Leinster face a decision on Tuesday on whether to register prop Cian Healy or flanker Seán O'Brien for their final pool match in the European Champions Cup. Currently, neither player is eligible to play with manager Guy Easterby having until midday to deregister a current player and register either Healy or O'Brien if they are deemed fit to play.
Kicking and skills coach Richie Murphy believes both players are finally putting themselves in a position where they might be considered for the trip to Coventry on Saturday to face Wasps.
“Seán is back training. He’s training this week. He’s doing really well. He is improving every day. I can’t say he’s jumped four weeks in his programme. But, he’s training today,” said Murphy on Monday.
“He’ll do some contact today and we’ll see where he is. Cian did some contact last week. They are two totally different injuries. We did think that Cian was probably a little further down the track. But the both of them are in good positions at the moment. Both are possible [picks].”
It’s a decision Leinster would obviously have wanted to take later in the week and may see it early in the week as too great a gamble. Healy hasn’t played rugby since September, when he tore his hamstring while O’Brien featured briefly at the beginning of this season but has not played since.
Choice to make
The province has just one registration slot left for the pool stages of the competition, having already deregistered
Ed Byrne
for prop
Jamie Hagan
, who is on loan from London Irish. If both Healy and O’Brien are available to play, coach Matt O’Connor must choose between the two.
Murphy added that Leinster cannot afford to start their game against Wasps they way they did against Castres for the winner takes all final pool match. He emphasised that they must reduce the handling errors and eliminate the turnovers that blighted the opening phase of their game.
Different threat
While the form in the squad is better than it was earlier in the season, Leinster are not focussing on the seven try bonus-point win but the totally different threat of a Wasps side that sits fourth in the Premiership.
An additional benefit from Leinster’s opening try-scoring blitz was that O’Connor could remove several of his key players early.
“Definitely some of it was better than it has been earlier on in the season,” said Murphy.
“There were still a few mistakes, a lot of handling errors and turnovers created by ourselves. So still plenty of things we need to work on.
“Guys are trying to do things before they actually have the ball. Maybe one or two got ripped out which you just can’t let happen. We’ll be driving the ball focus with the guys this week and ensuring that we’re not coughing up those opportunities.
“Wasps love playing off broken ball and if you give them turnovers like that, the ball is going to be in the winger’s hands pretty quickly and you could be chasing shadows after that.”
