James Lowe has been ruled out for the remainder of the Guinness Six Nations championship due to the groin injury he suffered in Ireland's win against England last Saturday.
The 33-year-old pulled up sharply after triggering the injury 18 minutes into Ireland's 42-21 win, where he was replaced by Tommy O’Brien.
Lowe was retained in Ireland’s mini-camp this week to rehab the knock, with assistant coach Simon Easterby confirming earlier this afternoon that the Leinster wing has seen a specialist to determine the extent of the injury.
"He's struggling," the Ireland defence coach said, after the squad held an open training session at Aviva Stadium this afternoon.
"Lowey's pretty tough. He was getting up and down on the sideline when things were going well for us and he was part of the cheerleading group on the sideline."
However, the IRFU have since confirmed Lowe will play no further part in the championship.
Just under 5,000 supporters turned up to Aviva Stadium to watch this afternoon’s open session, where Farrell’s squad trained alongside the Ireland U20s.
With several players released back to their provinces to get gametime, Lowe was the only member of the retained group not to train this afternoon, as preparations begin for the penultimate round at home to Wales on Friday week.
After a heavy defeat to France in the opener in Paris, and a scrappy win at home to Italy, Ireland’s 42-21 win against England last Saturday has blown their campaign wide open as they look to kick on and secure a Triple Crown, which should be enough for them to finish second in the table at least.
Easterby insists the squad and management won’t be getting carried away after the record win at Twickenham.
He said: "I guess one result against England in Twickenham, it doesn't give us the right to sit back and reflect and enjoy that, because you know you've got another game coming up against Wales who performed really well against Scotland.
"Our philosophy has always been to be really diligent around the fundamentals in our game and make sure that we keep honing those skills and keep mastering those skills in training to allow us to keep performing and we'll need to get better again next week.
"It's a different game, it's a different team that we're playing against. They [Wales] have got different skillsets and they've got different threats to England. We need to make sure we stay on top of that."
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