ULSTER WING TOMMY Bowe sustained a suspected fractured leg during his short, late cameo during Ireland’s Six Nations loss to Wales on Friday night.
The Monaghan man has left Ireland camp, replaced by Leinster’s Fergus McFadden, and will consult with a specialist in his native province today.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s medical team have cleared Conor Murray to be available for selection for the visit of England on the Championship’s closing weekend. The scrum-half was replaced in the second half after sustaining a ‘stinger’ injury to his shoulder during the game’s first-half.
“He’s responded well to treatment,” said team manager Paul Dean before defending the decision to delay replacing Murray when his passing was clearly hampered.
“Well, you have to give the player every opportunity to continue and Conor is such a good guy, such a valuable asset to us we needed to allow him to stay on as long as possible to try to overcome it.
As it happened, he wasn’t comfortable enough to continue so the best thing to do was to take him off.”
“Unfortunately, a stinger injury is a peculiar injury, it’s kind of a numbness that happens on the pitch. You recover quite quickly, all going well. Iain Henderson had a bad one against France but he recovered very, very quickly and he was able to stay.
“With Conor, he’s such a very, very good player, we gave Conor as much opportunity as we could to recover from the stinger. But as you all saw, he didn’t recover completely and we had to take him off, but he’s fine.”
Dean noted that Ulster trio Jared Payne, Craig Gilroy and Luke Marshall would be available to take a full part in training after their Pro12 meeting with Zebre. The team manager also gave an unprompted update on Jonathan Sexton’s well-being.
“Johnny Sexton underwent a precautionary HIA at the weekend, Concussion has been ruled out and he’s available for selection. Johnny went through all the concussion tests – the (stage) one, two, three,of the HIA so he’s completely clear.”
