Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt has named his 32-man squad for the upcoming summer tour of Australia, according to a report on the Irish Times.
Ireland stormed to a Grand Slam victory in this year’s Six Nations and go into next year’s world cup with hopes of winning that too.
Schmidt has a very strong group of players to select from and he named Ross Byrne and Tadhg Beirne in the squad for the tour. Both players are the only uncapped players in the 32-man squad.
Along with Byrne, fellow Leinster players Johnny Sexton and Joey Carbery have also been selected.
Quinn Roux has also made the cut and Dan Leavy has been passed fit to travel with the squad.
When speaking about his selection, Schmidt said:
This has probably been the most difficult selection process for the coaching group to date. We sat down on Monday morning to review the last pieces of footage and to discuss the balance and combinations that we felt we might need in Australia.
At midday today [Wednesday] we made the final decisions which included a number of very tough calls and some players are incredibly unlucky to miss out on selection.
The coaching group are excited by the challenge that this three-Test tour will present and from talking to the players we get a sense that they too are excited about going on Tour and testing themselves against one of the best sides in the world in their own backyard.
Ireland will play their first Test against Australia on 9 June in Brisbane.
Backs: Bundee Aki, Ross Byrne, Joey Carbery, Andrew Conway, John Cooney, Keith Earls, Robbie Henshaw, Rob Kearney, Jordan Larmour, Kieran Marmion, Conor Murray, Garry Ringrose, Johnny Sexton, Jacob Stockdale.
Forwards: Rory Best, Tadhg Beirne, Jack Conan, Seán Cronin, Tadhg Furlong, Cian Healy, Iain Henderson, Rob Herring, Dan Leavy, Jack McGrath, Jordi Murphy, Peter O’Mahony, Andrew Porter, Quinn Roux, James Ryan, John Ryan, CJ Stander, Devin Toner.
