The 28-year-old had been in scintillating form after returning to Wales from Brive in the summer before his latest setback.

The former Scarlets player has seen his persistent injury restrict him to just six first team appearances this season.

The decision was taken by the club for Davies to undergo the knife on December 11, and is expected to make a full comeback in the New Year.

“Barry has failed to recover from a groin problem which has prevented him from training fully in recent weeks, through conservative treatment, so a decision was made in his best interests to opt for surgery,” said Ospreys physio Chris Towers.

“It was not a major procedure, and with an aggressive rehab programme over the next couple of weeks, he is only likely to be unavailable for selection for a period of two to four weeks.”(source)

Flannery will undergo diagnostic surgery later this week after the injury forced him out of Munster’s match against Perpignan on Friday.

If Flannery requires further surgery he could be ruled out for months rather than weeks, which would leave either Connacht’s Sean Cronin or either of the Fogarty brothers John and Denis.

The Munsterman has not had a good 2009 with injury, with a fractured arm ruling him out of the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa.

John has been first-choice for Leinster this season, while Denis has deputised ably for Flannery at Munster.

Ulster also have Nigel Brady and Andy Kyriacou available, both of whom have shown good form this season, so Ireland are not short of options.

Ireland open the defence of their Six Nations title against Italy at Croke Park on 6 February before facing France in Paris a week later.(source)

Saracens trailed 9-3 at half-time at Stade Pierre Antoine but kept their opponents scoreless after the break as tries from replacements Andy Saull and Schalk Brits sealed a vital win that keeps their hopes alive of qualifying from Pool Three.

Castres, the surprise leaders of the Top 14 in France, dominated the first half after taking an early lead through full-back Thomas Bouquie in the fifth minute.

Saracens equalised after 13 minutes through Glen Jackson’s drop goal but spent the next 10 minutes camped in their own half as Castres were twice held up over the try line.

Bouquie added two more penalties after Justin Melck was sin-binned to establish a half-time lead but again Jackson levelled with two early kicks at the start of the second half.

Saracens were under pressure in the scrum but found success at the lineout from which the game’s opening try came. A strong drive saw hooker Brits go close before Saull drove over from close range.

Steve Borthwick’s side wrapped up victory nine minutes from time with their second try when Brits intercepted Alexandre Albouy’s long pass to score under the posts.

Saracens moved to second in the pool, three points behind Toulon who recorded their biggest victory in Europe, beating Italians Rugby Rovigo 73-3.

Fijian wing Gabi Lovobalavu crossed four times, including the first and last of the French team’s 11 tries at Stade Felix Mayol.

Fellow wing Sinoti Sinoti also scored twice while Felipe Contepomi added five conversions as.

Montpellier moved ahead of Worcester and Connacht in Pool Two with a comfortable 57-24 win over Olympus Rugby XV Madrid.

Full-back Benjamin Thiery scored 13 points as the Frenchmen ran in eight tries, while Cesar Sempere bagged 14 points, more than Madrid had managed in their previous two outings in the pool.(source)

Perpignan scored all the tries but they just could not stop giving away cheap penalties and O’Gara could have had nine more points in a game where Munster kicked so much you wondered whether there had been some private sweepstake on it in the Munster hierarchy.

It was a perfect game of rugby for the men in red. Nearly.

That means both half-backs and full-back kicked a lot, while the back row ran a lot. The opposition was pinned in its own half as though caught up in a spider’s web and a steady drip-drip of penalties and points accumulated. All over the southern hemisphere, rugby watchers - those still awake - buried faces in hands and lamented. All over southern Ireland, glasses were raised high in confidence. Vive la difference!

The stats tell their own tale. Munster are strong in the line-out and weak in the scrum, so controlled the game so well that there were only four first-half scrums but nineteen first-half line-outs. Perpignan could not get the ball or territory they wanted at all.

Nearly perfect. But two alarming lapses in concentration utterly ruined the picture and meant that despite some 70+ per cent of territory and possession in the first half, Munster were not even ahead at the break, instead held 12-12 by the visiting Catalans.

Indeed, the French, mixing opportunism and enthusiasm with equal vigour, racked up nearly a point a minute during the first quarter-hour, dismaying Thomond Park’s noisiest so thoroughly that it took a full 20 minutes for ‘Fields of Athenry’ to get going.

After O’Gara had given Munster the lead with a straightforward penalty, a Perpignan line-out in Munster’s 22 was stolen so well that it surprised even the Munster half-backs. It surprised Yoann Vivalda - the seventh choice Perpignan flank forward pitched in at the deep end - far less and he marched between Munster’s pods, snatched up the loose ball and sped away to the corner.

O’Gara restored Munster’s lead, but barely had he done so than the home side’s line was breached again, this time with hooker Guillem Guirado running through space around the fringes and offloading to scrum-half Nicolas Durand, whose side-step made Doug Howlett look every inch an overweight prop.

Jerome Porical converted the second one to make it 12-6.

Yet Munster were obviously getting the better of the structured parts of the game, with diagonal kicks from O’Gara and Paul Warwick especially causing heavy territorial damage to the French.

The penalty count by the end of the half was 8-2 in favour of the Irish; O’Gara landed two more goals to bring parity to the scoreline as the teams trooped into the sheds.

Munster regained the lead early in the second half when O’Gara notched his fifth, but a brief flicker of hope for the hitherto strangled French came from one of those rare scrums, with the French flattening the Munster unit to gain a penalty with which Porical restored parity.

Only a flicker. O’Gara dropped a goal off his left peg, missed another penalty with his right as Munster turned a screw with inexorable precision, then did add another with his right after Quinlan had followed up and caught a high kick. The question seemed to be now whether Perpignan could cling on for a bonus point or not.

They did better. David Mele landed a penalty after Lifeimi Mafi had held on but on the day that Free State prop Wian du Preez made his Heineken cup debut for Munster it was another from Bloemfontein, Philip Burger, who opened up the game again, fielding a high ball and returning it all 70m for a brilliant solo try.

But Mele could not land the conversion. Munster two points behind with eight to play? Where have you heard that one before? Sure enough, within four minutes, O’Gara had kicked another goal after a high tackle by Bertrand Guiry and Munster led 24-23.

Darragh Hurley sped away off the back of a ruck to land what looked to be the cruellest of sucker punch tries, but was pegged back for a knock-on. Then Munster got their mitts on the ball again for another couple of minutes, ground out another penalty and in a bizarre break with tradition, kicked for the corner rather than the posts. Perpignan discipline faltered under the pressure and the clock ticked down as Wayne Barnes administered a warning.

The final act was entirely appropriate. Munster won the line-out and were driven back five metres by a fine Perpignan effort before kicking the ball limply out into touch. Even in an attempt to administer a knockout blow, Munster could only resort to the cheap kicking option. The Irish got out of jail here, next week in the Aimé-Giral will be different. (source)

Rugby union chairman Jock Hobbs said Friday the union was reversing its decision made in July to cut the top provincial competition in 2010 from 14 teams to 10.

But he said the union still favoured cutting four teams from the 2011 season, depending on negotiations with the provincial teams.

The decision to cut the teams was made due to the the poor financial performance of some teams.

The Super 15 which starts in 2011 will also take up more of the rugby calendar making less time for the Air New Zealand Cup matches. A cut in the number of teams would reduce the Air New Zealand Cup window.

The July announcement raised a howl of protest from many fans and the four teams likely to be cut — Northland, Counties-Manukau, Manawatu, and Tasman.

Appeals from the teams and threats of legal action followed, which the union said was the reason — along with pay negotiations with players –that the competition will remain unchanged next year.

“A number of factors have changed since the board made its decisions in June and July,” Hobbs said.

The domestic season, which finished last month, was one of the most successful of recent years with the threatened teams drawing strong crowd support.

Rugby union chief executive Steve Tew said the strong growth in television audiences and the profile of the competition were “hugely positive”.

“Together with our provincial unions we now need to figure out how we can harness that interest and support in 2010 and beyond to sustain those teams and these vital competitions over the longer term,” Tew said.(source)

The cosmopolitan French capital club went down at the final hurdle in 2001 and 2005 to Leicester Tigers and Toulouse respectively but top Pool 4 and are four points clear of second-placed Ulster.

That makes the back-to-back meetings with the 1999 champions of Europe - starting at Ravenhill on Saturday and then on to a ground-breaking contest in Brussels a week later - potential group qualification deciders.

The teams are far from being strangers on the big stage, the Round 3 meeting will be the tenth time the teams have met in the Heineken Cup with Max Guazzini’s team holding a 5-4 advantage. And star scrum-half Julien Dupuy knows both what it takes to reach a final of European club rugby’s elite tournament - and the heartbreak of missing out on a winners’ medal.

Dupuy was in the Leicester Tigers team who lost 19-16 to Leinster at Murrayfield in May and has already made his mark in the tournament with his new club. Dupuy kicked the Parisians to victory over Bath at The Rec in Round 2 as he broke Bath hearts for the second season running.

The French international claimed 21 points in the 29-27 win, slotting a last-minute penalty goal to snatch what had seemed an unlikely victory. That just rubbed salt in Bath wounds as the former Leicester scrum-half had inflicted a similar fate on the 1998 champions when he crossed for a late try as the Tigers knocked out their bitter rivals at the quarter-final stage of last season’s Heineken Cup.

But for all that, Dupuy insists the French giants still have plenty to do if they are finally to be crowned European champions for the first time in their history.

Long-term planning can lead to a loss of focus on immediate objectives and Dupuy says Stade are simply concentrating on their double header with Ulster as they aim to continue to control Pool 3.

“We will try to reach the quarter-finals - that is what we’ll concentrate on,” said the player who kicked four penalty goals in helping Les Bleus to a 20-13 victory over world champions South Africa.

“But for the moment, we are happy. We are first in the Pool and we’ve won our opening two games.

“We will just try to play well for the remaining games in our Pool. We go to Ulster on Saturday and that will be a big challenge - it will certainly be hard to win there.

“After the first game against Edinburgh, we wanted to produce a big performance against Bath because we knew they are a very physical team.

“It was a good win for us but it’s very difficult to think about reaching the final because there are a lot of big teams who want to get there as well.” (source)

Upon his return form a successful November tour of Europe - despite Saturday’s 25-18 loss to the Barbarians - Graham Henry has voiced similar concerns to Springbok coach Peter de Villiers, calling for coordinated management of his country’s top performers.

While the All Blacks disperse for holidays in various location are the globe, Henry and his assistant coaches Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith, will meet with New Zealand’s Super 14 coaches in Wellington for a debrief of the tour, and discuss the physical state of some players.

“Can we keep them to a high level with the amount of rugby they’re playing or do they need a bit of space from time to time? We’re just trying to agree on how we do that,” Henry told NZPA.

“They’re not going to be a month out of the game, but a guy might play for three weeks then just needs a break for a week, so he gets out of the environment and gets away.

“Otherwise they’re going to be playing rugby for 10 months of the year for the next two years and they’ll be buggered… they’re buggered now.”

Most All Blacks will be given time off until late January, with veteran full-back Mils Muliaina already granted permission to miss the Chiefs’ first three matches while lock Brad Thorn was allowed to return home a week early after playing every minute of the All Blacks’ first eleven Tests this year.

Henry added that the current All blacks squad was exhausted after playing fourteen Tests this year and things needed to change. He explained however that the plan had more than just the 2011 World Cup in mind but was rather geared to help the players prolong their careers at the top level.

“You see the difference between last year and this year,” he said.

“Last year we had an extended period of time before they started playing Super 14 so they were in good shape and that reflected in the way they played.

“This year we came off a grand slam tour, basically straight into Super 14 and they’ve played rugby right through.

“The same is going to occur, back in their franchises in January, playing in early February, so it builds all the time.

“Unless we look after them as athletes and do what’s best for them then they’re going to struggle.”

Meanwhile, Henry said the coaches were yet to discuss if they would continue in their reshuffled roles which were an undoubted success on this tour.

Hansen reiterated his desire to return to coaching the forwards, despite having added some spice to the attack, while Henry admitted he found some issues with guiding the forwards.

“In my job I need to have contact with the 22 players and being a forward coach I don’t get contact with all 22 so that’s a wee bit of a frustration,” he said.

“But whatever is the best role for this team to be successful, I’m prepared to do.”

All three coaches agreed the reshuffle had put some onus on the players to step up and take more responsibility, which was reflected in their season-highlight 39-12 win over France in Marseille.

Henry said the coaches would discuss their roles early in the Super 14.(source)

Banahan was sent off for stamping on Northampton back Stephen Myler midway through the second half of his club Bath’s 15-13 Guinness Premiership defeat to Saints on December 5.

The 22-year-old pleaded not guilty to the offence, but a three-man RFU panel chaired by Christopher Quinlan imposed a fortnight’s suspension following a hearing in Bristol.

The ban means Banahan will be absent for home and away Heineken Cup fixtures with Edinburgh, both of which Bath must win to keep their European hopes alive.

The temporary loss of the prolific try scorer is certain to come as a massive blow to Bath head coach Steve Meehan, with his side currently at the bottom of Pool Four after suffering defeats to Ulster and Stade Francais in earlier rounds.

Bath are also just three points away from landing in the Premiership basement, having not won in the league since September.

Banahan, who has scored three tries in five Test appearances for England and started all of the autumn internationals last month against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand, will be eligible to play again on December 21. (source)

The IRFU said the match would serve as a warm-up for their June tour to New Zealand and Australia. The Barbarians will play England the week before.

The match will be the Six Nations champions’ first against the international invitational side since 2000. Invitations to play for the Baa Baas have already been issued to Munster’s Jean de Villiers, Doug Howlett and Paul Warwick

The Irish squad will depart immediately afterwards for New Zealand, where they are due to meet the All Blacks on June 12.

They will then head on to Australia for a Test against the Wallabies on June 26.

The most recent meeting between Ireland and the Baabaas also coincided with the last Southern Hemisphere tour Ireland undertook in 2008 when Ireland played the Barbarians in Gloucester, winning the game 39-14.

The London club refused to play the match on November 27 because of surface water down one channel of the pitch.

They were charged with a breach of regulations but a Premier Rugby disciplinary panel tonight dismissed the charges after deciding they had not been proved.

The panel will issue a written decision setting out its reasons for dismissing the charges within 48 hours.

Sale revealed they would study that judgement before deciding what action they might take.

Chief executive officer James Jennings said: “This decision is incredibly disappointing and will come as a shock to all Sale Sharks supporters who were at Edgeley Park on the night when the game was cancelled.

“We will issue a further statement immediately following the publication of the panel’s reasons for its decision.”

A statement from Wasps read: “Following full cooperation with the review into the game postponement at Edgeley Park, London Wasps are delighted that the members of Premier Rugby’s designated disciplinary group decided that charges had not been proven and accordingly the charges have been dismissed by the panel.

“London Wasps will make no further statement until the written decision is released within 48 hours, however the club are pleased that the matter has been resolved so that our full attention can be turned to our game against Bayonne at Adams Park on Saturday.

“London Wasps continue to share in both Wasps and Sale supporters’ disappointment that this game could not be played.”

Wasps potentially faced a range of sanctions, including a points deduction and fine, for their refusal to play the game.

They deemed the surface to be dangerous and the match was officially postponed almost 15 minutes after the scheduled 7.45pm kick-off.

Referee David Rose was happy for the game to go ahead and spectators had taken their seats when the decision was announced, angering Sale and their fans.

It is the third season running that Wasps have been involved in an 11th-hour postponement, but the Premier Rugby panel opted against taking any action.

A statement read: “On November 30 Wasps were charged with breaches of Guinness Premiership regulations 4.4 (a), (b) and (j) by Premier Rugby.

“After a hearing today before a panel consisting of three members of Premier Rugby’s designated disciplinary group, it was decided that charges had not been proven and accordingly the charges have been dismissed by the panel.

“The panel intends to issue a short written decision setting out its reasons for dismissing the charges within 48 hours.

“No further statement will be made until that time.”

Sale were infuriated by the withdrawal but Wasps, confident in their grounds for refusing to play, were prepared to vigorously contest any sanctions.(source)