When The Irish Times' rugby correspondent Gerry Thornley joined us on Off The Ball this week, Irish rugby fans were still digesting the news that Munster back-row Tommy O'Donnell suffered an injury against Wales last Saturday which rules him out of the upcoming World Cup.

And that is the risk of warm-up games as Gerry explained citing previous cases like Geordan Murphy (2003), Felix Jones and David Wallace (both 2011) who had their World Cup dreams scuppered by injury in build-up games.

Listen to the full interview with Gerry via the podcast player: