Newport Up Next

Munster travel to Wales again this week for Friday night’s game against Newport Gwent Dragons at Rodney Parade, ko 7.15pm.

Head Coach Rob Penney met with press in CIT today where he issued a further update on player availability for the round nine league encounter.

In addition to yesterday’s positive news on Keith Earls, Ian Keatley and Luke O’Dea, latest arrival Gerhard van den Heever and James Downey, both groin, are also back in full training this week and all are available for selection.

The international trio of Conor Murray, Paul O’Connell and Peter O’Mahony are back in Munster camp this week and management will discuss their availability options in the next 24 hours. Early indications for Peter O’Mahony are that he won’t be right for this weekend’s game after sustaining a dead leg in Sunday’s encounter against New Zealand.

Niall Ronan (knee) continues to be monitored and he is expected to meet with the specialist for a further update early next week. While Dave Foley has also been ruled out of contention for Friday night’s game as a result of the tight hamstring he suffered on Saturday night against Cardiff.

Penney believes Munster will have to be at the peak of their ability when taking on Newport Gwent Dragons after they recorded an away victory against Glasgow Warriors at Scotstoun last weekend.

“The Dragons are a really good team and are tough at the best of times, and we are now taking them on after they have had a really great result against Glasgow up there so we really need to put in a big performance if we want to keep our consistency and momentum up.

We are not playing as well as we would like but we still have some growth in us and we just need to keep getting the results.”

Please note Friday night’s game will not be televised and updates will be issued via Twitter here.