Saturday 24th October

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Ger McCarthy (0:30)

The Big Red Bench.

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Saturday and Sunday from 6pm, Cork's RedFM.

Ruairí O'Hagan (0:39)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, you are very welcome along to The Big Red Bench on this bank holiday, Saturday, Jazz Saturday. Hope you're all having a great jazz weekend so far. My name's Ruairí O'Hagan, I'm here with you for the next hour.

We have a top class 60 minutes of sport ahead. We are going to look ahead to the massive clash tomorrow. Nemo Rangers and St Finbarr are going head to head in the McCarthy Insurance Group Premier Senior Football Championship final. The Barres that are fending champions going up against the side they beat last year in Nemo Rangers.

It's going to be an absolute cracker tomorrow. Four o'clock is the start time for that one down in the park. We will of course have reaction on tomorrow evening's show. It's just on the way at the RDS where Munster are taking on Leinster in their URC clash. Munster going in to the game on the back of that impressive win over Rassing last week at Supervalue Parque in Quaife. That game has just kicked off. Let's hear a little bit from the Red78 podcast which I do for Off to Ball that features Alan Quillen and Fiona Hayes. This is their opinion on tonight's game. Quinny, how do you see it going?

Alan Quinlan (1:50)

It's always tricky to predict what's going to happen. I think Leinster probably, from where they were a year ago, they probably learned a lot from that in their preparations. They bought the bulk of their internationals with them to South Africa. Some of them didn't play, but I think just integrating them back into the system and the Lions Tour last year didn't help them at the start. It took them a while to get going. So look, to go to Claremont last week, and last Saturday, and to score seven tries was a discord, I think. Yeah. Yeah, they were very powerful. They weren't perfect.

Plus, yeah, it was a really strong performance. So look, the team that's gonna come out here, most of these internationals for Leinster only played the week before Cardiff. So they're not going to be rested here this weekend and rotated. So you're gonna get the bulk of all the big guns here. And it's a great challenge for Munster, I think.

They know themselves that some of these players, the Munster players, a lot of them have been under receiving end of maybe a few dominant losses, a couple of close encounters, you know, real physicality and quality from Leinster at times. So, and they've also experienced what can be attained. If you can bring that 80 minute performance, it doesn't have to be all bells and whistles and attack. But I think first and foremost, you have to bring that fight and aggression. And they did that last year. So they have, it doesn't mean it's gonna happen again. But what it does is it kind of, there's a bit of a more of an edge to this game now from a Leinster point of view. So I would think Munster have to, you know, front up physically at the start. And then try and just be smart with the way they play because it'll be difficult to outplay Leinster from a rugby point of view because of who they have in the squad and the players they have. And that's been just realistic. So great challenge into pro game. Irish squad being announced today.

There might be a few more Munster faces in there. Hopefully there is. There might be a few that are not in there that are frustrated. So there's so much to play for in these games. And as I said, Munster are in a better, I think Munster are in a good place in a sense of that bit of consistency around the set piece and that physicality is pretty good. So that gives them a chance. But look on paper, you think Munster should always win this game at the moment. Munster bucked that trend last year and they'll have to bring a really good 80-minute performance to have a chance of doing it again.