Kidney Gives Youth A Fling

22 year old Ian Dowling makes his Celtic League debut on Friday against Llanelli Scarlets, on a side that includes another 22 year old, Barry Murphy at full back and Tomas O’Leary (21) on the bench

22 year old Ian Dowling makes his Celtic League debut on Friday against Llanelli Scarlets, on a side that includes another 22 year old, Barry Murphy at full back, 41 cap ‘veteran’ Denis Leamy (23 years) old in the centre and 21 year old Tomas O’Leary on the bench.

The young guns will be joined this week-end by Paul O’Connell and John Hayes who are back for their first Munster start of the season.

Dowling, Murphy and O’Leary all featured on the Munster A side that defeated a strong Edinburgh Gunner A side on Monday last in Murrayfield. Dowling scored the try that gave Munster a 7-5 victory against a home side that included B&I Lion Simon Taylor and internationalsHugo Southwell and Peter Jacobsen.

Speaking of the newcomers – Barry Murphy already has 4 caps to his credit – Kidney said, “Barry and Ian showed up well in the pre-season games and then along with Tomas
performed very well last Monday in Edinburgh. So now we’ll give them the
opportunity to pwerform at the next level.”

Jeremy Manning and Paul Devlin took knocks in that A game that rules them out along with Anthony Horgan, injured against Glasgow and Shaun Payne who has a slight shoulder injury while Mossie Lawlor continues his recovery from the shoulder re-construction he underwent earlier this year.

Following on from the defeat in Glasgow, Kidney is no doubt hoping for a performance like the second half against Glasgow. ” The aim is to be more patient, to be more consistent over the 80 minutes. I think we’d be hoping to pick up from where we left off in the second half of that Warriors game.”

Munster: B Murphy; J Kelly, D Leamy, T Halstead, I Dowling; R O’Gara, P Stringer; F Pucciariello, F Sheahan, J Hayes; D O’Callaghan, P O’Connell; A Quinlan, D Wallace, A Foley capt.
Replacements: M Horan, J Flannery, T Hogan, M O’Driscoll, T O’Leary, P Burke, R Henderson.