MUNSTER WILL BE sweating on the fitness of out-half Ian Keatley this week ahead of the return leg of their double-header against Perpignan in the Heineken Cup.
Rob Penney’s side swept to a five-try 36-8 victory over the Top 14 club at Thomond Park this afternoon, but injuries to Keatley and Conor Murray – who will almost certainly be missing next weekend – were worrying.
Following the entertaining win in Limerick, Penney admitted that Murray’s knee injury looked like ruling him out of Saturday’s fixture, while saying that Keatley is considered touch-and-go at this point.
“Conor’s the main one [injury concern]. I don’t know exactly how bad it is. He’s feeling a little better now than he was when he came off, but I suspect he won’t be around next week.
Ian Keatley got a corked thigh, hopefully he’ll be able to bounce back from that. We’ll just have to wait and see as the week unfolds.”
Overall though, the Kiwi coach was pleased with his team’s performance. A strong first half had Munster 22-0 up at the break and from that point there looked little danger of a comeback from Perpignan. Penney claimed that his half-time speech had been made easy by the fact that Munster scored three tries in the first 40 minutes alone.
“We were trucking along well, we were doing everything that we had planned for. We just asked the lads if they could just dig a bit deeper into the well for the next 20 minutes and that we’d re-assess after that period.
“They managed to do that and I thought we finished really nicely on top of them in that last quarter, where we probably should have had a couple more but didn’t quite finish accurately enough.”
Thoughts have already turned to the return game in Perpignan, where the fervent support at the Stade Aimé Giral is likely to play a big part in the outcome of the game. USAP are a different team in those surroundings, and Penney claims that he has already spoken to his men about the next test.
“We’ve already talked about that, it’s a massive challenge going down there. Obviously the passion they have for the game down there, and the fervour, is something that we’re used to here, but it’s usually at our backs. Instead it’ll be right in our faces this time around.
That’s a big challenge for us to be able to adjust, not get caught up in the hype of the opposition side, and maybe even use that for our own purposes. We have to make sure we’re disciplined. Discipline is such a key element heading into next week, because obviously the referee can be easily influenced by the passion from the sidelines.”
The injury worries will play on Penney’s mind in the coming days, particularly as Murray and Keatley are in such prominent decision-making roles within the side. However, the focus will be on improving on this performance and coming away with a decisive win in Perpignan.
“We’ll take learnings out of this week, but there’s not a lot of time to get things done, given the travel and recovery day tomorrow. So the key for us is to prepare physically first and then later in the week get our minds on the job.”
