With 37 players in the original Irish squad, a further 12 togging out as part of the A team's preparations, and the injured Iain Henderson and suspended Bundee Aki also involved, there were 51 players in total training at yesterday's Ireland session in Abbotstown.
At least 18 of that group wont make the cut for a 33-man World Cup squad, although it will probably be even higher if you factor in the likes of James Lowe, Andrew Conway and maybe even Keith Earls, who have missed out this month due to injury, but still have plenty of credit in the bank.
Last week, IRFU performance director David Nucifora spoke of the need to build a working depth chart of 50 players, with the summer tour games against the Maori All Blacks, the Emerging Ireland tour and this week's Ireland A game against a New Zealand XV all fitting into that plan.
Yesterday, Ireland captain Johnny Sexton echoed the need for a wide net. If Ireland are to kick on and break their World Cup glass ceiling, their squad has to be deeper than ever.
"Yeah, you've got to keep evolving, you’ve got to keep getting better. If you stay the same, other teams will pass you out," he said, ahead of Saturday's visit of South Africa to the Aviva Stadium.
"And you know, we need to build a real competition for places, so that no one can get comfortable and that is exactly what the coaches are doing. They’re challenging us in how we play the game, they’re challenging us by putting all these extra fixtures in, with the Emerging Ireland tour, the Maori games, now the New Zealand A game, all these guys are getting chances to impress the coaches and to play under the coaches and to put what the coaches want out on the pitch.
"There were 50 players out at training today and I was thinking to myself that 20 of them are going to be left at home for the World Cup. And I couldn’t pick who is going to be left at home.
"There are going to be some good players left out but that’s exactly where we want to be and keep cultivating. So those are the lessons we learnt that we’re implementing."
And the out-half says the importance of squad depth has been the biggest lesson he's learned at his three previous World Cups.
"You don't need 32 players, you need 42," he added. "In the 2015 World Cup, we had an unbelievable team, we had a great draw, everything set up for us, won the pool, and then we lost seven players in the space of a week and we weren’t able to survive.
"We probably had 23 or 24 good players [in 2015], but we didn’t have the big [depth]... when you look at France, they have 80 good players, 80 players that are ready to go to the World Cup, they have amazing strength in depth, and with a much smaller resource pool we’ve got to keep building that and that’s why Andy [Farrell] and the coaches have done what they’re doing."
In terms of World Cup prep, the captain says he doesn't expect either side to be holding back any cards ahead of their Pool B clash in Paris next September, adamant that they plan to keep their game "evolving" over the next year.
"It can be a challenge, it always is at international rugby," he says of that evolution.
"The biggest challenge is always getting that cohesion back, getting back into the Ireland system, into how we do things here. That's always the challenge of playing international rugby.
"So, it's no different this time. They'll [South Africa] have seen things against New Zealand, they'll have a plan to stop it and it's about us either doing that a little bit better or changing it a little bit. Hopefully we will be able to change the picture on Saturday."
And while beating the Boks in September 2023 is obviously more important than beating them on Saturday, the Leinster 10 says a win this weekend would go a long way towards proving to themselves they can do it next year.
"Every Test match you play, you want to win. That goes without saying. How you do it is the most important thing.
"You've got to play well, you've got to go out and try score tries against a pretty tough, defensive team, a team that comes off the line higher and a team that tries to make life as difficult as possible for you, to put you under big pressure.
"So, it will be a very different test to what we had in the summer. You know, obviously we referred to the summer series as the biggest test you can face in rugby. It is in many ways. But it is a different test coming this Saturday.
"If we want to do special things over the next 18 months we've got to beat different teams playing different games and they are very different to New Zealand. They are almost unique."
Johnny Sexton believes that Ireland will face the best team in the world this weekend when they take on the Springboks and it's a challenge he's relishing. #RTErugby pic.twitter.com/cbzTOPkOE3
— RTÉ Rugby (@RTErugby) November 1, 2022
Follow a live blog on Ireland v South Africa on RTÉ.ie/sport and RTÉ News app this Saturday from 5pm with live radio commentary on Saturday Sport on RTÉ Radio 1.
