Injured pair ready to return

Brian O'Driscoll and Denis Hickie seem likely to come back into consideration for Ireland's next Six Nations Championship game - against France at Lansdowne Road on Saturday week - when the 22-man squad is announced on Thursday.

O'Driscoll's shoulder injury is improving slowly and he should be available, while the cast on Hickie's broken hand comes off later this week and the player is confident that the injury will have healed in time for him to train next week. Kevin Maggs and either Mike Mullins or Shane Horgan are the players most likely to be rerouted to the A squad if the pair are declared fit. Beyond that, it's hard to see any changes.

Admittedly the scrum was highlighted as an Irish weakness on Saturday by both Warren Gatland and Brad Johnstone and, tellingly, the best Irish scrum of the day came when Peter Clohessy was in the sin bin while Emmet Byrne and John Hayes propped down in a seven-man Irish pack.

Coupled with a number of disciplinary decisions against Clohessy by the match officials, Clohessy's 42nd appearance for his country mightn't be considered one of his best days at the office. However, there may have been mitigating circumstances, not least in the disrupted preparations which meant the Irish did not have any scrum practice last week and also because Clohessy may have been troubled by a neck strain.

O'Driscoll and Hickie will be monitored during the week before the Irish management convene on Wednesday evening. Apart from them, no one else is coming back into the reckoning and though the Irish As played well on Friday, it's hard to envisage any other changes.

Warren Gatland and his assistant Eddie O'Sullivan attended France's undistingusihed 16-6 victory over Scotland on Sunday, and the Irish coach said yesterday: "France made a lot of mistakes and looked a bit nervy. They still deserved to win, even if it wasn't as convincing as people expected, and conditions were poor. I would expect them to improve considerably when they come to Dublin."

Recourse to a video replay and a fourth official for marginal try decisions will be made available for the first time at Lansdowne Road. The absence of such technology was something of an embarrassment, most notably for last November's game at home to South Africa when the ground was the only one without recourse to a video replay on that weekend's round of internationals in Europe.

At the behest of the Six Nations committee, the IRFU have commissioned an independent company to provide the video replay and audio link-up to a fourth official for this year's championship games against France and England at Lansdowne Road, estimated to be in the region of u10-15,000 £10,000 to £15,000 per game.

Meanwhile, the draw for the semi-finals of the European Cup will be made in the Sugar Club in Leeson Street tomorrow evening and will be televised live on RTE's Six-One News, BBC regional television stations, Radio 5 Live and French television at approximately 6.40.

If Stade Francais reach the final, it will be held in Paris, but if they are beaten in the semifinals and Munster reach the final, the game will be played in Lansdowne Road.