Munster have made five changes to their side ahead of their RadoDirect Pro12 game with Ospreys, at Thomond Park on Saturday.

Three of the faces returning to the lineup were on international duty, with Ronan O’Gara, Dave Kilcoyne and Doug Howlett back in the side.

Cathal Sheridan gets a chance at scrum-half, while Damien Varley gets the number 2 jersey this week ahead of Mike Sherry.

Rob Penney admitted that Munster need to find some excellent form if they are to have a hope of qualifying for the playoffs. The Munster coach also admitted that, with his side's recent poor form in mind, Ospreys were not the ideal side to come up against: “I haven’t seen Ospreys play badly. They’ve been there or thereabouts every match they’ve played. There’s very few games where team have got away on them.  They’ll be tough.  They’ll be buoyed by the confidence they got from beating us over there."

Munster have lost two games in a row now, having lost to Treviso and Scarlets in recent weeks, and find themselves under pressure to get back to winning ways.

Mike Sherry told the Munster official site: "We had to do a lot this week to pick ourselves up. We played very poorly. Rob and Simon are coming under stick in the press but it’s completely our fault. We didn’t turn up on the day; we played very poorly and didn’t play to any kind of game plan."

"We let them get up ahead of steam and it was always going to be difficult then in Italy.  The weekend was just one bad thing after another, but there’s no excuses, we were terrible and that won’t do."

Munster Starting XV

F Jones; D Howlett capt, C Laulala, J Downey, D Hurley; R O’Gara, C Sheridan; D Kilcoyne, D Varley, S Archer; I Nagle, B Holland; P Butler, T O’Donnell, J Coughlan.

Replacements: M Sherry, W du Preez, BJ Botha, D Foley, S Dougall, D Williams, I Keatley, I Dineen.

Image ©INPHO/Billy Stickland