Ross Molony says he'll be ready and waiting for Ireland head coach Andy Farrell to come calling ahead of the Rugby World Cup.
The Leinster second row was an unlucky omission from the 42-man training squad that's been in camp this summer, but revealed that a phone call from Ireland forwards coach Paul O'Connell has reassured him he's not too far from the management's thinking.
"I'm not officially on standby, but I was told to keep my body right and that things could happen," the 29-year-old said at the launch of Energia's 'Rugby for All' initiative.
While Molony has yet to earn a Test cap for Ireland, he has been involved in several squads in recent seasons under Andy Farrell, and featured for Ireland A in their meeting with an All Blacks XV in November 2022.
And the experienced lock says his international ambitions remain as strong as ever.
"I got a call this summer from Paulie [O'Connell] when I wasn't selected, and it's still as disappointing for me, on a personal level, as the first time to say I wasn't selected. It's not a nice thing to hear as a player, but I don't think that want and desire to make that [squad] ever goes.
"I'm still playing in Ireland and I still want to play for Ireland.
"It shows that I am close, so all I can do is keep training away, keep my body fit, keep staying healthy and injury-free. It seems obvious, but it's a long campaign, and things could happen."
Molony has been back in pre-season training with Leinster since mid-June, although it's been a largely depleted group, with 20 players currently away in Irish camp.
The province will play several friendlies before the BKT United Rugby Championship gets under way in October, with Leinster heading into the season looking to win their first piece of silverware since 2021 following consecutive trophyless campaigns.
Last season ended in heartbreak for Leinster, first beaten by Munster in the semi-final of the URC before giving a devastating 27-26 defeat to La Rochelle in the final of the Champions Cup a week later.
That Champions Cup loss - in which they had led 17-0 after just 12 minutes - was the second year in a row they'd been beaten by Ronan O'Gara's side in the decider, with the added pain of it coming on home soil in Dublin.
In the days after the final, the squad came together for a players-only gathering before going their separate ways on holiday, which would be their only chance to meet as a group before the end of the World Cup.
"I'll be honest with you, it was brilliant," Molony says of that discussion.
"We put a message out that we wanted to have this, and everyone had a bit of time to prepare. It doesn't matter if you're the most capped or least capped person in the room, you can get your point across, if you have something to say now is the time to do it.
"It wasn’t a 'we’re feeling sorry for ourselves’, or anything like that. It was very optimistic in terms of putting together the mood of the players and how we wanted to approach next season, so that we could park the disappointment of last year and turn it into excitement about what's ahead.
"It was important that we acknowledged what had happened and then to grow a bit of excitement about next season. Whatever happens in the World Cup the lads are going to come back to Leinster at some stage so you want to have the hunger inside them to come back.
"It's going to be an exciting competition next year with the draw and everything, so it's to keep the fuel inside those lads and us as well."
The 29-year-old has been a keen observer of the Rugby Championship in recent weeks, with Springbok head coach Jacques Nienaber (below) set to join the province after the World Cup, replacing senior coach Stuart Lancaster who joined Racing 92 this summer.
And Molony says while he hasn't spoken to Nienaber directly yet, he says the incoming coach has been staying in contact with the rest of the province's management.
"We haven't had any contact with him as a group at the moment, I know Sean O'Brien has been onto him a good bit and started to integrate a bit of his defensive plan.
"Looking at the South African national team at the moment you can get a bit excited about how they are defending and probably see what's to come. Jason Jenkins has been coached by him before, talked to him a little bit, it sounds like a really exciting appointment and hopefully can take us as a team to the next level of defence.
"You are playing against his style of defence the last few years, more aggressive and blitz off the line a lot.
"If you don’t get your attack right against them it's such a hard thing to come up against. There's huge excitement amongst the group as to where we can take the next level of our defence."
Watch live coverage of Ireland's Rugby World Cup warm-up games v Italy (5 August), England (19 August) and Samoa (26 August) live on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player, listen to live commentary on RTÉ Radio 1 or follow a live blog on RTÉ.ie and the RTÉ News app.
