Injured Players Return

Munster coach Declan Kidney uses the Magners League game on Saturday against Ospreys to freshen up his side and welcome back from injury Anthony Foley, Anthony Horgan, Federico Pucciariello, and Mossy Lawlor to the Munster starting line-up with James Coughlan named on the bench.

Foley returns having limped out of the Heineken Cup pool game against Leicester Tigers at Thomond Park in mid January while Horgan’s last start was in the Magners League game against The Dragons at the start of that month. Coughlan came a cropper against Border Reivers seven weeks ago, in the game that saw Lawlor’s last involvement with the squad while Pucciariello picked up a groin injury against Cardiff Blues at the start of March.

Elsewhere, there is a second start for Brian Carney following on from his try-scoring debut against Ulster and Under 21 international Keith Earls is named among the replacements.

Ospreys lie in third place in the table eight points off the leaders Leinster but with a game in hand and a game in the Liberty Stadium against Leinster at the end of the month. So Munster’s return to Wales a week after exiting the Heineken Cup will be a difficult assignment, a point recognised by Kidney.
“Of course it’s been a tough week. Always is when you go out of a competition.  But what we have to do now is lift ourselves for the next challenge. This is when we find out about ourselves.

“We have to  park that (Heineken Cup defeat) now.  There will an opportunity to revisit it and see what we need to correct.

“We can’t do anything in the short term now about what happened last weekend but we do have control over what happens on Saturday and that’s what we must focus on”.

Munster: M Lawlor, B Carney, B Murphy, L Mafi, A Horgan; J Manning, T O’Leary; F Pucciariello, F Sheahan, T Buckley; D O’Callaghan, D Ryan; A Quinlan, J O’Sullivan, A Foley capt. Replacements: J Flannery, M Horan/Eugene McGovern, S O’Connor, J Coughlan, B O’Meara, R O’Gara, K Earls.