Here’s How & When The Players Found Out About The New PRO14

Madness.

Joey Carbery, Jack Conan and Rhy Ruddock sat down with us yesterday to chat through the season ahead, with the all new PRO14 the hot topic of discussion. All three players are excited about the challenge ahead, but don’t quite know what to expect.

Leinster will be the first team to travel to South Africa, and while they don’t see that as a disadvantage, they do realise it’s venture into the unknown.

The mad thing about all this is the players found out about the new format at the same time we did. Jack Conan says he was on holidays when he first heard the rumblings…

“I was away on summer holidays when I first heard the rumblings about it.” Conan said

Give the timeframe, the players though it would be next season before it would be possible to implement the new teams into the competition.

“Even then, until two weeks ago, we thought it might be next season at this stage because it was taking so long.”

Then head coach Leo Cullen just walked into a meeting as it was set to be announced, revealed not only are the South African teams on board, but they’ll be one of the first teams to make the trip.

Leo came in at the start of the meeting and said, ‘Look, we’ll be over there.’ Conan added.
We don’t have the schedule yet but it looks like it will be the first few weeks in September.’ I think it was a bit of a shock to all the lads.It’s great, I’m unbelievably excited; please God I get a chance to go over there. I think everyone wants to be on that first trip over there to see what it’s like. It’s going to be a good test for us.

Canterbury, official kit supplier to the Ireland Rugby team, has unveiled the new Ireland Rugby jersey for the 2017/18 season. The kit features ground-breaking technologies designed to give players an in-game competitive advantage and is available to buy now from Canterbury.com and sports retailers nationwide.

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