Now Wasps badly hit by Covid ahead of Munster tie

The English side have announced five further changes to their starting line-up 

A view of the Coventry Building Society Arena ahead of the game

Wasps have been forced into a number of changes ahead of Munster’s visit today to the Coventry Building Society Arena following their pre-game Covid-19 testing.

Munster will field five debutants in their starting XV and seven on their replacements bench following their own Covid outbreak in South Africa while Wasps have had a more orthodox injury crisis to cope with ahead of this Heineken Champions Cup pool opener, due to kick off at 3:15pm.

With 17 players unavailable through injury, the English Premiership side on Sunday announced five further changes to their starting line-up from the team announced on Friday afternoon and numerous positional switches.

The loss of fly-half Jacob Umaga has prompted an entire midfield rejig by head coach Lee Blackett, who must also change his forward pack to account for the absences of both locks and his selected No.8 Jack Willis.

There are positional switches at both centres, with Josh Bassett coming off the left wing to fill a vacancy at 13 and Michael Le Bourgeois moving from outside to inside as Jimmy Gopperth goes from 12 to 10 to cover for Umaga.

And there are changes to the entire back five of the pack with captain and flanker Brad Shields moving into the second row to partner Tim Cardall, originally selected on the bench, while the back row sees named replacements Nizaam Carr and Thomas Young occupying the flanks and Alfie Barbeary moving from blindside to No.8.

Wasps have also lost experienced scrum-half Francois Hougaard from their bench but announced that Sunday’s game against Munster would go ahead as planned.

Munster also issued a squad update on Sunday confirming that the majority of the 34 travelling party that returned from South Africa on December 1 have completed their quarantine period this weekend, although none of that group, including head coach Johaan van Graan, travelled to Coventry.

The 14 players and staff that were quarantined in Cape Town have all safely returned home but are now required to undergo a second period of quarantine after returning to Ireland.

“Our priority is the health and wellbeing of our players and staff, and we are hugely grateful to those involved and their families for the manner in which they are handling this situation,” a Munster statement said.

WASPS: M Watson; Z Kibirige; J Bassett, M Le Bourgeois, L Mehson; J Gopperth, S Wolstenholme; T West, D Frost, B Alo; B Shields- captain, T Cardall; N Carr, T Young, A Barbeary.

Replacements: M van Vuuren, R Hislop, J Toomaga-Allen, K Curran, G Oghre, W Porter, T Mathews, C Anderson.

MUNSTER: P Campbell; A Conway, C Farrell, D de Allende, K Earls; J Carbery, C Murray; D Kilcoyne, S Buckley, J French; E O’Connor, T Beirne; P O’Mahony - captain, J Hodnett, D Okeke.

Replacements: D Moore, M Donnelly, R Salanoa, J Forde, C Moloney, E Coughlan, T Butler, J Wren.

Referee: Romain Poite (France).