Tommy O’Donnell wants Munster to draw on big-match experience

Tommy O’Donnell has boiled tomorrow night’s Guinness Pro12 showdown with Edinburgh in Cork down to its essence: Take what the visitors have.

Just points difference separates the sides in the league table but with two games left in the campaign and the Scottish club in sixth place with Munster in seventh, it might as well be a chasm. Sixth place at season’s end means Champions Cup rugby for 2016-17 and mixing it with the big boys in Europe. Seventh place brings the evening of May 7 and the potential itinerary for the Challenge Cup could feature Siberia or, as Brian O’Driscoll has helpfully reminded the southern province, Bucharest.

So having lost successive derbies to Leinster and Connacht, getting their act together by beating Edinburgh at Musgrave Park will put Paris, Leicester, or Toulon back on the schedule for O’Donnell and his teammates heading into a last-day Thomond Park clash with Scarlets eight days later.