THERE WAS AN odd scenario following Munster’s victory over Perpignan last weekend, when Marc Delpoux arrived into the media room for his post-match chat.
The Catalan side’s head coach was asked a question in French and went on a six-minute spiel about his anger at the performance of the RFU’s Greg Garner. Delpoux touched on little else, with his monologue dominated by the word arbitre, which is French for ‘referee’.
A penalty count of 14 against his side was in stark contrast to Munster’s five, and Delpoux was of the belief that those figures were not reflective of a lack of Perpignan discipline. He also highlighted the disallowed Sofiane Guitoune as evidence of a home-town bias on Garner’s part.
It’s the oldest tactic in the book; blame the match officials in order to deflect attention away from one’s own deficiencies. However, Perpignan have taken it one step further, with president François Rivière sending an official letter of complaint to the ERC over the “injustice” against his club.
Munster coach Rob Penney isn’t buying the victim act for a second.
They’re alluding to a few things apparently around the refereeing and so forth. I think they’re throwing some distractions into the mix and trying to take away from the disappointment of the outcome. To that end, they’ll be trying to ambush us.”
The Kiwi, like everybody else, believes that the Perpignan we see this weekend will be a different team to the one that failed in Limerick. In the same press conference that Delpoux used to vent his frustrations, Penney had highlighted the need for Munster to improve their set-piece and ball retention for the return fixture.
Several days on, his focus hasn’t changed.
“We probably reflected pretty accurately post-game in the media session, around our accuracy of ball control. If we get that up, we’re going to be better. We’ve had a hard look at some of our defensive frailties and if we get that more efficient, we’ll be better.
“If we get some of our set-piece operating a bit more efficiently, we’re going to have ball in vital parts of the field. The challenge is to get that step up, because we’re going to need to. There is certainly the ability within the group to go up a step.”
Penney was particularly pleased that his pre-match plan for last weekend had come to pass. It is not always the case in professional rugby that the game plan a coach has decided to use works out on the pitch, but that wasn’t a problem for Munster at Thomond Park.
Our preparation was really good, so we were rapt with the way in which we approached the game from a tactical perspective. The things that we had planned to happen basically happened. We’re going into this game with a pretty positive mindset around our abilities this week as well.”
Meanwhile, Penney offered some insight into the process of signing Robin Copeland. One of the questions that has been troubling this writer’s mind in recent times is whether or not rugby clubs and provinces really scout the players they are planning to recruit.
The Munster coach says that this particular transfer was a combination of longer-term interest and what sounds like a proposition from the player’s agent.
“Sometimes there’s a gift horse that comes along, and the timing was right on a number of fronts. He was someone who had made a big impact amongst our group, particularly management and the wider level based around opportunities that he had had for Cardiff against us.
“Obviously, the performance against Toulon was pretty special, against a French team in the Heineken Cup like that. It had been something that was presented to us and given what we saw in him, it was a nice fit for us.”
Audio courtesy of Limerick’s Live95FM.
