O’Connell who is recently back from in injury lay-off has been made captain by coach Rob Penney after Doug Howlett failed to recover in time from a shoulder injury.

O'Connell said: “I was delighted to be back playing against Connacht - that faded away last week after the Glasgow game about how poor we were, it’s brought us back down to earth.”

“The happiness about being back playing now is gone and I’m back into working hard now and I’ve put the injury behind me and I’m just trying to focus on making sure we put together an 80 minute performance which we haven’t done in the last few weeks.”

Some claim that the only way Munster are going to be able to beat Conor O’Shea’s side is to re-kindle the same type of passion shown in the ‘Miracle Match’ back in 2003 when Munster, led by Mick Galwey, did exactly what was required against Gloucester in Thomond Park, scoring four tries and beating them by 27 points to progress.

The Munster captain said: “We have done a lot of work on Harlequins and we know how good they are so it’s a big mountain to climb.”

“They have some really key players; Nick Easter, Danny Evans and Nick Evans and Mike Brown would be the four players that come to mind straight away in terms of attack.”

“They offload very well and they can play an expansive game and Nick Evans is an excellent kicker so its easy to see why they have been so successful.”