Out of the sick bay and into the front line

IT WAS when room service knocked at the door and he could hardly get out of the bed that Marcus Horan realised he wouldn’t be facing France at Stade de France two days later.

It was something he had always wanted to do and, as a fully established member of the Irish pack with 33 caps to his credit, it was inevitable that he would do so this time round. However, fate intervened in the shape of what was described as the winter vomiting bug, though he himself says it was a little more than that.

He explains: “It was the worst sickness I’ve ever had. I was as weak as a baby on the Wednesday morning and I thought it would be a 24-hour job and the doc was saying I’d be okay. But the following morning, as the boys were getting ready to leave for Paris, I couldn’t get my head around travelling. I would have risked the rest of the squad and couldn’t have had all my energy back by Saturday because I had lost a fair bit of weight. There was a knock at the door and it took me nearly five minutes to get there.”