Connacht's Diarmuid Kilgallen ruled out for a 'couple of months'

Connacht are likely to be without Diarmuid Kilgallen for a couple of months after confirming that the wing suffered a "significant" hamstring injury.

Kilgallen, who had scored five tries in six appearances for the Westerners this season, was withdrawn 18 minutes after coming on as a replacement during their Champions Cup loss to Saracens on 16 December.

"Diarmuid Kilgallen's had confirmation on his hamstring injury, that’s going to be a decent one," head coach Pete Wilkins told RTÉ Sport.

"He could be out for a couple of months so we’ll wait for a clearer timeline on that but it was significant unfortunately."

Back row Sean O’Brien came off early in the first half of last week’s defeat 20-19 BKT URC defeat at Ulster and will "certainly be out for the next couple of weeks", however, lock Oisin Dowling has recovered from a shoulder injury and could feature against Munster.

Connacht, now tenth in the table, host Graham Rowntree's side on New Year’s Day (3pm) looking to avoid a sixth straight loss.

Despite the losing streak, Wilkins said there will be no big tactical change but improvements across the board are needed.

"We’ve got to keep working hard," he said.

"No one wants to have a run of defeats. Before that we had a run of wins and ultimately everyone still believes strongly it will balance out across the season and if we deserve to be in the top eight at the end of the season we’ll certainly be there.

"We’ve had some close encounters against some good teams.

"The Bordeaux performance [41-5 loss] was really disappointing. The other games we’ve had in this last block have been disappointing in terms of the end product, and there’s certainly been bits of the game where we could have done better and that’s the growth areas for us