'It doesn't get any bigger' - Farrell ready for SA

With three games this month, the Six Nations next spring and at least two World Cup warm-up matches confirmed, it leaves Andy Farrell with just 10 games - 11 if they arrange an extra warm-up - to work through until France 2023.

Appropriately it starts with the defending world champions South Africa, and a task which is nothing like Ireland have experienced in recent years.

Regardless of the result of Saturday evening, it will be fascinating to see how Ireland match up against the physicality, and set-piece power tha South Africa bring, or more specifically to see how they navigate their way around it.

As good as their series win in New Zealand was in the summer, it was a very different type of challenge, and what worked in Dunedin and Wellington may not work this weekend.

At the time, Andy Farrell described the task they faced in New Zealand as "the ultimate test", and while he laid an identical tag to the challenge South Africa will bring this weekend, it begins what he believes is the "perfect" set of games to carry them to France next September.

"The 18 months from the tour to what we know is ahead, is perfect for us," he said.

"The [New Zealand] tour was special in its own right, just because of the experience. Even if we had lost 5-0 on that tour, it still would have been great for us because of the experience for that group and what they faced, different cultures, different styles of players.

"From my mind, looking forward, playing South Africa, who we’ve not played for five years, and Fiji, a completely different style of rugby, and Australia, who we’ve not played in such a long time, it actually couldn’t get any better as far as experiences are concerned for us. Because what we’re going to experience in a year’s time,