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Paulie

ROG: Munster will move on from Paul O'Connell - that's what happens in sport

Paulie’s been ‘the greatest’ according to his former Thomond Park team-mate.

MUNSTER WILL HAVE to face up to life without their biggest icon very soon.

But Ronan O’Gara reckons the southern province will do what constantly happens in sport; move on.

“You’d be surprised how quickly they’ll move on,” O’Gara told Hugh Cahill on Game On yesterday evening. “It’ll be odd for two or three games but the show goes on no matter how good you are. And he’s been the greatest.

“That happens in sport and Paul is big enough to accept it. Paul missed periods of nine months when Munster played in a season. I think actually the ’06 or the ’08 season. I was captain in the pool stages and he was decent enough — as a mark of respect from the fella — he gives me a handle to lift the cup.

“So it goes on, you just think that it doesn’t. But for someone like him he is irreplaceable. What he brings to the whole set up is very, very different to any other player.”

And the Racing Metro assistant coach thinks the time is now for some of the province’s younger players to step out of O’Connell’s long shadow.

“For Munster I think he’ll be a huge lost but the timing is right,” O’Gara said. “There’s a new era of player there.

“Paul probably really enjoyed playing with people, you know, there was probably a core of players there that were consistently playing over a 10-year period and he’s the last of them, along with Donncha (O’Callaghan). He probably feels he’s done all he could there and he has done all he could there.

“It’s time for him to take on another challenge.”

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