O’Gara in fitness race for Edinburgh tie

Ronan O’Gara is in a race against time to be fit for Munster’s Heineken Cup clash with Edinburgh at Thomond Park on Sunday.

The iconic out-half limped off with a hamstring injury 33 minutes into their opening Pool 1 clash with Racing Metro and will undergo a scan today to assess the extent of the injury. The Irish Examiner understands Munster will not make any decisions until they receive the results from the scan.

On a day the province would like to forget, Paul O’Connell’s return was blighted by what he believes was an incorrect decision by English referee Greg Garner. O’Connell lost possession of the ball in the act of scoring a try but regained control before dotting it down. “Yeah, I just dropped it straight down and landed on it again. I thought it was a try. I thought he awarded the try but then I think he changed his mind and went to the video ref,” he said.

However the former skipper insists Munster’s record of making the knock-out stages can be salvaged despite Saracens picking up a bonus point victory over Edinburgh.

“It’s a very tough position now, I suppose that result from Sarries puts us in a really, really tough position and makes them favourites for the group.

“But, look, we’ve been here before where we’ve lost our first game. It kind of becomes a cup final mentality from here and clarifies the mind. We’ve a big home game this week, we’ve got to do everything in our power to do that. So we’ve just got to focus on getting a big win next week and we’ll worry about December whenever it comes along.

“What we need to do is to manage mistakes. At times it was a bit of a lottery but we put ourselves in a position through the try from Simon [Zebo]. It’s just a shame we didn’t close it.”