{"id":170591,"date":"2025-12-02T07:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T07:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/170591\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T07:00:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T07:00:07","slug":"joe-mccarthy-makes-injury-return-for-leinster-ahead-of-champions-cup-opener-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/170591\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe McCarthy makes injury return for Leinster ahead of Champions Cup opener \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ireland lock <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/joe-mccarthy\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/joe-mccarthy\/\">Joe McCarthy<\/a>, right wing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tommy-o-brien\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tommy-o-brien\/\">Tommy O\u2019Brien<\/a> and All Black centre <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/rieko-ioane\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/rieko-ioane\/\">Rieko Ioane<\/a> are all available for selection ahead of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/leinster-rugby\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/leinster-rugby\/\">Leinster<\/a>\u2019s opening <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/champions-cup\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/champions-cup\/\">Champions Cup<\/a> fixture against Harlequins on Saturday (kick-off 5.30pm).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ioane is contracted to the Blues in New Zealand until 2027 but has taken a \u201csabbatical\u201d, similar Jordi Barrett last season, to join Leinster on a seven-month contract until the end of the season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The 28-year-old, who can also play on the wing, has scored 38 tries in 88 appearances for the All Blacks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">McCarthy, who missed the Autumn Nations Series, has recovered from a foot injury, while O\u2019Brien has come through the graduated return to play protocols and is expected to train fully this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ioane is also expected to take fill part in training having arrived in Ireland last Wednesday following New Zealand\u2019s final November Test, a 52-26 win over Wales in Cardiff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Leinster also confirmed Andrew Porter (arm), James Lowe (calf) and Robbie Henshaw (hamstring) will be assessed further in the coming days after which a decision will be made on their availability.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">No further updates were given on Cormac Foley, Hugo Keenan, Will Connors, James Culhane, Jamie Osborne and Ryan Baird, who remain unavailable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland lock Joe McCarthy, right wing Tommy O\u2019Brien and All Black centre Rieko Ioane are all available for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[32728,61,60,21457,11287,94298,112,68174],"class_list":{"0":"post-170591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-champions-cup","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-joe-mccarthy","12":"tag-leinster-rugby","13":"tag-rieko-ioane","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tommy-o-brien"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}