Penney confident Ryan will snub Perpignan and pledge future to Munster

Donnacha Ryan’s weekend visit to Perpignan has been confirmed by Munster, but head coach Rob Penney still hopes he will pledge his future to the province.

Questioned about Ryan’s trip to France and the possibility of a move to the continent at the end of the season, Penney believes there is a strong chance the player will opt for a contract extension at home.

“As a young man with a lot of experience, obviously he is looking to potentially spread his wings, so who knows?

“Look, Donnacha, we know, is involved in contractual discussions and that can take on all all sorts of pathways. We would, however, be very hopeful Donnacha would re-commit to Irish and Munster rugby.”

With Ryan unavailable anyway for Munster in their win over Glasgow and sidelined for the foreseeable future with a knee injury, Penney will have optimised the player’s visit to Stade Aime Giral.

Asked whether he might have brought back information on Munster’s next Heineken Cup opponents, the coach hardly hesitated: “I hope so!”

Penney has more immediate issues of concern, the most important being the hearing in Cardiff today into an alleged act of foul play by Conor Murray during Munster’s win over Glasgow in the RaboDirect Pro12 game.

However, the coach believes Murray is innocent of the charge of elbowing an opponent and yesterday boldly declared: “I don’t think he has anything to answer for myself.”

Although there are still other injury concerns, with returnee Luke O’Dea picking up a hamstring strain in a club game for Shannon last week, Penney is in a happy place after Munster’s fifth win from six games and a place at the top of the table as he prepares for Saturday’s clash with Ospreys at Thomond Park.

The win over Glasgow was, he said, a boost for the group: “We got a bit of belief we can do the job away from home, which has been a challenge for us. And to do it when we had a bit of adversary with losing Earlsy (Keith Earls) at the last minute and then Paul (O’Connell) pulling out in the warm-up was good.

“It was a nice performance. There was great effort, energy and desire from the players so great credit to them for hanging in there and coming away with the points. Sometimes you have to win ugly.”

Penney paid tribute to youngster JJ Hanrahan for putting the mistake that led to Munster’s Heineken Cup opening day loss to Edinburgh behind him.

Hanrahan got the Man of the Match award against Glasgow and the coach remarked: “It was very pleasing. I thought the way the management group handled that situation was a bit special as well. On the back of the Conor (Murray) experience (mistake against Racing Metro) last year, the group did a great job not putting any extra pressure and letting the young man deal with it in his own way.”