Anthony Foley expects Keith Earls to face Treviso
Earls, 28, has been sporting a black eye underneath a cut after being caught with an elbow in the last play of Munster’s dramatic Guinness Pro12 victory at Edinburgh last Saturday . He has passed every stage of World Rugby-mandated return to play protocols since and is expected by Munster management to remain symptom free and be available for Saturday’s Champions Cup home opener at Thomond Park against Benetton Treviso.
Yet, having suffered a previous concussion during Ireland’s World Cup warm-up match against Wales at the Aviva Stadium on August 29, there is clearly a concern at the close proximity of the concussive episodes. Ireland fly-half Johnny Sexton was stood down for three months by French neurologists after suffering four in one calendar year last December but Munster head coach Foley said the clear cause of Earls’s latest concussion was less cause for concern than an unexplained incidence.
“The last play of the game when he went back into the corner to tackle the player, you can see it. I think he might have caught an elbow or something but he hit the ground,” Foley said.
“He’s passed all his impact tests up to this point, he wanted to train today and he did a bit of running and passing today. He needs to do a bit more and just remain symptom free and hopefully he’ll be available. “He’d be very coherent after the game. Straight away when he did the impact tests after the game he was passed, and since then every test he’s done has been passed. At times you catch a stray elbow out there and that’s life, unfortunately.
“He’s a black eye, he’d a cut over the eye. He clearly got an elbow into the eye at the time. I’m not a medical person so what the doctors said to me, they were all pretty happy with him after the game. He was in the changing room, there were no ill effects. He got the cut cleaned up and got on the bus and he can remember everything.
“There’s protocols you have to follow with any bangs to the head and we’re doing that and we’re making sure the player’s welfare is paramount. If there are any issues we’ll deal with that, we don’t put our players in harm’s way.”
Following his initial concussion against Wales, Earls had said he had been working on improving his tackle technique to improve his defensive game and he went on to be one of Ireland’s leading lights at the World Cup on both sides of the ball. Foley is satisfied his head injury against Edinburgh at Murrayfield was just an unfortunate occurrence rather than part of an underlying problem.
“Look, if he was going into a contact area and we couldn’t see what happened and he was getting concussed I’d be worried. If you see him getting hit by an elbow and he’s a cut over the eye and a black eye you know that he’s taken a sharp-edge knock and he’s coherent after the game, I never like to see a player getting hurt but I’m not as worried as if he got up and was falling around the place.”
Earls is not the only player to have come home from Edinburgh with a knock with Francis Saili (calf), Donnacha Ryan (knee), Jack O’Donoghue (forearm) among the walking wounded while Tomás O’Leary was withdrawn before kick-off with a lower limb injury. None are considered serious doubts to face Treviso but Foley conceded Tyler Bleyendaal’s quad tightness was continuing to be managed in terms of training workload.
“He trained (yesterday), he trained for about a quarter of the session, and just to see where he is at,” Foley said of the fly-half. “So I need to talk to the physios (today) in terms of seeing where he is at. It might be game too early for him.”
The other outstanding issue is the availability of in-form wing Gerhard van den Heever, who faces a Pro12 Rugby disciplinary committee today to hear his citing for an alleged dangerous tackle on Edinburgh’s Tom Brown. Foley admitted he was surprised a hearing was taking place and he thought a yellow card during the match had been sufficient punishment.
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