End of season was unlikely to swing RWC squad - Jonny Holland

Jonny Holland says it's no surprise that Ireland head coach Andy Farrell has stuck with what he knows in his World Cup training squad.

The Ireland boss yesterday confirmed a 42-man group for their pre-World Cup training camp, which gets under way on 19 June.

While four of the squad are uncapped, all of those players have previously been involved in the Irish squad over the last 12 months.

Given Munster's run to the URC title, there had been hopes in the province that some of their players would be recognised for their good form, in particular uncapped pair John Hodnett and Antoine Frisch, as well as second row Jean Kleyn who was last capped back in 2019.

However, Holland says he never expected Farrell's opinion to be swayed dramatically by the final weeks of the provincial season.

"You're not going to pick a squad based on who wins a final," the former Munster out-half told the RTÉ Rugby podcast.

And Holland, who is now head coach of Cork Constitution in the Energia All-Ireland League, says Ireland's summer training camp will be geared towards fine-tuning the squad, rather than getting people up to speed.

"There's so much more goes into it. You'd love to [call in new players ], but who comes out if John Hodnett comes in? People are still talking about Scott Penny, and who comes out?

"Besides that, you don't want to go into three warm-up games trying to get someone up to speed. If you've ever coached, a couple of people getting up to speed in a gameplan can absolutely affect how you go. You might win games, but you won't get to the same level, you won't be humming like you'd like to be.

"If they're going to analyse their preseason games or work on combinations, you can't have more variables going in there that you're unsure of.