JACK Crowley could be in a race to be fit for Ireland’s Nations Championship matches this summer.

The Innishannon man has been ruled out of Munster’s URC quarter-final against the Bulls in South Africa this Saturday due to an ‘obscure’ leg injury.

Crowley hasn’t featured for Munster since mid-April, having missed recent matches against the Lions, Connacht and Ulster. He had been named to start against the Lions in the URC on May 16th, but withdrew before kick-off.

Munster coach Clayton McMillan admits that a ‘little bit more investigation’ is needed to get to the bottom of Crowley’s neural leg injury.

While there are fears that he could miss Ireland’s summer games, starting with the clash against Australia on July 4th, McMillan also suggested that he could yet feature in a URC semi-final, if Munster get past the Bulls this weekend.

‘Clearly it’s something that’s a little bit obscure, something that comes and goes so a little bit more investigation required really,’ McMillan said.

‘If you saw him walking around the building now you wouldn't have any concerns, but obviously when he gets running something happens that brings about a kind of a dead leg feeling so we can't take the risk of taking him to South Africa and not being able to play, so he's going to have to stay back.

‘As I said, 99 percent of the time he feels absolutely 100 percent, so we're just going to get to the bottom of it and hopefully it's something that can be fixed pretty quickly and then if we're good enough to get through to a semi-final we'll explore that option then.’

In better news, both Fineen Wycherley and Alex Nankivell returned to training after missing the 24-17 win against the Lions, and were part of the travelling group that arrived in Pretoria on Wednesday afternoon.

Ahead of this weekend’s URC quarter-final, McMillan said: ‘It won't be easy going over there but it is a place that the team have enjoyed going and enjoyed success in the past so I think all you can do is prepare to the best of your ability and it all will come down to a few moments on the weekend.’