With the opening game 50 days away and warm-up matches being prepared for, what other way is there to bring you up to speed with World Cup goodness from the 4 UK teams than with a Habbox article?
“Nothing” is the answer you should have given. Read on!

England (my team, expect bias) made camp in Italy last Monday for a 12 day heat camp. Fun fact, the location was chosen because Treviso has the closest heat and humidity to Japan, where this year’s Rugby World Cup is being hosted. While the 38 players are mainly doing strength and conditioning training under horrendous heat, 7 England players who were back in England visited RAF Cranwell to undertake tasks designed to test their decision-making skills under pressure, and under stress.

Over the water in Ireland, the national rugby team held an open training session on the 19th July. Whilst 5000 fans watched them, head coach Joe Schmidt had the team dodging the morning rain and getting on with what their scrum-half described as “hard work”. They now have a few days off before they go off to train at their in-house high performance centre at the Sport Ireland campus in Blanchardstown.

Meanwhile in Scotland, the idea of an open session catches on as they hold one also, sporting their new training kit sponsored by BT. After the reception held at BT Murrayfield for the premiere of the new kits, 2000 fans watched them as they went through another day of “gruelling” pre-season training. All for a good cause though.

In Wales, the training squad of 42 head to Switzerland for their first of two camps. This first is designed for the players to get used to working in an environment where there is less oxygen, so the body can get used to the conditions they’ll face and get the most out of it. In addition to the Swiss camp, they will also be heading to Turkey to do their heat acclimatisation camp, a bit like England are doing right now in Italy.

The first warm-up game for our teams will be Saturday 10th August for Ireland vs Italy held at the Aviva Stadium, 2pm on Channel 4/RTE, officiated by Luke Pearce. The next day is England vs Wales at Twickenham, 2pm on Sky Sports, officiated by Mathieu Raynal.

I will be back soon for another roundup of the Rugby World Cup in our corner of the globe!