ANTHONY FOLEY BELIEVES there have been enough positives in Munster’s season for them to look forward to 2015/16 with confidence.
The southern province’s head coach has come under flak at various points during this campaign, including after early-season defeats to Edinburgh and the Ospreys in Thomond Park and following the disappointment of the Champions Cup campaign.
Saturday’s defeat to an excellent Glasgow Warriors side coached by Gregor Townsend has also been met with downheartedness. Indeed, Foley might even despairingly wonder if Munster would have been better off not qualifying for the final at all such is the negative reaction.
To come within one win of achieving league success in his first season in charge is no mean feat, however, with this season’s second-placed finish in the table an improvement on third and sixth in the two campaigns prior to this one.
Foley is of the mind that there will be negative reaction from some places no matter what his side do, and therefore welcomes their mental strength.
We are a resilient bunch,” said Foley after Saturday’s Pro12 final. “There’s always people out there that look at the dark side of things, and not see the light. At the moment we see a lot of light around the squad.
“We think there’s a good future with a lot of these players and hopefully we can see that at the start of next season and build into the season.”
It may well have been a different story at Kingspan Stadium had Munster had Ireland international flanker Tommy O’Donnell, captain Peter O’Mahony and game plan leader Conor Murray fit and firing.
That was not to be, however, but Foley sees the positives amongst the gloom.
“You have to play well along the year to get here,” said the former number eight. “We got there and we made sure that we were in a position to possibly win some silverware. Unfortunately we came up against a side that showed the ambition they had to throw the ball around and the passes were sticking.
“For our group, we had 17 players missing from today’s squad, some of them would have played, so we had a fair chunk of players we would have loved to call upon. We have a very good squad going forward and hopefully we can try and build on this and come back next year.”
Foley gave his praise to Townsend’s “well-coached” Glasgow side and pointed out that they face their “acid test” in Europe next season as they look to build on this first league triumph.
As for his own team, Foley looked back with regret on the fact that they had not managed to do more of what brought them back into the final just after half time, namely provide a good kick chase, use the maul and then target Glasgow at the scrum.
“We didn’t control the kick side of the game, we allowed them easy possessions in our own half,” said Foley.
“We got turned over far too many times at the breakdown and we didn’t control our feet around the ball carry. With all that, it lead to them getting far more possession in our own half. We tried to play from too deep in the second half.
“It’s hard to take, but a lot of us have been through this situation before. It’s about understanding it and making sure we keep going forward. We’ve a relatively young side and obviously we’ll have a few changes for next year.
“Hopefully we can get back into this situation again, but with the way the league is run this year and the way it’s run next year, it’s hard enough to get into the top four never mind winning it. It’s about maintaining what we’re doing and building on it.”
