Initially placed him with UCC, where he enjoyed a highly promising first year in Division Two of the AIB League, Manning then progressed to the senior Munster ranks, where he's been in and about the fringes of the squad ever since.

The out-half has struggled a little for form this season, and while he's likely to snap out of this spell sooner rather than later, it has emerged that Munster need not have reached so far to find a suitable shadow for O'Gara.

At exactly the same time that they were doing a deal for Manning, a 17-year-old Shane Geraghty was leaving school in Bristol and would have been as open to Munster's offer as he was to the RFU academy contract that he eventually signed.

Not only would Munster have got their mitts on an out-half with arguably more potential, Geraghty would have been Irish qualified immediately and his move from across the water would have been a lot less unsettling than Manning's switch. It just goes to prove that the obvious answer can sometimes be right under your nose, not on the other side of the world.