Preview: World Cup preparation ramps up for Ireland as old rival England come to town

Ireland welcome England to the Aviva Stadium today for the second of their Summer Nations Series matches ahead of the Rugby World Cup, which starts in three weeks' time.

Without the jeopardy of Six Nations points or a Grand Slam on the table these these warm-up matches exist in the grey zone.

Yes, they will tell you they are full international Test matches to be respected, but this close to a World Cup, and with the prospect of suffering an injury that may mean missing out on the showpiece tournament, there's other factors to be considered.

We've seen it over the last couple of weeks with Italy’s Tomasso Memoncello, England’s Jack van Poortvliet and most notably, France’s star out-half Romain Ntamack, all out of contention.

This fixture 12 years ago also saw flanker David Wallace suffer a knee injury that meant he would not be available for the trip to New Zealand.

It’s part of the game but at the same time that doesn’t mean that the players are fully able to jettison niggling doubts in the same way that they might in a game with a title on the line.

So what do the teams want from this match?

Get out of Dodge injury-free and dust off the cobwebs are the goals: performance and result are the gravy.

Ireland, understandably "clunky" in the 33-17 win against Italy, have named an entirely different starting team and, with the exceptions of Ross Byrne for the suspended Johnny Sexton, and Cian Prendergast for Caelan Doris, look close to what Andy Farrell would select for a match against South Africa at the World Cup.

Byrne, who was at the helm back in 2019 when England demolished Ireland in a warm-up in Twickenham, gets a chance to operate behind an almost full-strength pack. His only previous start for Ireland in the last three years