O'Shea: Too many games for us

13 April 2012
Leicester 34 London Irish 16

London Irish director of rugby Connor O'Shea admitted three games in a week had left his side punch drunk but still delighted to have booked a place in the Heineken Cup for the first time. Leicester beat them 34-16 at Welford Road, but with Northampton failing to claim a bonus point from victory over Newcastle, Irish were confirmed as finishing fourth in the Zurich Premiership.

The Tigers ran in three second-half scores and were awarded a penalty try as they completed a fourth successive League campaign without a home defeat. O'Shea said: 'The guys are absolutely punch drunk. They've played three games this week and you could see out there they just ran out of gas in the second half. It's just not on when there is so much riding on it.' Despite the difficult end to the season, O'Shea believes his side fully deserve all they have achieved this campaign and was excited by the prospect of playing in the European Cup.

He said: 'Yes, we have crawled across the line, but it's a whole season's work.

'You might say it's a disappointing end to the season, but it's been a great season for the club to have won the Cup and come fourth and qualified for Europe.

'We'll regroup and get ourselves well and truly ready for next year.' While Irish look forward to next season's Heineken Cup, O'Shea's opposite number, Dean Richards, was focused on this year's final. Having rested his stars at Bristol last week, Richards recalled nine internationals to the starting lineup but gave little away about his selection thoughts heading into the Cardiff showpiece with Munster.

He said: 'There are a lot of positions up for grabs for the Heineken Cup. We are just looking to see what our best side will be.'

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in