Sean Farrell reports from the Aviva Stadium
DEFEATS TO LEINSTER will always hurt.
Yet the experimental look to the Munster team who came within a score of the hosts at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday should provide quite a few strands of optimism for Rassie Erasmus to tease out this week before Sunday’s Champions Cup clash with Castres.
Erasmus sent a starting line-up to Dublin with one second row, a brand new back-line containing three out-halves and fell foul of the uncertain referee Ben Whitehouse until yet still made Leinster work until the final minute to hold on to the win.
“I’ve never played against a team who only conceded one penalty (across the first 60 minutes). So they obviously did things right in the eyes of the referee,” the South African director of rugby said good-naturedly post-match.
“You know when you concede (10) penalties and five of them are kickable, if you fix that you’ll know what to fix outside that. If you don’t fix that it’s impossible to know if the game would have flowed differently if we didn’t concede all those penalties that put the pressure on us.”
“Maybe communication to the referee (needs to improve), maybe the breakdown… I don’t think we were that bad, I really just thought it was discipline to be honest with you.”
There will be some on-paper improvements when the southern province take the field in Castres on Sunday. Simon Zebo has missed out in recent weeks because of a mild infection on the skin around his knee. He’s been taking part in training, but apparently not the three days which Erasmus requires as a minimum. That is likely to change this week. The lock crisis should ease too with Jean Kleyn expected to slot back into the row and the Munster boss made it clear that Rory Scannell remains his first choice at inside centre.
However, from both a coach’s and player perspective: discipline and painting those pretty pictures for the ref in France will be the first priority.
“Discipline is a big thing for me,” says Peter O’Mahony, his face more relaxed than the one that looked ready to tear Reggie Corrigan’s head off on live TV.
“I gave away certainly one, if not two. You can’t be driving it if you’re not doing it yourself.
“Look, we’ve got to have a look at ourselves discipline-wise. That’s something that’s easily fixed, that’s the good thing about it.”
He added: ”I think if we were a little bit more disciplined… we’re obviously trying new things, but a bounce of the ball here and there - there’s never much between us.
“As I said, if you’re going to be well into the teens in the penalty count (10 was Munster’s final tally), you’re never going to give yourself a chance against a team of that caliber. They’re one of the best teams in Europe. You’ve got to be squeaky clean and we weren’t today.”
I think a huge amount of the penalties were on us, absolutely. At some stage, you’ve got to stop the rot when you’re four, five, six penalties… that has to be on us.”
“It does make it easy. Certainly there’s a stand-out thing we have to go and sort. We’ve got to go to France for a win and we’ve got to give ourselves a chance to win a game and certainly discipline is a starting point, giving away as little penalties as possible.
“So there’s a glaring aspect there that we’ve got to sort quickly.”
Penalty count aside, O’Mahony and Erasmus also find themselves on common ground in assessing how Munster have improved and developed from the side who forced their way into a European semi-final and Pro12 final – but no further – last season.
Discipline is an essential for any winning team and Munster’s solid fundamentals have been the bedrock of Erasmus’ time in charge. So if they can restore those foundations under the new innovations then they will pose any side problems.
“I feel last year we really struggled to score tries,” Erasmus smiles while casting an eye back at how far his side have come,,”this year we’ve been really doing well with ball in hand.
Last year from (losing to Leinster) we went on and made the semi-final, so we’re pretty much in the same boat… we scored tries to still be second in our (Pro14) conference, there are many positives and Simon will be available, so yeah we’re not sitting too bad.”
“Tries win games and tournaments, but actually our kicking game was terrible today. Our attack kept us in the game and we managed to get over the try-line three times (including Earls’ disallowed first-half effort).
“In that regard I know we can always go back to a kicking game and set piece because that’s always been our stronghold, but it’s nice to have some attacking intent as well.”
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