Coach biding his time ahead of Edinburgh visit
Several players ruled out of last week’s game in Paris have returned to full or near fitness and Penney will monitor the progress of people like Felix Jones, Donncha O’Callaghan and Niall Ronan before making the call. However, Ronan O’Gara, Keith Earls, Wian du Preez and James Coughlan have no chance of making it.
“It’s early in the week and they’ve done some good work and we’re making sure they’re as good as they can be heading into the latter part of the week,” said the New Zealander. “It’s going to be a few days until we’re totally aware as to where they stand.”
The bests news concerning O’Gara is that “it will be sooner rather than later”.
His absence with hamstring trouble, however, means Ian Keatley will start his first Heineken Cup match at out-half. It’s unclear who will sit on the bench should a replacement number 10 be needed.
JJ Hanrahan, Ireland out-half in the Junior World Cup last summer, is registered but is yet to start a Rabo Direct game. Penney raised a few eyebrows when commenting “he is one of the options and we’ve got a nine who can also play at 10”.
The full-back berth will also provide Penney with food for thought. With Keatley switching to out-half, Denis Hurley is likeliest to return to the starting XV, although Felix Jones is back in the mix after his latest injury setback.
Looking back on the disappointment of Paris last week, Penney admitted they had failed to close out the game but said “given the experience level that was on the field at the end, you could probably make allowances”.
Youthful loose head prop David Kilcoyne came in for glowing praise but Penney felt because “he is a new kid on the block”, Kilcoyne got little latitude from the referee. “We’ve put through two reports to the referees’ authorities because we feel we’ve been harshly done by and they have been really positive, which is a great start.”
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