Quinlan returns to face the Blues
Both teams will be looking to bounce back after disappointing opening round defeats on Friday night as Dai Young’s troops travel to Thomond Park to face the reigning Magners League champions, Munster.
Cardiff, after suffering a dramatic 22-21 defeat at the hands of Edinburgh last weekend, are determined to produce a better performance this weekend after yet another poor start to a new campaign.
“The frustrating thing for me is, for season on season, we are awfully slow starters. I think last season, for the first three games we were very poor,” said Young to the official Cardiff Blues website.
“You can’t peak for 10 months, but we certainly want to be better.
“The attitude from the players is to work harder. A few people wrote us off at the start of last season but we cracked on and got things right.”
The Blues know it will be a hard task to get the right result in Limerick as the Munstermen have won their last seven home games in all competitions since Ulster were victorious at Thomond Park Stadium on 3 January.
A Welsh side has not won at Thomond Park since the Dragons were the visitors on 12 March 2004.
Reflecting on last Friday’s narrow defeat to Edinburgh at the Cardiff City Stadium, Young said,
“Certainly for 50 minutes of the Edinburgh match we were only just hanging in there.
“However, we showed a lot of character to come back into the game.”
“As I’ve told the players, when you hit top gear things become easy, but we are certainly far from top gear now.
“We did one or two things a lot better in the second half. Obviously we’ve got to build on the things we do well and work on other things.”
Munster meanwhile will be boosted by the return of two international stars, Alan Quinlan and John Hayes.
Hayes comes into the front row in place of Tony Buckley while Quinlan takes over from Billy Holland, both Buckley and Holland are named on the bench.
Quinlan’s return to action comes after his 12 week ban for eye-gouging, which cost him a spot on the British and Irish Lions, was finally completed.
The only other change in the starting line-up from the Glasgow game sees Barry Murphy regain the No.13 jersey, with Tom Gleeson, who he replaced in the 63rd minute last weekend in Firhill, listed among the replacements.
Quinlan declared himself, “delighted to be pulling on that Munster shirt again. Really looking forward to the game,” he said,
“Pre-season has gone really well and I feel in good shape but its a big step up from training, a game like this and particularly when it’s against a quality side like Cardiff. But nevertheless I cant wait to get out on the pitch.”The Teams:
Munster: 15 Felix Jones, 14 Doug Howlett, 13 Barry Murphy, 12 Lifeimi Mafi, 11 Denis Hurley, 10 Jeremy Manning, 9 Peter Stringer, 8 Denis Leamy, 7 Niall Ronan, 6 Alan Quinlan, 5 Donncha Ryan, 4 Mick O’Driscoll (captain), 3 John Hayes, 2 Denis Fogarty, 1 Marcus Horan
Replacements: 16 Damien Varley, 17 Tony Buckland, 18 Billy Holland, 19 Tommy O’Donnell, 20 Toby Morland, 21 S Deasy, 22 Tom Gleeson
Cardiff Blues: 15 Ben Blair, 14 Leigh Halfpenny, 13 Gareth Thomas, 12 Dafydd Hewitt, 11 Chris Czekaj, 10 Ceri Sweeney, 9 Gareth cooper, 8 Xavier Rush, 7 Robin Sowden-Taylor, 6 Mamma Molitika, 5 Paul Tito, 4 Deiniol Jones, 3 Taufa’ao Filise, 2 Rhys Thomas, 1 John Yapp
Replacements: 16 Gary Powell, 17 Gareth Williams, 18 Scott Morgan, 19 Andy Powell, 20 Richie Rees, 21 Sam Norton-Knight, 22 Dafydd James
Date: Fridau 11 September
Venue: Thomond Park
Time: 19:05 (18:05 GMT)
Referee: TBC
