At this stage Munster, Leinster and Connacht have all named their sides for this weekend’s Heineken Cup matches. Alan Gaffney announced his Munster side this morning and it was pretty much as predicted. Despite all the injuries the side still contains a huge amount of experience and almost all the team are past or current Irish internationals.
The Heineken Cup restarts tonight and I’m sure everyone will be glued to their TV to see whether Northampton can cause a huge upset when they face Toulouse. From an Irish point of view there’s nothing much happening but the three provinces in action this weekend should announce their squads today.
This weekend sees the return of European Rugby following the break for the Six Nations. Three of the four Irish provinces are in action. First up on Saturday it’s the turn of Connacht in the semi-finals of the European Challenge Cup, then later that evening Leinster will be looking to bury the ghosts of their past performances in the competition when they take on Leicester in Landsdowne Road. Finally on Sunday all eyes will turn to San Sebastian, Spain, where Munster are set to face French giants Biarritz. All in all it’s set to be a massive weekend of European Competition.
Munster’s Ronan O’Gara who picked up a leg injury last night against The Dragons has been ruled out of Munster’s Heineken Cup clash with Biaritz. The good news however is that should Munster progress to the semi-finals O’Gara will be able to play.
Word is creeping out that Paul O’Connell will be available for Munster’s trip to San Sebastian for their Heineken Cup quarter final on April 3rd. O’Connell has been at a hearing today related to an incident between him and Rob Sidoli last weekend in Cardiff.
Munster have nominated scrum-half Frank Murphy and utility three-quarters Brian Lima (Samoa) as their additional players for the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup. Both names were submitted to ERC by 12 noon today ahead of the deadline for registration.
The ERC have confirmed as expected that Munster’s Heineken Cup Quarter final will take place in San Sebastian, Spain on April 3rd.
Biarritz Olympique have received agreement from the relevant authorities in San Sebastian to site their Heineken Cup quarter-final with Munster at the Anoesta Stadium. Both the ERC and the French Rugby Union have to sanction the decision but this is expected to be a formality.
Biarritz have been given more time to work on their proposal to move their Heineken Cup quarter-final against Munster to Spanish soccer club Real Sociedad’s ground the ERC announced today. A decision on the location of the match was supposed to be issued today with the ERC setting today as the deadline but they’ve extended this to allow Biarritz to get an increased capacity ground so as to accomodate the expected thousands of Munster fans who will travel for the match.
The Leinster branch have announced that 31,000 of the 48,000 tickets for their Heineken Cup quarter-final with Leicester have already been snapped up and that leaves 17,000 tickets which Leinster Chief Executive Mick Dawson will be snapped up very quickly.