How do you replace the irreplaceable Paul O’Connell?

Paul O’Connell may be keeping quiet on his future but Anthony Foley knows it will not be with Munster and the head coach is making plans to bring in an overseas replacement for the departing Ireland captain.

O’Connell’s glittering 14-season career in the Munster first team came to a deeply disappointing end at Ravenhill on Saturday night as the province was outclassed by Glasgow Warriors in the Guinness Pro12 final.

Despite mounting speculation that the 35-year-old lock is set to put pen to paper on a lucrative contract with European champions Toulon, O’Connell has not confirmed anything about his future beyond this autumn’s World Cup other than to repeat he is still undecided over whether to play on after October or retire.

There were certainly no revelations forthcoming from the double Heineken Cup winner on Saturday following Munster’s 31-13 defeat in Belfast, O’Connell responding to a question from TG4 about his plans with a straight bat, saying: “Summer off now and prepare for the World Cup.”

Yet there is no doubt one of Foley’s chief tasks this summer will be to bring in a replacement lock capable of competing at the highest level.

“Yeah, I think when we get to that situation we will probably have to go to the market,” Foley said.

“Then again we have the likes of Dave Foley, Billy Holland, Donnacha Ryan. You still have Donncha O’Callaghan. You’ve Sean McCarthy, John Madigan coming through so we have players we’ve earmarked for progression but in the competitions that we play in you need top players as well and Paul O’Connell is a top player.

“You’d like to believe that if you lose him you need to replace him. When I worked with Ireland a season or two ago, when he got injured, Donnacha Ryan stepped in and did a very good job at international rugby so there’s no question that Donnacha Ryan can do a job for Munster in that kind of role. But it will be a Donnacha Ryan role, not a Paul O’Connell role.”

Bringing in an overseas second row would require the assent of the IRFU, whose controversial Player Succession Strategy covering Munster, Leinster and Ulster allows for only three Non-Irish Qualified players plus one project player per province and just one NIQ per position across the three provinces.

With back rower CJ Stander completing his three-year Irish residency qualification in November and fellow South African BJ Botha out of contract in December, Foley believes he has some wiggle room but the presence of Australian lock Kane Douglas at Leinster and South African Franco van der Merwe at Ulster may mean he has to plead his case to the governing body’s Professional Contracts Review Group.

“We’ve BJ (out of contract) in six months so there is room there to wriggle around that,” Foley said. “So we just have to ask the question around.... I don’t think this has ever happened before so it’s something that’s a question we probably need to ask. We’ll ask the question. I think that’s important but it’s important that our foreign players when they come to the end of their careers that there’s people behind that are stepping up. I think you have that, a case in point Stephen Archer. He’s stuck in behind BJ Botha for the last three years and now he’s emerging as a fine tighthead in the latter stages of this year.

“Hopefully we can get to the stage where Stephen can take the mantle off BJ and kick on with his career.” O’Connell may not play for Munster again but Foley believes the Ireland captain could have an ideal swansong in green at this autumn’s World Cup, regardless of any wish to persuade him to return to his province afterwards.

“You’re allowed ask him whatever you want but I think at this stage, where Paul is now, I think the World Cup would be a fitting end for him; a good dominant World Cup with Joe and the coaching staff there and hopefully they’ll have a good solid build-up with not a lot of injuries, and they can have a right crack off it. There’s no reason why he couldn’t walk off a winner.”

O’Connell at least has a summer holiday to take his mind off the losing end to his Munster career.

“It’s very disappointing,” he told TG4 in a post-match interview. “We didn’t play well at all. We didn’t show up in the first half. I don’t know, nothing seemed to work for us.

“That’s just the way it goes. It’s a shame to perform like that in a final but that’s life.

“Glasgow haven’t played well the last two weeks. They’re such a good side and they were never going to play badly three weeks in a row.

“Their second row (Leone Nakarawa) got some lovely offloads, he’s a hard guy to tackle, he’s a hard guy to put down and it ultimately created two tries. We missed some tackles, we did some simple things poorly and that’s what costs you in these big games.”