Cian Healy's World Cup On A Knife Edge

Cian Healy’s Rugby World Cup fate remains in the balance according to Ireland boss Joe Schmidt.

Healy underwent neck surgery earlier this year and has been fighting his way back to full fitness. Reports last week however suggested that Healy would not recover in time to make Ireland’s final 31-man squad.

Talking up Healy’s quality and importance to the side, Schmidt stated that Ireland would give Healy as much time as possible to get fit.

"The actual nerve is in good shape and the pressure is bring released off it but it takes a while to recover," Schmidt said to the Irish Independent.

"How long's a piece of string? We know he's making progress. He's a quality individual in the camp, and a quality player, so we'll give him as long as we can to make enough progress so we're comfortable he can reintegrate fully into playing the game.

"Potentially we'd like to get him into one of the last couple (of warm-ups) and there's a chance of that. If he's made enough progress and is training fully but hasn't played prior to England, and we don't select him for that, then we've got a tough decision to make.

"But if he was fully fit at that stage? Because he's played so many times for us already, and because he's a quality player, you'd want to select him. We won't actually know until the 31 whether he'll be in it or not.”