Team selection tough as McGahan spoilt for choice

MUNSTER coach Tony McGahan has made no promises to front-line players ahead of tomorrow night’s RaboDirect Pro12 clash with arch-rivals Leinster.

McGahan obviously can’t ignore his best players a week before the start of another Heineken Cup challenge as the World Cup veterans – those left standing – are all back in the fray.

But the Australian coach has been impressed by what was left behind. In terms of possible selection for the Northampton game, he threw forward a few surprises.

“Actually, I’m not that close.

“We’ve seen during the World Cup about the depth of the group and I think you saw at the back end of last season with Mike Sherry and Stephen Archer coming through in the front-row and now we’ve got BJ [Botha] as a new addition there.

“You’ve got Donnacha Ryan’s emergence through the end of last year and also at the World Cup and you’ve got Peter O’Mahony on the scene in the back row.

“Conor Murray’s coming back after playing the [World Cup] pool games.

“Danny Barnes, Will Chambers are added to the mix, so we’ve got a really different situation compared to where we were coming into the pool stages last year.

“We picked a group last week. We’ll pick another group of players this week.

“It’s just going to be on a game by game basis.

“I think there’s so much competition there and the quality of player makes it difficult just to get there.”

MUNSTER SQUAD: M Horan, W du Preez, J Hayes, BJ Botha, S Archer, D Varley, D Fogarty, M O’Driscoll, D Ryan, D O’Callaghan, P O’Connell, B Holland, D Leamy, N Ronan, P O’Mahony, T O’Donnell, J Coughlan, T O’Leary, C Murray, D Williams, P Stringer, I Keatley, R O’Gara, K Earls, D Barnes, L Mafi, W Chambers, D Howlett, D Hurley, J Murphy, S Deasy