Bob Casey, the Blackrock, Leinster and Ireland second row, yesterday confirmed that he would be playing for London Irish from the start of next season. Casey (23), who has played 40 times for Leinster in Celtic League and European competitions, has struck a two-year deal with the club where he will join former Irish full back Conor O'Shea, currently the director of rugby, and player/coach and former Springbok Brendan Venter.
The move to this season's English Cup winning side is a gamble for the talented lock, who has risen up through the age groups in Ireland where he has played schools, under-19s, under-21s and has been capped five times for the senior Irish team. The IRFU have made it clear to potential international players that they will look more favourably on those who play their rugby in Ireland.
Casey's primary motivation in making the change is to broaden his experience of top- class rugby with the regular challenge of playing in the Zurich Premiership. There are also personal reasons in that his girlfriend Tina is moving to London to take up an appointment.
"While we support the IRFU in keeping players at home, in special cases such as this where a player wants to broaden his experience by playing elsewhere for a couple of years, we are pleased to offer him the chance to do so," said O'Shea. "We believe Bob has the ability to compete at the highest level of club and international rugby."
Leinster this week spoke to legendary All Black Zinzan Brooke about the post of assistant to Matt Williams. Brooke had talks with Leinster officials on Monday about the vacancy, which arose when Williams' assistant Alan Gaffney was named as successor to Declan Kidney as Munster coach.
Brooke (37), the former Harlequins coach, is one of a number of candidates who have been interviewed, with Irish under-19 and Dungannon coach Willie Anderson also in the frame.
In Munster, Cork Constitution coach Brian Hickey will not be coaching the club side next season regardless of how they perform in Saturday's AIB All-Ireland League final against Shannon. Hickey, a dentist by profession, had preliminary talks with Munster when the coaching job came up before Gaffney's appointment. He decided not to enter into rugby full-time but informed Munster that he would be available to help out the province in some capacity if they so wished. His name had been linked to the assistant coach's job.
"I'm really not thinking beyond this weekend," said Hickey. "I said I'd be available to help in some capacity and that's just how it stands. I won't be coaching Con next season. I've been there three years now," he added.
Munster and Leicester, who will contest the Heineken European Cup final at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, on May 25th (kick-off 3 p.m.) have each been allocated 20,000 tickets for the match.
The public allocation of tickets has been sold out and tickets are no longer available through the Millennium Stadium, Ticketmaster UK or Ticketmaster Ireland.
Munster will distribute their tickets to all affiliated clubs in Munster, the supporters club and for public sale in Cork and Limerick. Details of public sale will be released later this week.
While around 50,000 people went through the turnstiles for last week's semi-finals, French television network FR2 captured almost a quarter of all viewers in France during match-time, with a total of two million watching the Castres v Munster match.
FIXTURES
SATURDAY: All-Ireland League: Division One final - Cork Constitution v Shannon, Lansdowne Road, 4.0.
Division Two final: Belfast Harlequins v UL Bohemians, Lansdowne Road, 2.0.
SUNDAY: Towns Cup final - Carlow v Kilkenny, North Kildare RFC, Kilcock, 3.30.
