Sport

Henry a doubt for Wallabies

IRELAND will be hoping for good news this week on openside flanker Chris Henry, after coach Joe Schmidt confirmed the gritty Ulster

loose forward suffered a hamstring problem against Samoa.

Schmidt said: "I think Chris may have a slight hamstring tear.

"He could run but if he'd stayed on he would have done further damage.

"it was a massive opportunity for Chris, he's worked extremely hard to get it.

"it's really disappointing for him to be literally hamstrung. He tried to play through it, but it was determined that it wasn't something he could play on with."

Until his injury Henry had looked sharp at the breakdown, an area that left Schmidt relatively pleased.

Captain on the night Jamie Heaslip, try-scorer Peter O'Mahony and replacement Sean O'Brien backed up Henry's turnover work too.

But Schmidt warned the contact area will be another facet Ireland must sharpen in time for Australia's visit.

He said: "i think we could argue six to eight turnovers were forced by us on the ground.

"Others we were able to capitalise on slightly loose play from them, but we can probably still be reasonably pleased with that work."

Heaslip, captain on the night, hailed Ireland's turnover hunters, but admitted they must tighten up for the visit of Australia.

He said: "We've got players all over the field that can win turnovers.

"When we won the collisions we were pretty effective, and relatively happy about it.

"You can't give Australia easy ball, because they've got such attacking prowess across the back-three.

"In defence we've got to get our body-shape a bit better in that contact zone, to get a really good shot.

"We were a bit slow getting out of the breakdown as the game went on.

"But as a whole it's quite positive and we took a step in the right direction.

"Dev (Devin Toner) was great, he called the line-out for the whole game, even when Paul came on.

"I thought he had a good head on him around what we wanted to do in the line-out.

"He's a big man but he gets around well and I thought he had a great game."