Leinster pair ready for debuts

RUGBY NEWSCJ VAN DER LINDE and Rocky Elsom both trained with the Leinster squad for the first time yesterday and are in line to make their debuts in next Sunday's minor little domestic squabble with Munster at the RDS, which is now an 18,500 sell-out.

While Van der Linde needs a game after the mixed blessing of a five-game ban, Elsom has come off a tough Tri-Nations campaign. However, with the proximity of the Heineken Cup (there is only one more Magners League away to Connacht on Sunday week prior to Leinster's Euro opener away to Edinburgh) Michael Cheika is liable to introduce both in the white heat of the mother of all Irish derbies.

"We all trained for the first time today, so it's good," said Cheika yesterday. "It's going to be tough getting ourselves organised and getting it right."

Much of the speculation this season has focused on the make-up of Leinster's first-choice backline come the Munster match, or at any rate the Heineken Cup in three weeks' time.

But as events have transpired, it is the composition of his pack that is liable to give Cheika and his coaching staff more headaches than the backline, all the more so now that Isa Nacewa has joined Gordon D'Arcy on the injured list.

"These things ebb and flow, you've just got to ride with them," says Cheika phlegmatically.

"Obviously we have a plan about how we want to use the squad this year and that's well and good, but sometimes there are always going to be these unforeseen circumstances.

"So you've just got to go with it and get yourself sorted out and have confidence in your players."

Jonathan Sexton comes back into the mix after missing last week with a neck injury, while another option would be to start Felipe Cotnepomi at outhalf and have another look at the once-tried Brian O'Driscoll-Luke Fitzgerald midfield partnership.

"That's a combination we will consider during the year; there's no doubt about that. We want to change our options to give teams something different to look at."

Nacewa has successfully undergone an operation and Cheika is "pretty confident that by the end of the November internationals he'll be back playing", which would put Nacewa in line for a return against the Dragons on November 29th.

This is a week before the first of the back-to-back Heineken Cup Pool Two games against Castres (who climbed off the foot of the Top 14 with a surprise 12-6 win at home to one of Munster's pool opponents, Clermont Auvergne, on Saturday).

Nacewa is not sure how or when he sustained the fracture to his left arm, and reckons it happened after either his first or second drop goal. The injury is a similar to the one which befell D'Arcy in the Six Nations opener against Italy last February, though hopefully without any of the complications that ensued in the centre's case.

"We're confident that Gordon is going to be back by the beginning of December; the same sort of time-frame as Isa," said Cheika.

"He's getting some really good healing and we're pretty sure that when he does come back he'll be fine. He's very positive about coming back to play, and he's doing weight work and is moving around and involved a lot.

"We're pretty unlucky to have two blokes with the same injury, in the same position more or less and at the same time, but that's what you've got to go through."

Munster, meanwhile, will be selecting from a full deck save for long-term absentee Denis Leamy and the still-to-arrive Nick Williams.

Ian Dowling took a slight knock to the head against Cardiff on Saturday, but was not concussed, while Denis Hurley and double try-scorer Niall Ronan suffered a couple of rib-tickling bangs, and Alan Quinlan also came through his comeback outing unscathed.

Everyone wants to play in this one. "You could say that, yes; I think that would be a fair assessment," commented manager Shaun Payne.