Earls: Van Graan hasn’t put his stamp on us yet

Keith Earls has had better Mondays.

The wound from Munster’s exit from the Champions Cup the day before wasn’t so much raw as still oozing blood yesterday and he had swapped the buzz of a radiant Bordeaux 24 hours earlier for a damp Dublin to honour a pre-existing commitment.

One of four nominees for this year’s Irish rugby Player of the Year, he was promoting the annual Zurich awards on the back of a fractured night’s sleep before facing into the inevitable inquisition as to what exactly happened in France and why.