Munster Resume B&I Campaign Against Nottingham

Injury and the week long warm-weather camp scheduled to start today has forced coach Anthony Foley to ring the changes for the British & Irish Cup that resumes with the game against Nottingham at the Regional Sports Centre in Waterford on Friday evening (7pm).

Eight of those who featured in the squad that accounted for Bristol in Nenagh last time out in this competition in November are unavailable including Simon Zebo who is on International (U20) duty, while Friday’s starting XV shows seven changes from the side that started against Connacht in Thomond Park Stadium last week.

Despite the disruption Foley is confident of a good showing from his charges, “Obviously the warm-weather camp has stripped us some players who would have been involved. But we expected this and geared our selection for the Connacht game with a view to this (Friday) game.

“With Nottingham unbeaten, same as ourselves, it’s a massive game for us if we are to qualify out of our group and that is our ambition.”he continued. “Yes it is hard to assess them other than see where they are in this competition and their own national league and indications from both of those are they’re a decent side.”

” It is hard to know what to expect from them. To know how they’ll approach the various areas of the game. What we do know is they’re fifth in their league five points off third spot with a game in hand and that makes them a good side.

“But as we have done in the past,” Foley concludes, “we’ll concentrate on ourselves, on getting our gameplan right. That’s our main priority.”

Munster: (v Nottingham). Danny Riordan (UL Bohs);  Ciaran O’Boyle (Garryowen),  Danny Barnes (Dolphin),  Eric Moloney (Dolphin), Sean Scanlon (UCC);  Declan Cusack (Thomond),  Conor Murray (Garryowen);    Dave Kilcoyne (UL Bohs),  Mike Sherry (Garryowen), Stephen Archer (Cork Con); Ian Nagle (Cork Con),  Dave Foley (UL Bohs);  Ed Kelly (UL Bohs),  Barry O’Mahony (Dolphin), Peter O’Mahony (Cork Con) capt Replacements: Ger Slattery (Young Munster), Pa O’Regan (UL Bohs), Sean Duggan (Shannon), Neville Melbourne (Clonmel),  Paul Rowley (UL Bohs), Andrew Burke (UCC), Barry Murphy (UL Bohs).