O'Connell now faces anxious wait

RUGBY: PAUL O'CONNELL and Munster received mildly encouraging news yesterday when an X-ray at Limerick Regional Hospital established that the Lions captain had not suffered a fracture to his left ankle in Saturday night's dramatic 24-23 win over Leinster at Thomond Park. However, O'Connell faces an anxious wait to determine the full extent of the injury pending examination by a specialist in Dublin.

That will hopefully take place today, and until then no one in the Munster management will speculate as to the possible prognosis. The best-case scenario is that, touch wood, O’Connell merely suffered a sprain and will be back playing in a few weeks.

But if he has torn ankle ligaments or suffered damage that requires surgery, the likelihood is his desperately unfortunate season (Saturday was only his seventh start since January last year) will be over and he will be sidelined for around three months. That oughtn’t to rule him out of the World Cup but would leave him with a delayed pre-season.

O’Connell’s injury was the one major blight on what was an otherwise celebratory and redemptive night for Munster when, for the umpteenth time, Ronan O’Gara held his nerve to land an 80th-minute match-winning penalty.

Who writes his scripts anyway? No one in the ground would have doubted he’d do it. In terms of League points, Leinster’s need was the greater. In every other respect, though, given five defeats in a row to Leinster and their own profoundly wounding exit from the Heineken Cup, Munster’s was.

“I think it was vital,” admitted Tony McGahan. “It was vital for ourselves, for the players, for the management, for Munster rugby, for the supporters and for everyone, whether they’re local or abroad, we really needed it.”

Rumour has it that McGahan might be on his way, and that he’s been linked with the Brumbies job in his native Australia, but Jake White is their number-one choice and, in any event, McGahan isn’t going anywhere given he has another year left on his renewed contract.

McGahan admitted that the Munster camp were “sick to death of hearing about” Leinster’s five-match winning run over them, but trailing 20-9 and with Johne Murphy sinbinned at half-time, they weren’t just staring down the barrel of a sixth win, but humiliation. By the end, akin to one of those epic Heineken slayings of English opponents, there was almost a primeval force from the raucous 26,000-capacity crowd which carried Munster over the winning line.

“Tactically the biggest thing was our physicality at the breakdown really,” said McGahan. “We really needed to make sure that we stopped them from a defensive point of view. I think we allowed them to make too many big carries, and they had really good numbers at the breakdown, and we needed to make sure we that got the same approach, because we played off a lot of slow ball in the first half. In the second half we had good application, we had good accuracy in what we were doing, therefore we controlled the ball, controlled field (position), and controlled the scoreboard.”

A minor Munster irritation was their failure to score a try against Leinster for the sixth successive occasion. “They’re a good defensive side,” said McGahan. “We certainly asked plenty of questions, and they came up with the solutions there. I think the penalty count was a fair reflection of the second half. I think it was 15-10 overall. You’re still able to put the ball through the posts, you need to keep the scoreboard ticking over. We were able to do that.”

Victory in the Challenge Cup quarter-finals in Brive next Saturday, along with one more in their last three league games, will assure them of two home semi-finals as they target two trophies this season, even if neither is the one they cherish the most.

There remains the tantalising prospect of Munster and Leinster meeting here again in the league play-offs. Leinster now probably need to win their three remaining games at home to second-placed Ulster in a fortnight, then Aironi away and finally Glasgow at home, to ensure both a play-off place and retain their own hope of hosting the other semi-final.

Although his patent anger with some of the decisions by referee Andrew Small had tempered by the time he spoke to the written media, Leinster coach Joe Schmidt remarked: “It’s a great pressure environment here and not just players but officials feel it and that’s all part of the game.

“You’ve got to get above that and what you deserve and what you get are not necessarily the same thing. But I congratulate Munster to take advantage of the pressure they applied and put the points on the board.”

While Schmidt felt Leinster looked more incisive and dangerous, and also lauded their resilience, he admitted that they weren’t particularly cohesive in the second half, but with the visit of high-flying, high-achieving Leicester – no one’s idea of ideal quarter-final visitors – in mind next Saturday, maintained: “It’s great for us to get a game under our belt and no better place for us to come for a heck of a game than to Limerick.”

The Ospreys-Cardiff draw was, he reckoned, a poor result for them, and while they still have momentum, making the top two will be a struggle.

“I said to Tony before the game I could do with these four points and he said he didn’t care about the four so much but that he just wanted the win.

“ It was an equation we couldn’t come to an agreement on,” he quipped.

And not before hell freezes over are the respective coaches of Munster and Leinster ever likely to.