Munster will be bidding to reach the quarter-finals for a 12th straight season when they lock horns with the Northampton Saints, new French champions Perpignan and Italian kingpins Benetton Treviso in the pool stages of Europe’s premier club rugby competition.
Speaking in South Africa, where he is captaining the Lions on their 10-match tour, Munster skipper O’Connell described Pool 1 as producing a ‘standard Munster draw.’
“We usually draw the top teams in the competition. We have the French champions, Perpignan, who have probably one of the biggest budgets in the whole of French rugby.
“It’s a typical Munster draw. It will be, as usual, incredibly hard to get out of the group. Northampton just won the European Challenge Cup. They have invested heavily and have signed a lot of players.
“It is the first time that we have been drawn with Italian opponents for a long time and they are the Italian champions.”
Adding a degree of spice to the draw is the fact that Munster lost out by a single point to the Northampton Saints in the 2000 Heineken Cup final at Twickenham.
O’Connell said that defeat might well be used as a motivating factor ahead of their two pool meetings with the Guinness Premiership outfit.
“2000 is a long time ago. I don’t know how many players we still have who played in that final,” Paul O’Connell said.
“There’s the likes of David Wallace, Ronan O’Gara and Peter Stringer, of course.
“We will bring everything we can to those games with Northampton and the 2000 defeat will probably be one of those things we will bring to it.”
Munster beat Perpignan in a quarter-final at Lansdowne Road on route to winning the 2006 Heineken Cup.
Meanwhile, Magners League champions Munster have lined up three glamour pre-season friendlies against top English opposition for August. Munster will take on old rivals, the Sale Sharks, at Musgrave Park on Friday, August , before facing Guinness Premiership finalists London Irish at the same venue seven days later.
Munster will complete their programme of pre-season friendlies with an away fixture against Heineken Cup finalists Leicester Tigers at Welford Road on Friday, August 28.
In the lead-up to the three friendlies, Munster will have a week long pre-season training camp in Portugal.
The camp, which begins on Wednesday, August 5, will be held at the Browns Sport & Leisure Club in Vilamoura.
For the past two years Munster have conducted their pre-season training camp in the United States- last year in Boston and the year previous in Chicago - but this time around the team has chosen Portugal.
Established in 1986 as a tennis club, Browns was completely renovated in 2000 as part of a two phase project to create an exclusive sports training facility in Southern Europe. On completion in December 2002 the venue now boasts 30 villas with a maximum capacity of 105 athletes in a total area of 53000 sq meters and a grass pitch of 120 sq meters x 80 sq meters plus all the requisite gym facilities.
Among those who have used the facility are the Kerry, Mayo and Monaghan GAA sides, rugby clubs including ASM Clermont Auvergne and Saracens, while England coach Martin Johnson had his senior elite player squad there in January of this year.
The majority of the Munster squad will begin pre-season training on Monday, June 29. The players who are currently involved in the Churchill Cup in Colorado with the Ireland ‘A’ side return to the training pitch two weeks later, while Munster’s representatives on the Lions tour are set to return to the gym on Monday, August 3.
Meanwhile, members of the Castletroy College senior squad were present in the ABSA Stadium, Durban this Wednesday night to cheer on the Lions in their tour match with the Sharks.
Thirty players and 10 coaches from the school have embarked on a three-week tour to South Africa which will see the Limerick side play five matches.
The students will get the chance to attend three of the Lions touring games, the Sharks in Durban earlier this week, the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth as well as the Emerging Springboks in Cape Town.
The tour took the best part of two years to organise. The students engaged in a number of fundraising initiatives, including raffles, bag packing and quiz nights.
The Castletroy College senior squad will take on Hillcrest High School and Northwood High School in Durban, Grey High School in Port Elizabeth, Point High School in Mossel Bay and Park Gymnasium in Cape Town during their trip.
Colm Kinsella
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