O’Connell included in squad
O’Connell was shocked when he saw red from French referee Christophe Berdos after an instinctive lash-back to a jersey tug from the Welsh sides number eight Jonathan Thomas.
O’Connell trained in Cork with the rest of the team yesterday before his journey to Dublin to face the disciplinary chiefs.
Donncha Ryan, who played for Munster A in their British and Irish Cup victory over Melrose last weekend, is an automatic replacement should O’Connell receive a ban.
McGahan said: “In essence, everyone is fine at this stage so it’s the same squad as last week. We only had one training session, so we’ll see how everyone fits and what we need to do. We’ll look at any change that needs to be made (after O’Connell’s hearing).”
O’Connell’s dismissal has dominated much of rugby conversion these last couple of days, and strangely, some even suggest it could help Munster’s cause should the big man be unavailable.
After all, French referee Roman Poite will be in charge this weekend and he has proved to be a thorn in Munster’s side in the past. Putting it mildly, Poite and O’Connell appear to have a communication problem.
Yet McGahan hopes that past events won’t cloud the necessity to move on, and he promised there would be no baggage from Munster’s point of view in relation to Poite.
“No, any referee is always going to play a part in the game. You just hope they don’t play a major part. Everyone remembers games that have gone extremely well and when the referee’s been a very minor part of that. We hope that’s the case this weekend.
“It’s really not in our nature (to get involved with referees), not the way we go about things. We’ll just get about our business, do our talking on the field and, hopefully, let our actions speak there. From my end there’s definitely no purpose served in trying to influence and have a cut off individuals with regard to the game.”
So, in relation to the referee, McGahan is approaching the match in a positive frame of mind, although he pointed to the difficulties associated with these back-to-back Heineken Cup fixtures
“It’s always difficult. We’ve been on both sides of the process, with an away game first and a loss and still picked up an away losing bonus point. That puts you in a good frame of mind so I’d imagine Ospreys are certainly carrying that (achievement) into the game.
“They’ve got a tremendous record at home in the Heineken Cup, so they’ll be going in with a lot of confidence and I’m sure that they felt that they had certain stages of the game where they had the capabilities of getting a result.
“Ourselves? We certainly know we’re in a really tight pool and there’s a history of winning games at home although that creates its own pressure. The pressure really builds and if you’re behind in round four for the last 15 or 20 minutes, knowing that a home defeat will tip you out of the pool, then it can lead to the type of reaction that makes you do things you really don’t want to.
“Being away, we just have to make sure we navigate our way through the first 60 minutes and put ourselves in a great position to be able to do that to put the pressure on them.”
But McGahan expects his side to be under plenty of pressure too. “Ospreys always had a real skilful element about them, but I feel, especially the last 12 months, they’ve really added a pragmatic approach to their rugby.
“I think we have seen that in the way they’ve played and conducted themselves at the back end of last season; the way they’ve navigated through the pools series of the Heineken Cup, especially last season when they had a very tough pool and got through that playing more than one style of rugby.
“Any side that wants to be competitive at the top end of Europe or any competition, you need to have different ways to play the game. I certainly think they’ve evolved with the competition and their playing group to having different ways of getting results; that’s a really positive sign and positive statement about the club itself, about the coaching structures and the quality of player that they have.”
W du Preez, D Varley, M Sherry, D Hurley, J Hayes, T Buckley, Dave Ryan, D O’Callaghan, P O’Connell, M O’Driscoll, D Ryan, J Coughlan, D Wallace, A Quinlan, N Ronan, D Leamy, T O’Leary, P Stringer, R O’Gara, P Warwick, J Murphy, L Mafi, T Gleeson, S Deasy, D Hurley, S Tuitupou, K Earls, D Howlett.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
