Trevor Brennan's European Cup Diary: A busy week on the injury front and one where the emphasis was put on discipline.

A funny old week for various reasons. We trained pretty hard on the Tuesday before the Edinburgh game, but I didn't do contact sessions as I was nursing a rib injury and the physio and the coach wanted to ease me back into things.

So I was doing circuit training with Seba, our fitness guy, and an 18-year-old called Jerome from the Espoirs. He was supposed to have an injury as well, but he hit the tackle bags I was holding like a train. We hit a lot of tackle bags while the first-team battled it out with the Espoirs in a full-on session.

After I had completed my circuit training I went back into the changing room, and within five minutes Gregory Lamboley had joined me. I asked him what was wrong and, cool as a breeze, he said: "I broke my hand."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I heard the crack," he explained.

There was nothing the team doctor could do but send Gregory off for an X-ray and he was operated on the next day. Three screws were inserted in his hand and he'll be out until the New Year. With Fabien Pelous suspended until the New Year as well, we're down to two secondrows, myself and Romain Millochlusky.

With Izzy Maka also rested at the weekend because he has a sore knee, a couple of the Espoirs were on the bench. Aidan McCullen is also serving a mandatory 20-day suspension for a red card for punching in a recent game. He had been playing number eight at the start of the season, but as he was also getting game time in the secondrow this was unlucky timing for him.

On Thursday I was running around doing some Christmas shopping and came home late in the afternoon. That night I watched The Passion of the Christ, and all I can say is that Mel Gibson went a bit over the top on the graphics.

We went to Edinburgh on Friday and after our team run we went back to the hotel for dinner. Myself and Alfie went up to the room to watch the Ulster-Saracens match. Ulster seemed to be on the back foot for much of the first 70 minutes, but Saracens lost two men to the sinbin and the game hinged on that.

Yet, again in this competition it showed how important discipline is, especially away from home.

On the morning of the match, Guy Noves came up to me and asked me if I had watched the Ravenhill match. I said I had, and he said: "You see how important discipline is. Two yellow cards and the game changed."

There isn't a game when he doesn't come up to me beforehand. Discipline, discipline, discipline.

At lunchtime on Saturday I watched the Munster game away to the Dragons, and it was good to see Munster play with a bit of width, and they were trying to offload in the tackle. Of course Ronan O'Gara kicked to the corners well, but they also used their backline. It wasn't typical Munster rugby, going to ground and rucking over it. They were trying to keep the ball alive more and offload in the tackle more.

When we went to the reception after the Edinburgh game and I looked up at the big screen for the last 20 minutes of the Leinster-Bourgoin match, I couldn't believe that Leinster were hammering Bourgoin the way they were doing.

Bourgoin were typical of French teams on their travels, but if Leinster can win the return match as well it really will show that Leinster rugby is on the up again.

We won our own game 20-13, but it was a tough match. Edinburgh played some great rugby and ran everything at us, which seemed to take some of our lads by surprise. We were 14-0 up heading towards half-time and cruising, but they picked off a try to make it 14-7. They kicked two penalties after the break and suddenly it was game on at 14-13.

We came back with a couple of three-pointers ourselves and our lads shut it out, but yesterday's video session confirmed our feeling afterwards that we did what we had to do but that there's much more in us. We still have an awful lot of work to do on areas like our defence and our driving mauls.

Not one of us had a particularly good game, but looking at the results of other French teams in Europe we've won away from home and drawn away to Wasps, along with one home win, so it's a good position to be in.

The Scots may be getting better on the pitch, but we played in front of about 3,000 in a ground with a 70,000 capacity, which seemed ridiculous. By comparison, Munster brought more people, 4,000, to Newport with them, making it like a home match.

We flew home on our private plane, an ECG 135, which holds about 50 people (and by the way, we don't own it. It was just a charter flight).

Just before we took off I got out a good book that had been given to me last summer while I was back in Ireland, though I'd only started reading it about two weeks ago, from that great writer Mr Tim Pat Coogan, called Wherever Green is Worn.

The morning of one of the Lions' Tests, I drove out to Dún Laoghaire and met Peter Cavison, a fishmonger and a good friend of Tim Pat Coogan. He gave me a few books, and I hadn't realised how many books the man had written and how much of a respected Irish historian he is.

I don't think anybody could be as knowledgeable about the Irish abroad, and in researching this book he travelled five continents talking to expatriates, or those with Irish bloodlines, about why, when and how they left Ireland. It is almost 700 pages long, and according to Tim Pat there are 70 million people in the world who are entitled to call themselves Irish, yet only five million live in Ireland.

Flicking through the pages, I noticed there was a reference to Toulouse and Bordeaux, so I turned to page 666 (sorry Tim Pat, but otherwise it would take me a year to get there).

In short, he concluded this entire study by referring to Munster's famous semi-final win (over Toulouse) in 2000 by quoting Declan Kidney: "I do believe in Irish people. We are an unbelievably good nation at turning out good sports people in all sports. Instead of being harsh with each other we just try and stress what is good about what we are doing."

After the defeat in the final to Northampton by a point, he quoted Kidney when he told his players on the Twickenham pitch afterwards: "No one could savour the delights and the heights of victory unless one had experienced the lows of defeat."

"Like Kidney," wrote Tim Pat, "I too believe in Irish people around the globe."

Here he was, after travelling around the world, from America to Japan, South Africa, France, Latin America, the Caribbean, and finishing it with two rugby matches involving Munster in the European Cup.

We're back in that competition when we host Edinburgh this Friday night, when hopefully we can improve on last week's performance. Unfortunately it's an 8.30 kick-off, by which time it will be freezing. It makes for a long, slow build-up, as we'll get together in a hotel on the Thursday. But it's part of the job.

(Trevor Brennan's regular Heineken Cup column can be read on the ERC website, www.ercrugby.com)