A few years ago the Celtic League was a bit of a farce because of the fact that with International commitments some of the bigger teams were pretty much unable to compete on a lot of weekends. Thankfully this situation is somewhat resolved these days but unfortunately there still are weekends when many players are […]
Munster and Leinster have both named their teams for their Celtic Cup semi-final on Sunday evening. The match will be on of the team’s final match of the season. This season so far both sides have one victory a piece, but in the most recent clash on New Year’s Day, Munster’s forwards denied the Leinster backs the ball thus neutralising Leinster’s strongest asset, their backline.
Tonight saw two of the Irish provinces in action in the Celtic Cup. Munster played host to Edinburgh, while Ulster travelled to meet the Ospreys. Ulster lost out in the end, despite keeping within striking range of The Ospreys for the vast majority of the match. In the Munster match, the lead changed hands a number of times, but in the end Munster ran out victors in an extremely close match.
The Celtic League organisers have announced the line-up for the Celtic Cup semi-finals. The open draw means that the winner of the Munster V Edinburgh game will travel to play the winner of Leinster V Glasgow away.
Today continued to be a busy news day with the announcement from Leinster that they would be signing England and Wasps prop Will Green. The signing is clearly intended to strengthen up Leinster’s front five which has come in for a lot of critism recently.
This weekend sees Munster take on The Borders in Scotland while in Galway Connacht will face this year’s league winners, The Ospreys. The Connacht match is on Setanta Ireland which is what NTL subscribers and Sky Subscribers in Ireland recieve. Thankfully for Munster fans there is a way to get Setanta UK and watch the Munster match.
Today has been an extremely busy day in terms of Irish Rugby news with changes happening all round, mainly to do with Declan Kidney’s switch from Leinster to Munster.
Following yesterday’s interviews for the job of Munster coach, it is being widely reported that Declan Kidney is the new Munster coach. Kidney left Munster to become Ireland assistant coach three years ago and became Leinster coach last August.
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.