Six New HC Starters

Six of the side for tomorrow’s Heineken Cup Round One game against Racing Metro will be doing so from the off for Munster for the first time.

Ian Keatley and Billy Holland have four appearances to their credit all from the bench and Casey Laulala and James Downey have Heineken Cup experience with Northampton Saints and Cardiff Blues respectively but for Dave Kilcoyne and Sean Dougall it will be a first ever experience at this level.

Kilcoyne will come up against Luc Ducalcon the French international, part of an all-international front row that includes the Italian Andrea Lo Cicero and Dimitri Szarzewski. It’s a pretty daunting assignment for Kilcoyne who starts just his third game for Munster but he acquitted himself more than well when up against Mike Ross last time out and probably deserved better than he received in terms of tight decisions.

Looking back on that game Kilcoyne said. “I thought it started off very well. There was an issue there with the bind before half time which was maybe fair enough, I dunno."

“But in the second half I thought we were getting off the mark very quick. There was one particular scrum, I think we were down to seven. I thought we really got a kind of good drive on and I don't know, the ref penalised us and I was wondering why?"

In terms of the pace of the game he felt comfortable while he was on. “Yeh, I found the pace grand, we did a lot of work with Bryce (Cavanagh) over the summer and I think our conditioning levels are very good."

“I was well able for the pace. It’s just that sometimes we were following kicks and maybe our kick chases could have been a bit better but overall I’d have been comfortable with the pace of the game.”

It’s an experience that will stand to the highly rated prop in what will be the cauldron of Stade de France tomorrow afternoon.