step in. Having the ability to deepen our experience in the squad and playing in big games is part and parcel of us being the best we can be, whether it’s the best 33 in the World Cup or if we have to dig deeper to 45 players.

“The mentality was a couple of years ago to make sure that we have more than just 30, 31, 32, 33 players available. Certainly, we have drilled down into players underneath those and we feel like we are in a much better place to lose someone like Tadhg and not lose performance in players that come in.”