Pat Lam delighted to have Kieran Marmion available for Grenoble trip

Both Jake Heenan and Kieran Marmion have recovered from their respective ankle and quad injuries to be available for Connacht's Challenge Cup quarter final trip to Grenoble on Saturday night.

Tiernan O’Halloran (quad) and AJ MacGinty (shoulder) have commenced rehabilitation and their return dates will be determined by how well they progress over the next few weeks.

Nathan White is also continuing rehab from his recent head injury under the supervision of the medical team, while both Rory Parata and Jack Carty have progressed well with their rehabilitation and have returned to light contact training. The Connacht medical team are hopeful that they will be available for selection for the upcoming Guinness Pro12 games.

Craig Ronaldson and Ciaran Gaffney have both returned to running from their respective ankle injuries and will continue to progress towards team training in the next two to three weeks.

Head coach Pat Lam confirmed on Tuesday that Galway native O'Halloran will definitely sit out the weekend's visit. While outhalf Carty is progressing well after rupturing his spleen on holiday earlier this year.

“Yeah, Tiernan had a good tear and initially it looked like five weeks but, again, he’s progressing pretty well with the medical team so hopefully it’ll be before five weeks.

“Jack has started light contact training. He got signed off to do contact, but Dave Ellis has got a progressive contact plan through him. Obviously he’s not going straight through, but he started that yesterday, he’ll do a bit more next week and that’ll be over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully Jack could be back in the next couple of weeks.

“Kieran was going to play last week but at kicking practice he felt his quad, both him and the Tiernan at the same time actually. His wasn’t as bad as Tiernan, so he’s back available. It’s great for us.”