Corrigan happy with his lot

Brilliant sunshine, smiling faces and a relaxed yet sharp edge to yesterday afternoon's Leinster session at Anglesea Road.

The queue for the treatment room is diminishing daily, evidenced by captain Reggie Corrigan's presence and the promise that Shane Horgan will follow suit come Monday. Leinster's preparations for the Heineken European Cup semi-final against Perpignan at Lansdowne Road will be considerably less fractured than their build-up to the Biarritz match.

Corrigan bore the contented smile of a man who will not be cheated twice by medical restrictions. He's banking on a date with Perpignan having missed the Biarritz game. "Everything is brilliant. I took part in the whole session with the exception of the heavy contact. I saw the surgeon Bill Quinlan on Wednesday and he's very happy with the way everything has gone.

"He x-rayed it and everything is moulded back together nicely. I hope to take full contact on it in Monday's session , using a protective guard." Horgan, in jeans and T-shirt will know more about his chances by Monday evening. Peter Coyle (achilles) and David Quinlan (ill) will both be back in the fray after the weekend.

Coach Matt Williams conceded: "We've done more training than we did in whole of the build-up to the Biarritz game. We had more people on deck. The only exception was Peter Coyle and Reggie (Corrigan) for the contact stuff. Shane Horgan looks like he'll be back running by Monday or Tuesday. While neither (Horgan nor Corrigan) is 100 per cent and we have to get them through the week, it certainly looks very promising."

Meanwhile, Munster coach Alan Gaffney said the province side had been negotiating with Wallaby full back Chris Latham. "I go back a long way with him and he's a friend," Gaffney said yesterday. "We've spoken to Chris along with a whole lot of other people who've spoken to him. If he would like to come, of course we'd love to have him."