No rest for the wicked.

The Irish provinces may be in the middle of one of their most important periods of the season, but that hasn’t stopped Ireland boss Joe Schmidt from running a 2-day mini camp this week.

Fresh from their hugely impressive back-to-back clean sweep in Europe, a number of players gathered to go through the motions wit Ireland’s top man, before they get straight back into domestic action with some huge inter-provincial clashes.

Interestingly, John Cooney was called up to the camp, after his hugely impressive run for Ulster. The scrumhalf is arguably the in-form nine in the country right now behind the ever impressive Conor Murray.

There were recalls for the likes of Garry Ringrose, Niall Scannell, Dan Leavy and Josh van der Flier, while there was no room for in-form players such as Leinster’s Sean Cronin and Ulster’s Craig Gilroy.

Other than that it was same old, same old, with veterans such as Conor Murray, Keith Earls, Robbie Henshaw and Johnny Sexton knocking about.