Front row pair take another back seat
Horan has discarded the beard that he has sported for the past year and looks the picture of health. However, his total lack of game time since the first Treviso game back in mid- October means he must settle for an AIB League game with Shannon against Dolphin at Coonagh.
The situation regarding Flannery is even worse with coach Tony McGahan revealing he will also miss the Pool One decider against Northampton at Thomond Park tomorrow week.
However, the news regarding the front-row is not all bad. Frenchman Julien Brugnaut has recovered from injury and has been included in the 26-man squad along with Tony Buckley and the promising young Cork Con prop, Stephen Archer.
McGahan commented: “Marcus has been back in training for three weeks but unfortunately he hasn’t had game time. He’s played a minute of rugby in 11 weeks so he is not in the squad.
“Jerry Flannery hasn’t been able to complete a field session up to the end of today. He’s done a lot of running, he’s done a lot of gym work but at this stage, especially for players in the front row, to assimilate them back into the team at this stage would be very hard.”
McGahan pointed out that Brugnaut “came on for Marcus after 15 minutes in the first game. That was his first taste of it and we thought he acquitted himself well. Young Stephen Archer has been excellent when he’s had opportunities. His first big test was against Ulster at Thomond Park when he was up against Botha and the like and we thought he was excellent. He came on and did an excellent job for us up in Ulster again last week.”
South African Wian du Preez will again start at loose head prop and will also be available against Northampton before returning to South Africa to renew his contract with the Cheetahs.
Jean de Villiers was paired with Keith Earls in the centre for last Sunday’s abortive Magners League game against the Scarlets and Niall Ronan came in for the injured Denis Leamy in a reshuffled back-row.
The near certainty is that McGahan will again opt for the same formations but he still won’t show his hand until lunch time tomorrow.
The consensus is that Italian teams are invariably whipping boys for the big teams in Europe but Treviso have proven otherwise this season after beating Perpignan and running Northampton to three points on home territory. As Ronan O’Gara pointed out, they are looking at this game as their “cup final” and there hasn’t been a hint of complacency in the Munster camp over the past few days.
“They are extremely well coached by Franco Smith and have an extremely well organised game plan,” says McGahan. “They also have a very good long kicking game with Goosen at 10 and McLean at 15.”
Munster conceded two early tries in the first meeting of the sides but McGahan said Munster were never rattled: “I thought we played really well in the first half but the scoreboard didn’t reflect that,” he maintained.
Munster trained on Tuesday at Douglas Hall and at Musgrave Park yesterday. The weather certainly didn’t help their efforts as in a short period of time they have had to cope with flooding, snow, ice, frost and fog. Nevertheless, the coach insists they are accepting it all in a positive manner.
“It is what it is and you have to make sure you deal with that,” he reasons. “We have been lucky that we haven’t really been compromised with regard to our ball-work but we have been compromised with regard to playing on grass – today was the first time in two weeks that we were able to train on a grass pitch and that was a welcome relief for us.”
Munster know for sure that they will win on Saturday if they reproduce the form that demolished Perpignan but McGahan admits that could be a case of wishful thinking.
“You hope that you can look to those standards every week but the reality of that is that it is very difficult,” he said.
“We haven’t really been given an opportunity to do that over the last three weeks because we had a strong rotation over the Connacht and Ulster games and then our game was wiped out at the weekend. It will be difficult to replicate Perpignan for the whole game this week.”
MUNSTER SQUAD
Forwards: J Brugnaut, W du Preez, T Buckley, J Hayes, D Fogarty, D Varley, S Archer, D O’Callaghan, M O’Driscoll, P O’Connell, D Ryan, A Quinlan, B Holland, N Ronan, J Coughlan, D Wallace.
Backs: D Howlett, I Dowling, K Earls, D Hurley, P Warwick, L Mafi, R O’Gara, J de Villiers, P Stringer, T O’Leary.
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