U-21 squad taking shape

It was a case of honours even when Ireland and France met in their annual pre-Under 21 Six Nations Championship tussle at Stradbrook last weekend. The countries meet in two matches every year with home advantage changing on a yearly basis.

In the opening match France triumphed over their Irish counterparts 33-11, the visitors ruthless once they had achieved the initial line break. The Irish set piece play was strong but they lacked the cohesion and fluency of the French. In the second game Ireland conceded two early tries but came back strongly to win 16-10. Irish coach Mark McDermott was happy with the exercise.

"It gave us the opportunity to run the rule over 44 players and make a definitive judgement on players in seeing how they reacted in a competitive environment," he said.

"As an exercise the positives outweighed the negatives, particularly in the second match where the team recovered from a slow start to dominate their opponents. It'll be a reasonably easy job to pare down the squad to 30 players.

"In comparison to last year's squad there is a little bit more football in this crop of players. It's great to be able to look at players away from a domestic environment and discover their aptitude to play at international level. I'm optimistic that there is a good blend of players. There's a lot of work to be done but the schedule of strong competitive fixtures mixed with squad sessions will allow us to do that."

The IRFU's High Performance Manager Steve Anderson will assist McDermott and former Galwegians and Connacht wing Nigel Carolan. Ex-Shannon player Niall O'Shea takes over as manager from Davy Haslett.

The Ireland Under-21s assemble again from December 18th-20th and then play Leinster A on December 30th at Stradbrook. A second training camp in pencilled in for January 15th-17th with another game against Leinster A down for Donnybrook on January 17th.