INTENSITY WOULDN’T HAVE been the first word that come to mind when watching Munster warm into their week with a chaotic 15 or 20-aside football match.
Yet whatever the rights and wrongs of Reggie Corrigan’s line of questioning underneath the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, it will serve the very useful purpose of iron-cladding the province’s determination at the beginning of their European campaign.
Corrigan, in case you were immune from internet virals all weekend, asked Peter O’Mahony if his charges had hit sufficient intensity levels in the inter-pro loss to Leinster.
O’Mahony’s displeasure at the former Leinster stalwart was instantly visible, he fired back a question of his own, a few ‘hundred per cents’ and the rest is TG4 history.
With no match to prove themselves in until Sunday, Munster were able to take Monday as an extra rest day, but yesterday morning it was back to work and, rest assured, intensity won’t be a problem next weekend either.
“That’s what we stand for, that’s our work-rate,” says CJ Stander. Putting everything in is a bear minimum for these players.
“We pride ourselves on our work-rate and knowledge of the game and what we want to do. You could look at the GPS and that (game) has been up there with most of the intensive games we’ve had, one of the toughest games we’ve played in… so if someone saw it differently then…”
At that point Stander lets out an exasperated breath and his arms give the universal sign for ‘what can you do’. He wants people to watch the game and trust their own opinion on the matter.
“I really don’t think it was a matter of intensity it was a matter of indiscipline,” is the view of Rassie Erasmus before he too refers to the GPS figures that reflected a hard fought game.
The former Springbok says the whole Corrigan-O’Mahony affair is ‘not a big deal’ and brings an end to the subject in favour of discussions about the European week ahead. Besides, Erasmus was pretty pleased that the experimental back-line he sent to the Aviva Stadium didn’t go the way of Northampton Saints.
“They smash most teams there so for us to go there, we experimented with a few things there, we lost by six points, conceded 11 penalties…”
That’s how Munster are channeling their energy this week, working hard on fixing their discipline accuracy at breakdown and set-piece. Intensity is a given. Always
“That’s part of Munster,” adds Stander, “when you arrive here it’s the first thing you hear: ‘we work for the jersey here, and we work hard for it’. We pride ourselves on the work-rate on and off the pitch. Even in the gym and all the small stuff, we make sure we’re ready and going into the weekend we work hard on everything we want to do.”
We work close together, for the whole year, every day we’re in each other’s faces, you know. So if we can’t stand up for eachother, who’s going to stand up for us? Pete did exactly that. There’s different ways to interpret the interview and different ways to go at it, but he stood up and, what we thought was right in the moment, he did it. We all back him.
“The boys are working hard I promise you that. They’ll work for that badge until the jersey’s ripped off them.
“Because you know if they don’t work hard for the team then someone else is going to step in. And that’s not what we want.”
