Foley On New Arrivals

With injuries in the back-row to Peter O’Mahony and Tommy O’Donnell, and the injury enforced retirement of Felix Jones, Head Coach Anthony Foley speaks about our latest signings Lucas Gonzalez Amorosino and Sean Doyle, and their inclusion in the 2015/16 Champions Cup squad.

Argentinian international Amorosino and Australian-born Doyle both signed three-month contracts with the province and will link up with the squad this week.

Commenting on the signings Foley said, “With the injuries that occurred within the squad we needed to bring in quality players from overseas that can play with us for a period. We would previously had to announce 38 players in a European squad and this year we’ve had to announce 41. We already had five academy players in the squad and in order to balance that up, with the likes of Peter O’Mahony and Felix Jones missing out, we needed to look elsewhere. Fortunately enough we found Lucas and Sean. It’s hard during this period, within a six-day timeframe, to get players of quality, and a lot of hard work was done in the background through Garrett Fitzgerald (CEO), Niall O’Donovan (Team Manager) and all the coaches to get players of a standard where we can be competitive on both fronts.”

The Head Coach went on to explain that last week’s signings were delivered in consultation with the IRFU’s Performance Director, David Nucifora.

“We spoke to David and the first thing we did was search to see what was available within Ireland. However once you play competitively for one province in a season you can’t transfer across to another and each province had their own 41-player panels to submit so it became clearly evident early on that we needed to look abroad.”

29-year-old Amorosino most recently featured for Argentina in last Friday’s Rugby World Cup Bronze Final defeat to South Africa and lined out for Cardiff Blues in the Guinness PRO12 last season. 26-year-old Doyle joins from Super Rugby outfit the Brumbies having previously played for Ulster Rugby, making 24 appearances for the province.