Ireland confirm Cian Healy is on World Cup standby

Healy was initially told he would be included in Andy Farrell’s squad, only to suffer a calf injury while scrummaging against Samoa in the final warm-up game in Bayonne that ruled him out of the coach’s thoughts.

Jeremy Loughman was called up instead to provide back-up for Andrew Porter and Dave Kilcoyne, but Healy has shown his incredible powers of recovery once again by getting back to full fitness in a month.

He posted a video to his Instagram page earlier this week to show how far he’s come and Ireland manager Mick Kearney confirmed that the management are keeping tabs on his recovery, but can only call him up if another player gets injured.

“The medics and strength and conditioning team would be in touch with Cian and, I’m sure, other players back home to see how they are,” he said.

"It’s great to see Cian back training and training well. Possibly later in the tournament if we get an injury, Cian would be a great addition if fully fit. It’s good to see him back training.

"But it would require another injury for Cian to come back in.”

Kearney said the coaches are keeping a close eye on the provinces’ pre-seasons in case of any injuries.

"There was a lot of discussion with the provinces in pre season as to how we would keep the players fit who are not in the squad.

"There’s a mini interprovincial series going on, the likes of Jamie Osborne, Gavin Coombes, Kieran Treadwell are getting regular game time.

"It’s really good they’ll be match fit if they get called in.”

As for the 33 players who are in France, Kearney said the entire squad trained in Tours this morning as preparations for next week’s final Pool B match against Scotland stepped up.

"Everybody's great,” Kearney said.

"Obviously we got back to Tours on Wednesday after a couple of great days off.

"Some of the lads stayed in Paris, some came straight back here with their families.

"We got back here late Wednesday evening, had a walk through on Thursday so we effectively mirrored Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday on Thursday, Friday and today so a nice walk through organisational day on Thursday and then full days yesterday and today.

"All 33 trained, which is great and all in good form, so a great position to be in after four weeks in France and a long pre-season as well. To have 33 fit players is just fantastic from our point of view.”