The Ireland coaching group have named the 31-man panel that will travel to Japan on the 11th September to compete at Rugby World Cup 2019. The squad is captained by Rory Best who will play at a fourth Rugby World Cup having been involved in the 2007, 2011, 2015 editions. Six of the squad named featured at the previous two Rugby World Cups (2011 & 2015) – Sean Cronin, Keith Earls, Cian Healy, Rob Kearney, Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton, while a further five played in the 2015 tournament – Tadhg Furlong, Iain Henderson, Robbie Henshaw, Peter O’Mahony and Rhys Ruddock The remaining 19 players will be making their Rugby World Cup debuts – Bundee Aki, Tadgh Beirne, Joey Carbery, Jack Carty, Jack Conan, Andrew Conway, Chris Farrell, Dave Kilcoyne, Jean Kleyn, Jordan Larmour, Luke McGrath, Andrew Porter, James Ryan, John Ryan, Niall Scannell, CJ Stander, Garry Ringrose, Jacob Stockdale and Josh van der Flier. Ireland are in Pool A and will play Scotland, Japan, Russia and Samoa. Ireland’s opening fixture is against Scotland at the Yokohama Stadium in Tokyo. Six days later Ireland will take on tournament hosts Japan in Shizuoka before playing Russia in Kobe the following Thursday. Ireland’s final pool game is against Samoa on Saturday 12th in Fukuoka. Ireland play Wales in the final game of the Guinness Series 2019 at Aviva Stadium on Saturday – tickets are on sale from ticketmaster.ie – click here to buy. Ireland head coach Joe Schmidt, commented, “It was a difficult thing right from the start to have the 45 that we had. We went down to 40 players and to go from 40 down to 31 was really difficult, but we had a process whereby we looked back through every training, looked through the games. “There were some guys who obviously had more experience and probably had more credit in the bank and were more established and there were other guys who were trying to force their way into group and trying to get a balance of current form versus previous performance, it’s always a very very difficult conundrum to try to solve. “It was one of those typical selection meetings where maybe 20-25 of the players are listed straight away and it’s those ones where you’re are trying to get balance where it’s very difficult to choose between two players and two players offer slightly different things and you’re trying then to narrow down and trying to get the best balance across the squad of the entire 31 because that’s part of what you need to do because you’ve got to make sure you have cover that’s immediate even though you can replace players there is obviously a big time delay in that.” IRELAND'S RUGBY WORLD CUP SQUAD 2019 Forwards (17) Rory Best (Banbridge/Ulster) 119 caps CAPTAIN Tadhg Beirne (Lansdowne/Munster) 8 caps Jack Conan (Old Belvedere/Leinster) 15 caps Sean Cronin (St Mary’s College/Leinster) 69 caps Tadhg Furlong (Clontarf/Leinster) 35 caps Cian Healy (Clontarf/Leinster) 90 caps Dave Kilcoyne (UL Bohemians/Munster) 30 caps Iain Henderson (Queen's University/Ulster) 47 caps Jean Kleyn (Munster) 2 caps Peter O’Mahony (Cork Constitution/Munster) 59 caps Andrew Porter (UCD/Leinster) 17 caps Rhys Ruddock (St Mary’s College/Leinster) 22 caps James Ryan (UCD/Leinster) 18 caps John Ryan (Cork Constitution/Munster) 20 caps Niall Scannell (Dolphin/Munster) 16 caps CJ Stander (Shannon/Munster) 32 caps Josh van der Flier (UCD/Leinster) 18 caps Backs (14) Bundee Aki (Galwegians/Connacht) 19 caps Joey Carbery (Clontarf/Munster) 19 caps Jack Carty (Buccaneers/Connacht) 6 caps Andrew Conway (Garryowen/Munster) 15 caps Keith Earls (Young Munster/Munster) 77 caps Chris Farrell (Young Munster/Munster) 5 caps Robbie Henshaw (Buccaneers/Leinster) 37 caps Rob Kearney (UCD/Leinster) 91 caps Jordan Larmour (St Mary’s College/Leinster) 15 caps Luke McGrath (UCD/Leinster) 13 caps Conor Murray (Garryowen/Munster) 73 caps Garry Ringrose (UCD/Leinster) 23 caps Jonathan Sexton (St Marys College/Leinster) 83 caps Jacob Stockdale (Lurgan/Ulster) 20 caps IRELAND'S RUGBY WORLD CUP FIXTURES 2019 Ireland v Scotland Yokohama Stadium, Sunday 22nd September, 2019 KO: 08.45 (Irish Times) Ireland v Japan Shizuoka Stadium Ecopa, Saturday 28th September, 2019 KO: 08.15 (Irish Time) Ireland v Russia Misaki Stadium, Thursday 3rd October, 2019 KO: 11.15 (Irish Time) Ireland v Samoa Fukuoka Hakatanomi Stadium, Saturday 12th October. 2019 KO: 11.45 (Irish Time) RWC2019 BROADCAST INFORMATION: ROI: Eir, RTE TV, RTE Radio NI: ITV, BBC Radio

Best to lead 31-man Ireland squad at RWC2019

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