ANTHONY FOLEY GREETED Munster’s qualification for next season’s Champions Cup with relief, crediting his inexperienced squad for overcoming nerves to score five tries in a 31-15 win over the Scarlets on the final day of the Guinness Pro12 regular season.
The bonus-point win secured sixth place for the southern province and Foley said the sense in Munster’s changing room immediately afterward was of pressure having been lifted.
“I think it’s relief,” said the Munster head coach. “You watch the game and there’s a lot of nerves out there, there was a lot of indecision out on the pitch.
“There was a lot of young players with a lot of inexperience with a lot of pressure on their shoulders to make sure we were in the Champions Cup next year.
That was a lot of pressure on those guys and it’s something that as they go through their careers, they’ll learn to cope with better. Hopefully, it will be more on the winning trophies end of it when that pressure is on, rather than making sure you’re in the Champions Cup.”
Foley said he would have preferred Munster to have had a better stranglehold on the possession at Thomond Park, but expressed pleasure at how his men had taken advantage of some loose handling by the Scarlets to score counter-attacking tries through Francis Saili and Ronan O’Mahony.
He underlined the efforts of Saili and Rory Scannell in midfield, while also saying that loosehead prop Dave Kilcoyne had led the side with his actions on the occasion of his 100th Munster cap.
While the campaign has been one of disappointment for Munster, Foley has been encouraged by how younger players like Scannell, Jack O’Donoghue and Johnny Holland have stepped up to deliver.
“It’s a young group,” said Foley. “We haven’t shied away from that and I think a lot of them have turned up for one another and made sure they’re playing at the highest possible level next year.
It’s good quality there, it probably lacks about three or four experienced players but that’s the way when you have BJ [Botha] out, [Mark] Chisholm out, Felix [Jones] out, Denis Hurley out.
“Those would have been the fellas carrying the can for the group I suppose and then you can’t leave out Peter O’Mahony. That’s five of them and it puts heaps of pressure on others and I thought the others coped well.”
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