Stade Francais off Munster agenda for now

How quickly priorities change.

Before last Friday night and the horrific events thatunfolded in Paris, Munster’s impending trip there to play Stade Francais had seemed so very important.

By yesterday evening Sunday’s Champions Cup Pool 4 fixture was reduced to an inconvenience by a grieving city trying to make sense of the deadly attacks on their way of life.

So it was, that the champions of France and tournament organisers EPCR, with the backing of Munster Rugby, bowed to the advice of the local authorities and postponed the game.

“In light of recent and tragic events, Stade Francais does not wish to overburden or complicate the work of the government and security forces by organising a sporting event with 15,000 people in the Stade Jean Bouin stadium,” a statement read on the hosts’ website, and few could argue with the sentiment.

The headache of rearranging the fixture, as well as the four postponed last weekend in the immediate wake of the terrorist atrocities is of minor importance to anyone outside of rugby while those inside the bubble will just have to suck it up and get on with finding a solution.

As trite as it sounds, Munster head coach Anthony Foley may have had a couple of headaches alleviated by the decision. Playing the French champions on their own turf was a mission full of challenges that will remain whenever the game is rescheduled but he will feel a lot better about it than if he was forced to travel this weekend without his two most experienced hookers.

Mike Sherry and Duncan Casey were both serious doubts for Sunday’s game having picked up injuries in the bonus-point victory over Treviso at Thomond Park last Saturday night.

Starting hooker Sherry was forced off inside 30 minutes with a knee injury that required him to yesterday visit the Santry Sports Surgery Clinic and leading consultant orthopaedic surgeon Ray Moran. Casey, his replacement and a try scorer against the Italians, exited late on with a pectoral muscle injury, leaving head coach Foley to fear the worst.

“Mike and Duncan came off with serious enough bangs,” Foley had said yesterday, a couple of hours before news of the postponement broke.

“They’ve both been scanned at this stage, we’re just waiting on a report. Mike was up at Ray Moran today and we’re waiting for a report back on Duncan.

“We’ve an eight-day turnaround to this game but we wouldn’t be hopeful... we need to give it as much time as possible.”

Now he will have more time than he bargained for. His chief concern, however, was mental rather than physical, as Foley attempted to keep his side focused on rugby in the face of such high levels of emotion in Paris.

“Everybody’s fully aware of what went on, everybody was watching the news and it’s hard to fathom. First and foremost it’s hard to put your head in it and then you have a lot of sympathy and respect for the people of Paris in terms of what they were put through.

“The game is only a small thing in the greater scheme of things but as a group we’ve talked about it to the leadership group, and from a sportsman’s point of view, I think it’s important that we’re all united in it.”

With major football international friendlies cancelled last night in Brussels and Hannover amid security fears, doubts about whether Munster’s game in Paris would go ahead were inevitable yet Foley had no choice but to assume it was going to kick off on schedule.

“Nobody’s said it isn’t so we’re preparing as if it is,” he had said. “It’s not for us to decide that, so we’ve had no indication whether the game was to be cancelled.

“Nobody has said anything and as far as we’re concerned we’re flying out on Saturday morning to play a game on Sunday, come home Monday.”

Now Foley and his players will instead have a rare weekend off. Paris can wait.

• Munster captain Peter O’Mahony will finally undergo surgery at the end of this week to repair anterior cruciate ligament knee damage.

The back rower suffered the injury during Ireland’s World Cup pool win over France in Cardiff last month but had been unable to go under the knife before swelling around the knee subsided.