Tipoki Arrives

Munster’s latest acquisition, Rua Tipoki arrives in Ireland later this week.

 The New Zealand Maori captain is expected on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Ireland continue their preparations for the Rugby World Cup this weekend when an extended squad depart for their training camp in Spala, Poland as part of the preseason conditioning programme.

This will be the second trip to Spala this summer.  The players who did not take part in the Argentina tour endured a one week intensive training camp during June as part of their return to training.  This second trip to Spala, departing on July 8th, will see them joined by members of the Argentina tour party for another week long training camp.

Spala has been an integral part of the Ireland team’s preseason training programme and was first used in 2001. The training facilities include swimming pools, a full sized indoor athletics arena with a reduced impact surface; power and weight-lifting facilities, an outdoor running track and a rugby pitch.  It also has the now famous cryotherapy facility which is a large freezing chamber that players enter to speed up recovery from the fatigue of training.

Following their return from Spala on July 14th, the players will continue their conditioning programmes in their provincial training centres under the guidance of the Irish team & provincial fitness staff.

The next camp for the squad will be the second half and final part to the tournament preparations. The team will join up in Limerick on July 29th and they will remain together in camp for the warm up games against Scotland (Murrayfield, August 11th) and Italy (Ravenhill, August 24th) right up until departure for the tournament on September 5th. 

The panel will be reduced to the final Rugby World Cup 30 man squad on Sunday, August 12th after the Scotland game and ahead of the IRB deadline of August 14th