Best ready to captain Ireland in autumn series
Rory Best is hopeful of leading Ireland into the upcoming test series in November.
They host South Africa, Fiji and Argentina over the course of 3 weekends in Dublin.
The Ulster hooker has so far missed the majority of the domestic season as a result of a hamstring injury, but he made his return from the bench in the defeat to La Rochelle.
He's also inline to start against Leinster, and as a result, Best believes he'll be named in Joe Schmidt's Ireland squad, announced on Thursday.
"I would hope so. I haven't heard anything to the contrary and it's something that I love doing and something that I'd love to continue to do," said Best.
"I suppose we'll see how we get on this weekend vs Leinster but I haven't heard anything from Joe - so we'll see, maybe I'll just stick the phone into airplane mode."
Best's involvement with Ireland is almost certain, as is his position as the captain.
The hooker says Ireland need to lay down a marker with 3 wins in order to build some momentum ahead of the 6 Nations.
"I think if we want to make a bit of a statement and push on and get the championship back in the new year, then these are 3 games that we have to at the very least perform well in. If we do that, we can win all 3," said Best.
Ireland picked up headline wins in 2016, notably beating Australia and New Zealand - but Best believes they need to target consistency.
"Obviously we created a bit of history, but we didn't quite get the consistency we'd had over the previous 2 or 3 years."
"We need to just get back to that, and it'll be 3 really tough tests. It'll be tough for our squad, to see where we are, and to see if we can get that level of consistency."