Simon Easterby issues injury update on Joe McCarthy & Tadhg Furlong

Today at 08:02 AM

Nasty bang.

Ireland interim head coach Simon Easterby has revealed that Joe McCarthy suffered a "nasty blow" in training that ruled him out of this weekend’s Six Nations opener with England at the Aviva Stadium.

The towering lock was a surprise omission in the starting line-up with Tadhg Beirne named in the second row alongside James Ryan and Ryan Baird brought in at blindside flanker.

But the good news is McCarthy should be back for the Scotland game next week.

"Joe took a knock to the head yesterday in training and unfortunately, it put him out straight away for this game," Easterby explained.

"It's a real disappointment for him and the team but he's good now, fortunately, there's no long-standing issue there in terms of any breaks or anything but he might have damaged his nose, it might look a little bit like mine now!

"But other than that he's good and he'll hopefully be joining up with the squad this weekend but unfortunately not available this weekend."

"It was a rugby kind of collision, it was really innocuous in terms of it was just an unfortunate set of circumstances that ended up someone's head landed on his head."

"It was just a nasty blow but he's come around well and he should be good to go."

As for Tadhg Furlong, who suffered a reoccurrence of a calf injury, he also looks set to be ready to go for Scotland.

"Tadhg Furlong unfortunately had a recurrence of the calf injury and it's nothing major, to be honest," Easterby explained.

"It just wasn't quite right and we weren't prepared to try and push him through this week so we made the right decision for Tadhg and for the team for him to go back and rehab and make sure that he was comfortable with his plan over the next couple of weeks.

"It's not a major issue but it wasn't one that we were prepared to take any risk this weekend."

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