Breaking: Peter O’Mahony’s World Cup Is Over, More On Sexton & O’Connell

Peter O’Mahony’s World Cup is over and Paul O’Connell’s is set to be brought to an end later today as Ireland count the cost of their dramatic win over France yesterday.

Ireland are hopeful that Johnny Sexton could yet play a part against Argentina with the medical team optimistic on his groin injury, but he will go for scans to establish the extent of his injury.

O’Mahony will returne to Dublin today for a specialist opinion on his knee ligament injury, while O’Connell suffered what Ireland manager Mick Kearney described as “a significant hamstring injury” and, while he hasn’t been ruled out, it is highly unlikely he will play for Ireland again. A further update is due this afternoon.

Ireland have not heard from the citing commissioners regarding the incident involving Sean O’Brien in the opening minute in which he appeared to strike Pascal Pape, but there is a 36-hour window from the end of yesterday’s game in which he could be charged.

“Paul O’Connell appears to have suffered a significant hamstring injury and was hospitalised overnight. He is having scans later today to clarify the extent of the injury,” Mick Kearney said.

“Peter O’Mahony has suffered a knee ligament injury and is returning to Dublin today for specialist opinion and will play no further part in the tournament. Johnny Sexton suffered a groin injury. Initial clinical assessment is encouraging and it is scanning later today.

“Host of bumps and bruises and soreness and will need to be managed, but no more serious than that.”

With Jared Payne also ruled out before the game, Joe Schmidt must now consider calling up replacements for him, O’Mahony and probably O’Connell.

Ireland are assessing the rest of the squad as to how their various bumps and bruises show up before deciding on who to bring in and it might not be a like-for-like replacement.

“I’m not quite sure at this stage. At the moment, only Peter O’Mahony has been definitively ruled out. He was in hospital overnight and was very sore and we will be in a better decision to rule on that later on,” Mick Kearney said.

“In relation to Jared Payne’s replacement we will wait for a full injury report from yesterday and I would be pretty sure that a decision would be made at some stage today.

“It was a physical and hard match and we are travelling up to Cardiff later today so it will be a complete rest day. The intention then tomorrow will be just to have a walk-through and a few meetings. The first two days will be very light.

“There will be a full training session Wednesday, a down day Thursday and then another full training session the Friday so we have a little bit of time.”