MUNSTER LEGEND ALAN Quinlan pulled a few punches, but not many, in his assessments of Munster’s woeful 27 – 7 defeat to 14-man Stade Francais today.
The double Heineken Cup-winning blindside appeared to have made a conscious effort to compose himself before speaking post-match on Sky Sports, so the delivery was calm even if the words were damning.
“It’s embarrassing,” said the Tipperary man, “I think this whole organisation needs to be dissected now and they need to look at the structure from the top to the bottom – including everyone – to figure out what’s gone wrong.”
With words being carefully chosen, he added: ”no spirit, no heart, no passion. Borderline disgraceful.”
“I’m not privy to the goals or what the team or the organisation want, because I’m out of the organisation.
“Everybody’s trying hard and there’s a lot of good guys, CJ Stander is as honest as they come, but when you fall off tackles and walk around the field it frustrates people.
This has been going on a while now. They’re on the back of a win last week, we gave them the credit. They came out this week and couldn’t back it up.
“They were really, really poor. They were being bullied around the field, knock-ons, turnovers, no attack whatsoever…
“If it’s a business you have to look at all the structure from top to bottom: coaches, chief executive, players – that’s what you do.”
Bearing the scars of battle, captain Stander wasn’t much more upbeat when he manned up for the Sky Sports cameras. The Irish-qualified South African lamented that his side did not fulfill their half-time promise of raising the tempo to expose the one-man advantage thanks to Josaia Raisuqe’s red card for eye-gouging Stander.
However, his main complaint was another European season lost because of errors, concentration and, in Stander’s mind, commitment.
“I can’t say we have to learn,” said the number eight, “because it’s the same stuff as last year — we’re not playing for 80 minutes, not putting bodies on the line.”