Stephen Moore Could Have Been A Munster Player

David Nucifora and the IRFU were blamed for blocking Munster’s move for Stephen Moore but it appears that was not the case.

Anthony Foley had claimed that Munster had no interest in the hooker born to Irish parents, but Nucifora yesterday contradicted the Munster head coach, saying the province made an offer that Moore refused.

Munster’s offer fell short of what the 32 year old was looking for because Nucifora was not willing to contribute any IRFU central funds for an ageing star who was not going to give up playing Test rugby and would deny a young native player like Niall Scannell playing time.

“Munster came to us with Stephen and said ‘this is what we’d like to put forward’. There’s a whole range of things that we think about that go into these decisions.

“So having a player that’s still eligible to play international rugby that’s going to cost a province a lot of money, is that the best use of the funds available at that point in time, where he’s going to be missing for a large portion of the season? Probably not,” explained Nucifora.

“It’d be nice to have him but it’d be nice to have him for the whole year. The fact that people have said that we blocked it, it wasn’t blocked. I think you’ll find that there probably was an offer made to Stephen Moore. It just wasn’t accepted.”