Jonny Holland says it's no surprise that Ireland head coach Andy Farrell has stuck with what he knows in his World Cup training squad.
The Ireland boss yesterday confirmed a 42-man group for their pre-World Cup training camp, which gets under way on 19 June.
While four of the squad are uncapped, all of those players have previously been involved in the Irish squad over the last 12 months.
Given Munster's run to the URC title, there had been hopes in the province that some of their players would be recognised for their good form, in particular uncapped pair John Hodnett and Antoine Frisch, as well as second row Jean Kleyn who was last capped back in 2019.
However, Holland says he never expected Farrell's opinion to be swayed dramatically by the final weeks of the provincial season.
"You're not going to pick a squad based on who wins a final," the former Munster out-half told the RTÉ Rugby podcast.
And Holland, who is now head coach of Cork Constitution in the Energia All-Ireland League, says Ireland's summer training camp will be geared towards fine-tuning the squad, rather than getting people up to speed.
"There's so much more goes into it. You'd love to [call in new players ], but who comes out if John Hodnett comes in? People are still talking about Scott Penny, and who comes out?
"Besides that, you don't want to go into three warm-up games trying to get someone up to speed. If you've ever coached, a couple of people getting up to speed in a gameplan can absolutely affect how you go. You might win games, but you won't get to the same level, you won't be humming like you'd like to be.
"If they're going to analyse their preseason games or work on combinations, you can't have more variables going in there that you're unsure of. The squad was picked in the Six Nations, it wasn't picked the other day."
One of the only real surprises in the squad was that Farrell opted for 42 players rather than the 45 that had been reportedly been considered.
And Holland says the final number of 42 won't have been arrived at by accident.
"I think even making it 45, there's been a plan in place, You think about logistics of training numbers, how many people will be standing around and what does that take away from the workrate around the session?
"Even with John Hodnett, I think he's had a very good season but the hype is created in the last two games. If a fella has a very fast peak, I'm not saying he will but there can be a very fast decline as well.
"You might have a couple of players in the 42, but Andy Farrell as said it won't be a 33 man squad, you need more [in reserve].
"Bringing a fella in out of the cold and expecting him to get up to the speed of things, and to get the same level of feeling of success, and the story they've told in the last two years. Anyone who has been in there has been part of that story," he added.
With games against Italy, England and Samoa to come before Farrell trims his group down to the final squad of 33 for the tournament in France, the nature of rugby means injuries are inevitable.
And Holland feels we could well see someone featuring at the World Cup who didn't even make this week's provisional group of 42.
"I think there's a case to be made for some of them.
"You can't just bring in six or seven fellas different to what you had before and expect them to get up to the pace.
"I think Jean Kleyn is the biggest one, he's a bit of an enforcer in your pack, you look at what he does in maul defence and defence in general.
"His attack is what's going to let him down. He doesn't maybe have the handling that other fellas have, and you need to be a really rounded player to get into an Andy Farrell squad.
"You could make the argument of him going in ahead of Joe McCarthy or Kieran Treadwell, but they've been in there, they know the craic and are still very good ball players for the position they're playing in."
