Clayton McMillan said it was always the plan to make significant changes to his Munster side for the visit of Edinburgh with next weekend's derby against Leinster part of his thinking.
The 2023 BKT URC champions welcome the Scottish outfit to Cork tomorrow evening (7.45pm) looking to make it three wins on the bounce, following victories over Scarlets and Cardiff.
McMillan admitted that he was just "kind of" happy after the 23-20 success over Cardiff last weekend with questions marks around the team’s physicality against the Welsh side.
However, with a mouth-watering clash against rivals Leinster on the horizon, the New Zealander, who took over during the summer, said he has to select with a bigger picture in mind.
"We’ve had a lot of people who’ve put a lot of work in over the pre-season and the first month of URC we wanted to get as many people [as possible] an opportunity to stake their claim and this week was an opportunity to do that," he told RTÉ Sport after naming a side with 10 changes from the Thomond Park match.
"Week one and two was an opportunity for us to build some cohesion and have some consistency of selection.
"You see a fair bit of that in the forward pack and in the backs we have a number of outside backs that have been out with injury, so we’re keen to get them back in and create that internal competition."
The province confirmed that scrum-half Craig Casey (above) is "one to three weeks" away from a return with a hamstring injury and hasn’t yet been ruled out of the Leinster tie.
"I would certainly love him to play next week but we won’t take any risks," said the former Chiefs boss.
"He still has strong ambitions for featuring for Ireland in the game against the All Blacks [1 November] and if playing him next week puts him at risk, we won’t do that.
"It’s a long season and given his importance to this team, and I would think Irish rugby, we’ll do what’s best for the player.
"He's not ruled out at this stage but it is something that we will take a conservative approach with."
Tom Ahern, who played the full 80 minutes against Cardiff, suffered a head injury at training yesterday and is now following the return-to-play protocols.
"He copped a boot to the face and was pretty sore afterwards," said McMillan.
"He had a headache so the decision was made to rule him out for the game."
Meanwhile, McMillan confirmed that out-half Jack Crowley, player of the match in round two, was not considered due to the IRFU’s player-management system.
Last season the 25-year-old (above) missed the home derby against Leinster but Irish rugby fans look set to see the Cork man square off against Ireland rival Sam Prendergast next weekend.
"Yep, 100%, he would have been in the matchday 23 but he had to miss one game in the first four weeks and this was the designated game," he said.
Edinburgh, whose clash against Ulster last weekend was postponed due to Storm Amy, beat Munster on their last visit to Virgin Media Park in March and have won three times at the Cork venue.
Coach Sean Everitt has named a strong team with British and Irish Lions Duhan van der Merwe, Darcy Graham and Pierre Schoeman included and a return to Irish shores for former Munster out-half Ben Healy.
"[They are] a quality side with a lot of international talent," said the 51-year-old.
"A lot has been spoken in the four walls here about the way they went around dismantling us earlier on in the year, and so we know that we have to be a hell of a lot better than what we were last week to get the job done.
"Only time will tell what the week off will mean for them. I know for us, getting battle-hardened and trying to find a rhythm is important.
"But equally, having a week off to just fine tune how you approach this game could be advantageous for them as well.
"So we'll have a few questions answered tomorrow night. I guess you could argue that we lost a little bit of momentum last week.
"We had a good positive performance against the Scarlets and there weren't too many people patting themselves on the back in our environment around the manner in which we played [against Cardiff] and that's important to us.
"We're obviously delighted to get the win against Cardiff and they made us work bloody hard for it but we want to be a more consistent team than what we showed the last night.
"This week represents another opportunity to get back out and play the rugby that we want to."
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