{"id":466425,"date":"2026-05-25T16:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/466425\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T16:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T16:40:09","slug":"jack-crowley-is-a-doubt-for-irelands-nations-championship-games-with-obscure-leg-injury-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/466425\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Crowley is a doubt for Ireland\u2019s Nations Championship games with \u2018obscure\u2019 leg injury \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two of Munster<\/a>\u2019s most talismanic players, captain Tadhg Beirne<\/a> and Jack Crowley<\/a>, will not be part of the travelling squad which will leave for Pretoria on Tuesday ahead of Saturday\u2019s URC quarter-final against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld (kick-off 12pm Irish time).<\/p>\n

Crowley looked sprightly enough in the warm-up before Munster\u2019s win over the Lions in Thomond Park last Saturday week, which sealed their place in the URC playoffs, but the outhalf has a leg injury which has been troublesome to diagnose.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly it\u2019s something that\u2019s a little bit obscure, something that comes and goes so a little bit more investigation required really. If you saw him walking around the building now you wouldn\u2019t have any concerns, but obviously when he gets running something happens that brings about a kind of a dead leg feeling so we can\u2019t take the risk of taking him to South Africa and not being able to play, so he\u2019s going to have to stay back.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is likely that Crowley will see a specialist over an injury which places a doubt over his availability for Ireland\u2019s summer matches against Australia, Japan and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of those sorts of things are being explored,\u201d said McMillan. \u201cAs I said, 99 per cent of the time he feels absolutely 100 per cent, so we\u2019re just going to get to the bottom of it and hopefully it\u2019s something that can be fixed pretty quickly and then if we\u2019re good enough to get through to a semi-final we\u2019ll explore that option then.\u201d <\/p>\n

Beirne appears to be a better bet for the semi-finals were Munster to upset the Bulls and certainly the Irish tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, clearly he\u2019s not going to travel with us, but he\u2019s getting closer. Given how important he is to the national squad, let alone our squad, we won\u2019t rush him back into anything. But again, all of those things will be revisited if we\u2019re here in another week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Munster will be underdogs in this quarter-final but can take heart from pushing the Bulls to a 34-31 win in difficult conditions in Loftus<\/a> at the end of March.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been good to get a good old 23 or 24 degree Limerick day,\u201d noted McMillan with a wry smile and evident astonishment over this relative heatwave in Ireland. \u201cThat\u2019s probably fairly close to what we\u2019re going to encounter in South Africa. Obviously, you\u2019re dealing with altitude, which brings a whole new factor in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bulls are a quality side and I think I said it again when we played the Lions, you\u2019re under no illusions around what you\u2019re going to encounter in terms of the opposition.<\/p>\n

\"Munster'sMunster’s head coach Clayton McMillan in training before Bulls match. Photograph: Morgan Treacy\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are big physical men who want to impose that physicality on you through their set-piece, through their carry clean, through the way that they defend. This is a team that probably the last time we played them, those battles were probably shared, but they cut us to shreds with a little bit of X-factor and speed in broken play.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, that\u2019s probably a reminder for us that we need to be really tight and connected and don\u2019t switch off because these finals games can be won or lost in the moment. We\u2019ll get a couple and they\u2019ll get a few and we want to be on the right side of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years ago Munster finished fifth in the table before negotiating three odds-defying away wins in the knockout stages to claim the URC. And though that squad looked stronger, and wasn\u2019t missing such key figures as Beirne and Crowley, once more McMillan said they are in it to win it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou work hard all year to give yourself an opportunity now and form doesn\u2019t necessarily go out the window but it just comes down to one game. Like I said, we\u2019ve prepared really well over the last couple of days and we can go over there with some genuine excitement and the reality is that not too many people have given us a bit of a shot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that it\u2019s a free pass but I imagine the pressure is all on them and we\u2019ll go over there and throw the kitchen sink and see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

However long Munster extend this season, McMillan confirmed he plans remaining as head coach next season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s certainly my intention. That\u2019s always been my intention. I guess the line that I\u2019ve talked about beforehand is just having confidence in a few things that I think need to happen in this team and in the club to give me confidence that actually we all want the same things and we\u2019re all heading in the same direction. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a review that\u2019s going to take place and I don\u2019t want to pre-empt anything that\u2019ll come out of that review but I\u2019d imagine if it\u2019s thorough that everyone will come out with clarity around the way forward and we\u2019ll get on with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two of Munster\u2019s most talismanic players, captain Tadhg Beirne and Jack Crowley, will not be part of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11896,61,60,43771,11897,43,58217,14881],"class_list":["post-466425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-clayton-mcmillan","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-crowley","tag-munster-rugby","tag-news","tag-tadhg-beirne","tag-united-rugby-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466425","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=466425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}