'I struggled with it in November' - Cian Healy on coming to terms with his new role in the Irish squad

With Andrew Porter sidelined for Ireland's two remaining Guinness Six Nations games, Andy Farrell has a call to make at loosehead prop.

The Ireland head coach will draft another front row into camp next week, but whoever arrives looks more likely to be a reserve rather than competing with Cian Healy and Dave Kilcoyne for minutes.

The number 1 jersey looks set to be a straight shootout between the pair. Healy has been the preferred second choice to Porter since November, but while he's outscored Kilcoyne for appearances during this Six Nations campaign, the Munster man has significantly more game time.

Kilcoyne bagged 37 minutes off the bench last week against Italy, while Healy's two earlier cameos as a replacement amounted to just 22 minutes.

The likely scenario is that Healy starts, with Kilcoyne's style of play lending itself to an explosive impact off the bench, but whichever way Farrell calls it, the timeshare is likely to be more evenly split.

Since Porter's switch across the scrum this season, his age and fitness means he's regularly been playing beyond 60 or even 70 minutes, with the ratio likely to fall back to a more traditional 50:30 over the next couple of games.

"I'm in a spicy battle now with Killer (Kilcoyne) for the week," said Healy at this week's Irish mini-camp.

"Both of us have been in and out in training, and you back each other in that role, getting on top of plays, 'where should we be?' and ‘this is what we should be doing’ and we’ve been working really well on that because we obviously get less reps than the starting team would get so we’ve been shouldering the burden on each other a bit, and I think we’ve been doing that really well.

"It’s going to be a nice week for us to get going."

The pair are