O'Connell may miss summer tour

DEPENDING ON the effectiveness of intravenous drugs, Paul O’Connell may miss this summer’s Ireland tour to Australia and New Zealand, which leaves Ireland on June 5th. The Irish and Munster secondrow has been suffering from an infection to his groin, which has kept him out of Munster’s Heineken Cup run since he captained the team in the pool stages against Northampton in January.

More recently O’Connell has been attending hospital in Cork where he has been receiving intravenous antibiotics to tackle the infection.

He played during Ireland’s Six Nations Championship but since then has been unavailable for Munster and last month travelled to Liverpool for a consultation with the Liverpool FC team doctor, Peter Bruckner.

Since then he has experienced a disheartening time and even when rested the injury has flared up, indicating the problem was not a physical issue. Writing in his blog on the O2 website O’Connell’s frustration is evident.

“I’ve spent more time than is healthy staring out of the window of the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork over the past eight days watching the world go by,” he says.

“It’s not quite that melodramatic as I’m hardly a prisoner, having been able to slip out to meet friends, family and team-mates for a coffee or a bite to eat in between treatments.

“My enforced sabbatical from the game has been hugely frustrating, a sequence initially of MRI scans, rehabilitative processes and now an intravenous course of antibiotics.

“Once I stopped training and the inflammation was still getting worse the emphasis on what needed to be done, changed. An infection was identified as the primary cause of my discomfort.

“I was originally given a heavy dose of oral antibiotics but after another scan last Wednesday week the antibiotics were administered by intravenous drip: three times a day for 20 minutes.”

While the inspirational captain has been severely knocked back and has not played rugby since Ireland lost to Scotland in the final match of this year’s Six Nations Championship on March 20th, he feels fresh with just one thought, to get healthy again.

“You always associate hospitals with being sick and I don’t feel that way, which is unsettling,” said O’Connell.

“I have been extraordinarily well looked after in the Bon Secours and had plenty of visitors but I miss home. I’ll be going there on Thursday or Friday. The doctors are pretty confident that if I maintain the current course that progress will be appreciable.

“There is very little blood supply to the tendons and muscles in question so it’s a tricky process. No sportsperson likes to be injured and I’d love to be in the RDS this weekend, but my responsibility now is to ensure that I get my body completely right before returning to the game.”

Ireland’s summer tour kicks off against the All Blacks at Yarrow Stadium on June 12th.