Wednesday 28 January 2015 15:39, UK
Ireland coach Joe Schmidt is confident flanker Sean O’Brien is ready to put his 14-month injury nightmare behind him after observing him in training.
O'Brien has not featured for Ireland since injuring his shoulder in the 24-22 autumn Test defeat to New Zealand in November 2013.
The 27-year-old was closing on a return after surgery when an infection forced a second operation on the same shoulder.
Ireland open their campaign in Italy on February 7 and while Schmidt was reluctant to pencil O’Brien in for that, he did say he expects the Leinster star to feature in the opening half of the tournament.
"Sean trained fully on Tuesday to be honest," said Schmidt. "So we'd be hopeful that he'd be involved in the first half of the Six Nations."
Schmidt is also optimistic on the fitness of Leinster prop Cian Healy but did stress the importance of caution with the World Cup looming later this year.
"We're still hopeful that Cian may have an involvement as well," said Schmidt. "Cian looks in great shape; he's just got to hit a few markers to finish off his full recovery.
"Because one thing we don't want to do is to have someone reinjure themselves and therefore put themselves out for an extended period of time.
"So we're very much Six Nations-focused but it's a massive year, and what we can't afford to do is worsen a situation for a player with an injury."
Scrum-half Conor Murray has been sidelined with disc problems in his neck and missed Munster’s recent Champions Cup games against Saracens and Sale.
Schmidt is pleased with the recovery the British and Irish Lion has shown however and expects him to be fit to play at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome on Saturday week.
"Conor is feeling really good, we're quietly confident," said Schmidt. "He's got a few more things to tick off and he will be scanned again by the end of the week.
"And by Monday we'd like to have a clear picture so we can have uninterrupted preparation for Italy, but at the moment we're hopeful he'll be okay.
"If you get bruising, bruising causes swelling, and swelling causes discomfort.
"That's a layman's view of what Conor has got presently, so we're hopeful that will dissipate, and has dissipated over a period of time since it first happened."
Schmidt also played down speculation the defending champions – who have risen to third in the world rankings after seven straight victories – will be distracted by their status as tournament favourites alongside England.
"Being labelled a favourite? We were unaware of that until this morning to be honest because you do live in a bit of a bubble," Schmidt said.
"For us to be favourites is a distraction. It's somebody's speculation. We try to stay focused on one game at a time. If I was to speculate I might come up with a different favourite.
"You just try and get better at what you are doing, the peripheral things that occur – rankings, or tag of favourites I don't think either of those are going to tangibly add value to performances.”
