Boost for Leinster as injured duo return

GORDON D’ARCY, Leo Cullen and CJ van der Linde have all been included in an extended Leinster squad ahead of Sunday’s Magners League game against Ulster at the RDS. Team captain Leo Cullen and van der Linde return after injury – the South African prop played for Blackrock College last weekend – while D’Arcy has expressed a desire to play despite being an integral part of Ireland’s Grand Slam victory in Cardiff.

Leinster coach Michael Cheika confirmed that Rob Kearney, Luke Fitzgerald, Brian O’Driscoll and Jamie Heaslip have been given the weekend off but that D’Arcy wanted to be involved against Ulster.

The Australian smiled: “Gordon D’Arcy’s rested enough over the last 12 months. He’s expressed his desire to play this weekend. We have a formula we use as far as who is playing enough football and who isn’t.

“He’s had time off early in the week. He won’t come back and join us until later in the week.

“It’s good we’ve got a Sunday game so we’ve got a bit of extra time to prepare. But he’s expressed his desire to play and we respect that from our players – if they want to play we’ll pick them. We’ve obviously tried to balance the idea of getting our players back from the international arena so we decided to leave a few of those out and give them the opportunity to have a rest.

“We’ve been boosted by Leo’s (Cullen) availability, CJ’s (van der Linde) availability so we’re getting close to the first time this season having everyone available. If everyone can get through this week with no problems then next week could be a week where for the first time we’ve got our whole squad to pick from.”

Cheika pointed out that while he hadn’t seen the medical prognosis on Fitzgerald’s shoulder injury sustained against Wales last Saturday, he didn’t believe it to be too serious. “I just saw him up in the office now. I haven’t had a full medical report but if it was something serious I’m sure I would have heard by now.

“He went and got scans yesterday [Monday] just for precaution but we’d be confident enough he’d be okay. Isa Nacewa, who picked up a leg injury in Leinster’s victory over the Ospreys last time out, is also included.

Sunday’s game against Ulster is the beginning of three weeks that will go a long way to defining Leinster’s season as the match is followed on successive weekends by another derby against Munster in Thomond Park and then the Heineken Cup quarter-final against Harlequins at the Stoop.

Cheika isn’t looking past the Ulster match. “If you look at our first battle against Ulster, they’ve got a few players . . . I saw (Stephen) Ferris got injured at the weekend so I doubt he’ll be playing but they’ve got (Rory) Best, (Paddy) Wallace and Tom Court returning from the Irish team and I imagine they’ll be playing.

“It’s a big test for us as far as the fact that I see Ulster very buoyed by their win at Thomond against Munster. They’ll definitely be targeting to come and do that double, the two away games and we know that our title aspirations are sort of (reliant) on the next two games.

“We got two good results in Wales which is great in terms of the league title. I’d like to think we’ve improved a little bit over that time. We’ve had the time to maybe look and understand exactly what’s going to help over the next three games starting with Sunday, to become a better team and become a team that can get through what’s going to be a tough period.”

Munster coach Tony McGahan will confirm his squad for Friday night’s trip to Glasgow to take on the Warriors at lunch-time today. He will be without Rua Tipoki but will be able to call upon Denis Leamy, Mick O’Driscoll and Peter Stringer who started on the bench for Ireland at the weekend.

Ulster and Connacht are also expected to announce squads today with the latter due to take on Edinburgh on Friday night.

Magners Irish Cider has announced that they have extended their sponsorship of the Magners League for a further two years. The agreement will see the company continue as title sponsor of the competition until at least May 2011, having done so for the past three years.

Connacht have received a boost ahead of Friday night’s clash in Edinburgh with hooker Adrian Flavin recovering from injury and available for selection.

The experienced 29-year-old has recovered from a leg injury but centre Niva Ta’auso is unlikely to feature because of a hamstring problem.

LEINSTER (squad v Ulster): Cian Healy, Ronan McCormack, Brian Blaney, John Fogarty, Bernard Jackman, Stephen Knoop, Stan Wright, CJ van der Linde, Leo Cullen, Trevor Hogan, Devin Toner, Malcolm O’Kelly, Rocky Elsom, Cameron Jowitt, Shane Jennings, Seán O’Brien, Stephen Keogh, Paul O’Donohoe, Chris Whitaker, Felipe Contepomi, Jonathan Sexton, Simon Keogh, Isa Nacewa, Gordon D’Arcy, Fergus McFadden, Eoin O’Malley, Shane Horgan, Gary Brown, Girvan Dempsey.