LEO CULLEN SAYS Tadhg Furlong is ‘ok’ after the Leinster tighthead was pulled from the team to play Munster today due to an ankle problem.
With Ireland due to take on the Springboks in just two weeks time, Ireland head coach Andy Farrell will be keen to have Furlong fit and firing, particularly given the number of injuries he already has to content with ahead of the November international window.
Speaking after this evening’s 27-13 win against Munster, Cullen issued a positive update on Furlong’s condition. However his lack of action must be concern, with a 40-minute cameo against Connacht the 29-year-old’s only outing of the season so far.
“Tadhg is ok,” Cullen said.
“He rolled his ankle on Thursday. When we were here yesterday, I thought he would be ok. He didn’t do the team run, he was pretty confident he wanted to give it until this morning, he was confident he’d be OK.
He woke this morning and there was still a bit of swelling, so it was the right decision, it wasn’t worth the risk. A different type of game, a different type of year he would have played, that’s my take on things. But we gave him as much time as we could.”
Cullen also saw Ciarán Frawley exit the action early against Munster, while Jamie Osborne didn’t return to the pitch following a heavy collision with Jean Kleyn which resulted in a yellow card for the Munster second row, and a HIA for the Leinster player.
“He had a bang on the shoulder,” Cullen said of Frawley, “but he wasn’t too bad. I thought Ross [Byrne] would be good on there, just a different pair of eyes in the middle of the field. We saw Garry [Ringrose] play pretty well on the wing the last day (against the Sharks), man of the match after coming off the bench, so he did well.”
Cullen was reluctant to give his opinion on Kleyn’s yellow card after stating Osborne felt the full force of the impact.
“He was struggling there, yeah. It’s a fair old impact he too, I’m sure you have all seen it.
“I’m curious… I’ll find out exactly what the official line is on it (the yellow card).”
“We’ll find out. Again, there are lots of decisions in the game, which I’ll always ask the question because I honestly don’t know. There are certain things that happened in the game I’m questioning, so I’ll ask that array of questions like we normally would.
“There was a lot in that game, lots going on, certain things I’m thinking ‘why are we not getting these calls? Why are certain calls going against us?’ We’ll ask the questions.”
Meanwhile Munster will await news on Joey Carbery after the out-half was removed midway through the second half with a shoulder injury.
Graham Rowntree also saw Liam Coombes and Jack O’Sullivan forced off across an attritional encounter at Aviva Stadium.
“In a couple of there’s an injury report,” Rowntree said. “I’ll get one tonight, then we’ll see how they pull up in a couple of days time and we’ll look at what we can do this week with what we’ve got.”
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