Andrew Conway And Luke McGrath ‘Settling In Nicely’ In Japan

It was a busy day at the first full Ireland media session of the Rugby World Cup. Andrew Conway and Luke McGrath spoke about settling in at the team hotel in Makuhari, Chiba, recovering from the jet lag and adapting to the humid training and playing conditions.

Sunday is a rest day from training and a chance to explore the city. Speaking about the the experience so far, McGrath said:

The first few days was about trying to get over the jet lag. Today we have the afternoon off so a few of the boys will head in to Tokyo, have a taste of what that’s like. The people here are so friendly, it’s a great place to visit. It’s important that there is time to switch off and a lot of the lads will do that today.”

Asked about the conditions for training, Conway commented,

We were both here two years ago (on the June tour of 2017). Yesterday was quite hot and it was very hot two years ago. We were in Portugal training in the heat, we’ve been using sweat vests, so we’ve been doing a lot of things to make ourselves as used to it as possible before we came here.

“It is is just one of things where you just have to adapt to it as quick as you can. We’ve got some cooling strategies that the S&C team have put into place in pre-season so we are as up to date as we can be, but there’s only so much you can do before you get into the real thick of it.”