{"id":666977,"date":"2026-10-27T16:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T16:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666977\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T16:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T16:48:08","slug":"mcmillan-coombes-not-dwelling-on-furlong-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/666977\/","title":{"rendered":"McMillan: Coombes not dwelling on Furlong incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

Munster head coach Clayton McMillan has said that Gavin Coombes has returned to business as normal, following the incident in Saturday’s defeat to Leinster that led to Tadhg Furlong being cited<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Leinster prop was accused of interfering with the groin area of Coombes during a first half ruck, although no on-field action was taken due to a lack of replays.<\/p>\n

For Coombes, however, he returned to the HPC in Limerick as normal according to his head coach.<\/p>\n

“Nothing has changed for Gavin (Coombes), he turned up on Monday,” McMillan said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“What happened on the weekend is now in the hands of the judicial committee.<\/p>\n

“Like the rest of the group, he’s just turned up and focused on preparing for the Sharks this weekend, allowing whatever happens in the background to take care of itself.”<\/p>\n

Furlong was cited on Monday, which came as no surprise to McMillan, after speaking to the citing commissioner on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“I think it was obvious after the game when the Citing Commissioner was there that they saw a case to answer,” the Munster head coach added.<\/p>\n

“That’s been proven to be the case. Again, we leave it in the hands of the judiciary.<\/p>\n

“There’s nothing more for us to add in that regard.”<\/p>\n

Furlong will face his hearing on Thursday 29 October, the URC announced on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"24
\nShane Daly is going through return-to-play protocols<\/p>\n

On the field, the Munster boss has hinted at needing to strike a balance between resting and returning players ahead of this Saturday’s United Rugby Championship clash with the Sharks.<\/p>\n

The defeat to Leinster came at a cost in the rehab room, with two players ruled out of the mix this weekend. Shane Daly (above) sustained a concussion and has started the return-to-play protocols while Se\u00e1n O’Brien misses out due to a groin injury.<\/p>\n

McMillan is hopeful to have a few returnees however, with Edwin Edogbo, Will Harrison, Michael Milne, Jeremy Loughman, Lee Barron, Diarmuid Barron and Jack Aungier among those who the province will be hoping to have back in the mix.<\/p>\n

“[We are] pretty confident there’ll be at least a couple back,” McMillan added<\/p>\n

“It’s really just a case of weighing up whether in the last game of this block it’s worthwhile chucking them out or giving them a couple of extra weeks given that there’s no rugby after that.<\/p>\n

“Our hand might be forced in a couple of those decisions given that there was a couple of dings over the weekend but we haven’t selected a side yet.”<\/p>\n

The club also confirmed that former Ireland Under-20s, Leinster and Gloucester back three player Rob Russell has been training with the squad as short-term cover in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Although he is not expected to feature this weekend, the New Zealander said the Dubliner, and Young Munster RFC turned Lansdowne winger Hubert Gilvarry are putting their hands up.<\/p>\n

“Given the run of injuries that we had, particularly in our outside backs probably three or four weeks ago now, we brought Rob in and Hubert Gilvarry who was with us through the whole pre-season anyway as just additional cover,” he explained.<\/p>\n

“And they both acquitted themselves really well. They’re good men. Really grateful for the opportunity to come in.<\/p>\n

“If we get any more dings and the opportunity for them to play, it’s probably very real.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Munster head coach Clayton McMillan has said that Gavin Coombes has returned to business as normal, following the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-666977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666977","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=666977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}