Key players and officials from within the Munster rugby set-up will meet today to select the captain for the coming season which kicks off in 10 days time with an away fixture against the Glasgow Warriors.
Speaking to Leader Sport yesterday in Thomond Park at the official launch of the 2009-10 Magners League O’Connell said that it was his wish to remain in possession of the captain’s armband for the province.
“I wound’t mind doing it again for another year,” said O’Connell who will also be in line to lead Ireland when Declan Kidney announces his Irish captain in November.
Ahead of Munster’s defence of their Magners League title Paul O’Connell have given his backing to the new structures for the ninth season of the competition.
“We all want to play in big games in the best of weather so two semi-finals and a final in May can only make the competition more spectacular and enjoyable,” said O’Connell.
The eighteen-round regular season runs through until the weekend of May 7, 2010, but play-offs have now been introduced to decide the Magners League champions - semi-finals to be held over the weekend of May 14. The season concludes with the Magners League final on the weekend of May 28.
“I think it is great - I am not sure where we finished in the last few years, but this structure would probably have given us a greater chance in this competition. We provide a lot of players to the national team so there are times when we are under strength and that’s very tough.”
O’Connell emphasised his point: “When you look at the system in England, where Wasps provide so many players to the England team and still get a shot at the top four and generally creep into in third or fourth and end up with a shot to win the championship - I don’t think Wasps finish top too often, but yet win the championship”.
After next week’s trip to Scotland, Tony McGahan’s men will play their first Magners League home fixture on the following weekend against the Cardiff Blues.
The exact fixtures are to be confirmed in the coming days, but Munster will travel to Dublin to take on Heineken Cup champions Leinster at the RDS on the weekend of October 2 while Leinster will visit Munster on the first weekend in April 2010.
After games in Musgrave Park against Sale and London Irish Munster continue their pre-season this Friday with a clash against Leicester Tigers in Welford Road.
O’Connell has praised the impact of the squad’s newcomers.
“Guys coming through are bigger, stronger, fitter and their skill levels are much higher than they used to be and they are coming in as guys that don’t need to learn as much as they did in the past,” he said.
“There are plenty of guys coming through - Ian Nagle is playing great stuff for the last few weeks in the second row, Felix Jones has been a great signing from Leinster and he had a fabulous Churchill Cup and he is training well and Denis Fogarty had a great finish to last season.”
Ahead of the new season Paul O’Connell is happy that Munster continue to progress.
“In terms of how we played, we never played better than we did last year.
“We played probably the best rugby that I have been involved with since I started with Munster, but obviously we had a disappointing result against Leinster at the end of the year and we will look at that and figure out why that happened.”
This Saturday morning at 10am Paul O’Connell, Keith Earls and Alan Quinlan will be at a special autograph signing session at the Elverys Sports store in the Crescent Shopping Centre.
Adidas and Elverys Sports are giving fans the opportunity to meet their heroes and will have autograph cards for each of the three players in the new adidas Munster jersey for the Munster stars to sign for fans.
JEROME O’CONNELL
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