Ireland's Rob Kearney doubtful for World Cup opener

Ireland fullback Rob Kearney is set to miss World Cup opening encounter against Scotland following a calf injury according to reports.

Kearney is five short of reaching the 100-Test milestone and his absence will be a concern for head coach Joe Schmidt with Robbie Henshaw already on the sidelines with a hamstring injury and Keith Earls is also under injury cloud.

Scrum coach Greg Feek revealed that Kearney has shown a lot of improvement and will be aiming to make a return in the second game of the tournament against host Japan in Shizuoka on 28th September.

“Robbie’s looking a lot better this week, we’re just back from training and still sorting things out but it’s reasonably positive in terms of what we saw,” Feek told reporters.

“Day by day, week by week things can improve so we’re just taking it like that. From here on in, we’ll see how it goes over the next few days and then reassess.

“As you know our collective has always been something we pride ourselves on, we back everyone and we’ve spent a lot of time in pre-season. I know what game he’ll be targeting, it’s still early days. We still have hopes for next week.”

Ireland will head into the World Cup with back to back wins over Wales in the warm-up games and are grouped in Pool A in the showpiece event along with Scotland, Japan, Russia and Samoa.