Murray and Sherry remain Munster injury doubts

MUNSTER scrum-half Conor Murray and hooker Mike Sherry remain injury doubts for the province’s crucial Heineken Cup round five clash with Edinburgh at Murrayfield on Sunday (12.45pm).

Murray sustained a bad mouth injury, which required stitching both internally and externally, during the course of Munster’s disappointing defeat to the Cardiff Blues in the PRO12 last weekend. Sherry injured his ankle during the course of the same match and was also replaced.

Tighthead prop Stephen Archer, who sustained badly bruised quadriceps in the weekend defeat to the Blues, is expected to be in the mix for selection when the Munster side is announced this Friday.

Munster coach, Rob Penney said: “Yeah, we’ve got a few bumps and bruises but Mike’s (Sherry) still in doubt and we won’t know until the last minute whether he’s able to take his place in the group.”

“Conor Murray is similar. He’s obviously got quite bad stitches to the mouth, internal and external which is not the most healthy spot. Your mouth can get infected quite easily and he’s taking it very slowly at the moment. Again, we won’t know until the end of the week, where he’s at.”

“Stephen Archer’s making good progress after a really badly bruised quad. And just on that, the conscientiousness in which, particularly Mike Sherry and Stephen Archer treated their injuries has put them in the frame for this week. Archer didn’t train today (Wednesday), probably won’t train until Friday. It’s great for those young blokes to have such a good attitude towards their recovery and rehabilitation that they’ve done such a great job to put themselves in the frame.”

Munster are set to welcome back the likes of Simon Zebo, Donncha O’Callaghan, Peter O’Mahony and BJ Botha, into their starting line-up for the trip to the Scottish capital. None of the four players were not involved against Cardiff last weekend.