Jared Payne faces race to be fit for Wales encounter

Jared Payne is in a battle to be fit ahead of Ireland's Six Nations Championship match against Wales and at the Principality stadium on Friday night (8.0). The Ulster back was one of four players to sit out Ireland training at Carton House on Monday morning along with Tiernan O'Halloran, Joey Carbery and Dan Leavy.

Payne picked up a couple of bruises in Ulster’s victory over Benetton Treviso on Friday night – a game in which he scored a try and played the 80 minutes – and is expected to take a full part when Ireland train again on Wednesday.

Ireland assistant coach Simon Easterby explained: "Jared Payne, Tiernan O'Halloran, Dan Leavy and Joey Carbery stepped out of training today with a few bumps and bruises," before speaking more specifically about Payne.

“He [Payne] felt pretty good on the weekend, pretty sharp but he has been a long time out of the game and so we have been pretty comfortable with what we have picked so far. We’re happy with the guys who have been playing in those positions.

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“For Jared it is great to have him back around and hopefully we will see him train on Wednesday and then we will take it from there. It’s bruising. It’s nothing worse than that. He has been out for a long time and some players will take a little bit more to recover from games, especially when they have been out for so long.”

There had been some conjecture that Payne could force his way back into the Ireland team but it now appears that he will be vying for a place on the bench, vacated by the injured Andrew Trimble; especially after the confirmation that Rob Kearney took a full part in Monday morning's training session.

Kearney picked up a groin issue at the tail end of the victory over France at the Aviva stadium. Easterby confirmed: “Yeah, he came through training today, took part in everything and we’re happy that we have got through the session, as we’d hoped he would.”

Ireland coach Joe Schmidt prefers his players to take a full part in training in the week of a match – there is the occasional exception – so it appears that Kearney will start at fullback and Garry Ringrose will partner Robbie Henshaw in the centre.

Easterby spoke about the impact Ringrose has made in his fledgling international career. “We can all say how impressed we have been with Garry. He is a young man in years but he certainly looks like he is playing beyond those years in terms of his understanding of the game, his awareness.

“He is an intelligent rugby player, he sees things that a lot of players can’t see and guys who have been around a lot longer than him. We’ve known for a long time, as have all of you, that he is something special and he hasn’t done too much wrong.”

On the biennial issue of whether Ireland will opt to have the roof open or closed on Friday night, Easterby confirmed that they have had no official request from the Welsh Rugby Union yet but anticipated it would be forthcoming in the next day or two.

“We haven’t been contacted yet by the WRU so that is something that we haven’t really discussed too much. Later in the week, by Wednesday, there will be some correspondence between the WRU and ourselves and we will make that call.

“We’ve had it both ways, open and closed. We had it closed in the World Cup and the players enjoyed that. And we have had it closed and open when we played Wales in the last few years. It is important that it is not a distraction.”

The Ireland team will be announced at lunchtime on Wednesday.