Ryan injury woe adds to Foley’s frustrations

Anthony Foley’s first year as Munster head coach seems to be lurching from one crisis to another.

Yesterday’s news that international second-row Donnacha Ryan will miss at least the next four months looks sure to be followed with an announcement that Keith Earls will be joining the growing list of long-term injury victims with a knee problem.

Throw in the unavailability of the much heralded New Zealand signing Tyler Bleyendall until after Christmas and you could hardly blame Foley for believing that the rugby gods were conspiring against him.

Furthermore, he must register his squad for the forthcoming European Champions Cup tomorrow and will spend much of the next 24 hours figuring who will be available to him over the coming months and how best to plug the gaps left by a sizeable group of injured players, including hooker Mike Sherry.

“Welcome to my world,” Foley commented — but with a determined facial expression that suggested he had no intention of allowing an unbelievable run of bad luck to derail his ambitious plans for his team this season.

“What’s happened with Donnacha is very frustrating,” he admitted. “He was out there today training full on. The only thing he can’t do is scrummage. It’s a weird injury, one that I haven’t come across before. It’s the bone underneath his toe that he uses to spring and that’s why there are issues about scrummaging. We’ve done everything in our power but unfortunately it’s going to be surgery for him. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but we’ll get on with it and we knew this was coming for a few weeks. It’s a good opportunity for many other lads, Dave Foley, Billy Holland, Sean McCarthy, John Madigan, these lads coming through, and others who could step in to have a go at the second-row role. We do have a lot of good players coming back, you’d have seen Peter O’Mahony out there today, Damien Varley is nearly ready.”

Earls will have his knee assessed by a renowned Swedish consultant in London next Monday. But the Munster management are preparing for the worst. “Keith again took another knock to his knee last week sidestepping and he couldn’t take the pain,” said Foley. “Keith was above in Irish camp at the weekend and the view after testing him was to bring him for more tests. I don’t have a crystal ball but it doesn’t look great.”

Foley won’t announce his squad for the visit of table-toppers Ospreys for Saturday’s (6.30pm) clash at Thomond Park until Friday. He acknowledges the Welsh side will provide their sternest test of the season.

“I’ve been very impressed with them,” he acknowledged. “Look at the Ospreys, Scott Baldwin at hooker, Alan Wyn Jones, Barker, Justin Tipuric, these guys are dominating up front at the moment.

“We need to control our own patches and make sure we can go at them. There’s no point playing in Thomond Park and sitting on our heels, we’ve got to be on the front foot.”

Eusebio Guinazu, the Argentinian hooker who recently joined the squad until December, took part in yesterday’s squad session at UL and made a favourable impression on the head coach.

“He’s a very experienced hooker,” said Foley. “Peter Stringer spoke really highly of him after his time with Bath last year. He’s a hooker who can play prop, he’s an excellent line-out thrower, is very good around the field, he’s dynamic judging from a few of the things he did for us today and I’d think he’d be keen enough to get into the forward battle. He won’t be in the mix this week but we have two fixtures next week against Leinster and Leinster A and we’d look to get him into one of those games.”