Leinster welcome back Contepomi

THE good news first.

Leinster will travel to the south of France later this week with both Felipe Contepomi and Isa Nacewa back in the squad and available for selection after respective hand and knee injuries.

Contepomi hasn’t featured in blue since the disappointing Magners League defeat away to Glasgow in late October while Nacewa had made only a handful of appearances before being sidelined back in mid-September.

“They will be alright,” said consultant coach Alan Gaffney. “They will be in the squad. “Shane Jennings is back and available too. They are three good guys to have back and that will strengthen our squad.”

Their returns are timely because the bad news is that Shane Horgan is almost certainly out due to illness while a hamstring injury is casting doubt over Brian O’Driscoll’s input at Castres’ Stade Pierre-Antoine on Friday night.

O’Driscoll is said to be “hopeful” about recovering in time but Horgan is struggling badly with a bug that has hit various members of the Leinster squad recently and which sidelined CJ van der Linde for the last Mangers League game against the Dragons two weeks back.

“Shane played last week and under a lot of difficulty considering he was ill,” said Gaffney. “He has had a virus now for some time and he knew we were in a lot of trouble last week so he played and credit to him for that.

“It obviously didn’t do him the world of good at the same time so he is doubtful at the present time. He is not fully ruled out as of yet but I suspect there is not much chance that he will play.”

Leinster are at least fortunate in that they possess an abundance of versatile backs in Contepomi, Nacewa, Luke Fitzgerald and Rob Kearney and a number of combinations are being road-tested in training this week.

Leinster squad (v Castres Olympique)

Forwards: C Healy, R McCormack, B Blaney, B Jackman, CJ van der Linde, S Wright, T Hogan, D Toner, C Jowitt, M O’Kelly, R Elsom, Stephen Keogh, S Jennings, S O’Brien, J Heaslip.

Backs: C Keane, C Whitaker, D Holwell, J Sexton, R Kearney, Simon Keogh, F Contepomi, L Fitzgerald, B O’Driscoll, S Horgan, G Dempsey, I Nacewa.