Healy comes through Ireland training unscathed

Cian Healy is set to take his place on the Ireland bench for tomorrow's first Test against New Zealand after coming through this morning’s captain’s run unscathed.

The experienced loosehead prop injured his ankle in the midweek loss to the Maori All Blacks and was helped off the field on a medical cart.

However, he was named in the squad for the Eden Park encounter yesterday and trained with the team at the stadium on Friday in Auckland, reporting no adverse reactions after the session.

Connacht's Finlay Bealham, primarily a tightead prop, is also included on the bench for the match (8.05am) with Andy Farrell insisting that both replacements can do a job on either side of the scrum.

Former Ireland tighthead Mike Ross said he was somewhat bemused by the thinking.

"It is a bit strange. I know Cian very well and he'll back himself at anything but Cian has a 100-odd caps at loosehead and Finlay has played the vast majority of his career at tighthead," Ross, told RTÉ's Game On.

"So I'm not really understanding why you'd want to swap them around, except maybe most of our looseheads are probably the wrong side of 30, so maybe they're looking at moving Finlay across, because he's been playing well and he's been finishing off games well."

Meanwhile, Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan (above) says the team are relishing the chance to create history by winning a Test on New Zealand soil for the first time.

Ireland have beaten the All Blacks in Chicago and twice in Dublin but victory in the land of the long white cloud is still to be achieved.

"To get the chance to come over to New Zealand and be the first Irish team to win is huge motivation for us," said the 23-year-old Leinster front row, who will win his eighth cap.

"To win a series and to win