Munster back rower Paddy Butler, who was replaced after 55 minutes against Edinburgh on Saturday, has been ruled out of action for at least eight weeks.
Paddy Butler underwent surgery in Limerick today after sustaining a fracture to his right thumb during the 29-23 defeat to the Scots and could be sidelined for a possible eight to ten weeks.
Meanwhile, winger Simon Zebo, who was helped off by medics after 73 minutes with an injury to his left ankle, will undergo a scan early this week to identify the full extent of his injury.
Butler’s back row colleague James Coughlan took a knock to his left forearm against Edinburgh. He had an X-ray this morning which was clear, but he will be monitored as the week progresses ahead of Munster’s round 2 clash with Gloucester.
The province’s meeting with Gloucester at Thomond Park next Saturday could decide their fate in this season’s Heineken Cup, following a frustrating first outing against Edinburgh.
Munster head coach Rob Penney admitted after the Murrayfield loss: “We got embarrassed today by a number of errors and I think it was on the back of a general malaise – a bit of flatness in the group for some reason.
“We’ll be looking at what we did all week in terms of mental preparation to see if there was something amiss there. We may have got a bit ahead of ourselves.
“We are ruing some poor mental preparation, I would suspect, because you don’t change from one week to the next physically in any way.
“I don’t think our mental application was where Edinburgh were – that was self-evident. We weren’t good at all but that’s not taking anything away from Edinburgh. We weren’t allowed to be good.”
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