LATE ON SATURDAY night a bunch of Munster fans stared miserably at their chips in a quiet service station off the M7. Munster’s anthem, ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries, played at a low volume over the speakers, as if the song itself knew now was not the time or place.
Those Munster supporters have no doubt had many debriefs along the road back from Thomond Park over the years. There wasn’t much talking happening on this occasion, but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were thinking. Where do we go from here?
A two-point defeat to Castres which sent Munster out of the Champions Cup delivered one of the most devasting blows the province has experienced on the pitch for some time. Losing that Champions Cup status is a bruising demotion for a team of Munster’s status. But what really hurt was just how familiar it all felt as Clayton McMillan spoke of the ‘worrying trends” which hurt his team. Everything that went wrong against the French side across a thrilling contest in Limerick had been identified as an issue in recent weeks.
McMillan and his staff will view the moments where Munster switched off as totally inexcusable. They will look at some tame one-on-one tackle efforts in defence and question why the execution didn’t match the levels of Toulon the previous weekend. They will be satisfied with some excellent attacking play, but rue moments where passes didn’t stick and balls were spilled in contact. A lineout return of 76% was improved from 63% in Toulon, but included some costly losses. So too was the penalty count of 9 – down from 14 in Toulon – but for the second week running Munster conceded 14 points without reply while they had a man in the bin (making it four yellow cards across their three pool defeats).
Jack Crowley was busy as Munster’s top ball-carrier but won’t have slept well after converting just two from five off the tee, yet this was a team failure in which the shortcomings were wide and varied. Some were evident away to Bath and Toulon, but winning your home games is a must in this competition.
And even Thomond Park isn’t the weapon of old. In the lead-up to this game defence coach Denis Leamy admitted the ground has lost some of the edge it held in his own playing days. This was Castres’ first win in Limerick, having failed in eight previous attempts.
Castres won in Limerick for the first time. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
When the dust settles Munster will line up a shot at silverware in the Challenge Cup, with the province heading to Exeter in the round of 16 on the first weekend in April. They may even go on to win EPCR’s secondary competition, but whatever happens, McMillan will be fully aware there is a serious body of work to be undertaken before Munster become the team he wants them to be.
Post-game, the Munster boss insisted this setback hadn’t changed his thoughts about the scale of the task he took on last summer. Yet perhaps the floor he spoke of raising was lower than he initially realised.
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“I’m well aware of the expectation of the club and where our aspiration lies,” he said.
“We’ve had good moments and not so good moments and this was one of those ones we have to accept and live through and learn from and get better.”
It all felt so very far removed from October’s win over Leinster in Croke Park, a night where Munster were ferocious without the ball and clinical with it.
“I don’t know if we’ve gone backwards but other teams have certainly got better, and our challenge is to continually get better,” McMillan added.
“There’s elements of our game that have progressed, our scrum is in a much better place than it was a couple of months ago and that’s a real positive.”
The most simple explanation might just be that this squad isn’t as strong as it was even a couple of seasons ago. While young players like Edwin Edogbo and Brian Gleeson are highly promising and the likes of Tom Farrell and Dan Kelly have been smart transfers, the overall strength and depth of the group has slipped. It’s worth reminding that last summer Munster saw veterans Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray, Dave Kilcoyne and Stephen Archer walk out the door. Joey Carbery, Simon Zebo and Antoine Frisch moved on 12 months beforehand, months after Keith Earls had called time on his career. That’s an awful lot of leaders leaving the dressing room.
There will be further rotation at the end of this season, with Jean Kleyn’s move to Gloucester opening up a valuable NIQ slot, but Munster need to be smart with their recruitment if they are to get back among Europe’s best.
Jack Crowley had a poor night off the tee. Dan Sheridan / INPHO
Dan Sheridan / INPHO / INPHO
None of this is new information, but Saturday felt like a harsh realisation as over 20,000 supporters witnessed those issues lead to a devasting January blow. In truth, this inquisition may have arrived sooner. Last season Munster only secured Champions Cup rugby by beating Benetton in the final round of regular URC games. Maybe this is the jolt Munster needed.
Trying to make sense of it all, captain Tadhg Beirne said the province’s exit highlighted the strength of the Champions Cup.
“It’s an incredibly difficult competition. Our group in particular, you can see that. We’ve lost two games now by one score in the last two weeks. It’s really nip and tuck, and we’re out of the competition, just like that.
“It’s incredibly disappointing, but it just shows how important it is to get your wins in this competition, particularly your home ones, and we weren’t able to do that. It’s incredibly disappointing, but the competition is still alive and well, for sure.
“It doesn’t sit well with me at all,” he added. “That dressing room, you could certainly feel it in there. It’s important we have to dust ourselves off.
We’ll have to look at this. We don’t want to be in this situation ever again.
“If we make the Champions Cup next year, we’ll definitely refer to this when we’re in our group stage next year. For now, our focus will move on to the Dragons and the URC. That’s our opportunity right now towards silverware.”
It will be a painful review at Munster’s HPC this morning, and for the coaching staff the challenge is to lift the group for Friday’s URC meeting with Dragons in Cork. It’s not the most glamorous fixture on the calendar, but on the back of four straight defeats across both competitions Munster need to get back to winning ways.
“It’s a bit of a cliché, but when you’re winning it becomes a bit of a habit and when you lose it can also become a bit of a habit,” McMillan said.
“What we know is that we’ve played some quality teams over the last four or five weeks and while we haven’t played our best rugby, we haven’t been that far away in most of those games either.
“So it’s certainly not throw everything out the kitchen window and start again. We’ve got a lot of confidence in the people in the room. We just have to learn the lessons and learn them fast because the same ones keep hurting us.”
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Longstanding concerns snowball into a Champions Cup disaster for Munster
LATE ON SATURDAY night a bunch of Munster fans stared miserably at their chips in a quiet service station off the M7. Munster’s anthem, ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries, played at a low volume over the speakers, as if the song itself knew now was not the time or place.
Those Munster supporters have no doubt had many debriefs along the road back from Thomond Park over the years. There wasn’t much talking happening on this occasion, but it wasn’t hard to guess what they were thinking. Where do we go from here?
A two-point defeat to Castres which sent Munster out of the Champions Cup delivered one of the most devasting blows the province has experienced on the pitch for some time. Losing that Champions Cup status is a bruising demotion for a team of Munster’s status. But what really hurt was just how familiar it all felt as Clayton McMillan spoke of the ‘worrying trends” which hurt his team. Everything that went wrong against the French side across a thrilling contest in Limerick had been identified as an issue in recent weeks.
McMillan and his staff will view the moments where Munster switched off as totally inexcusable. They will look at some tame one-on-one tackle efforts in defence and question why the execution didn’t match the levels of Toulon the previous weekend. They will be satisfied with some excellent attacking play, but rue moments where passes didn’t stick and balls were spilled in contact. A lineout return of 76% was improved from 63% in Toulon, but included some costly losses. So too was the penalty count of 9 – down from 14 in Toulon – but for the second week running Munster conceded 14 points without reply while they had a man in the bin (making it four yellow cards across their three pool defeats).
Jack Crowley was busy as Munster’s top ball-carrier but won’t have slept well after converting just two from five off the tee, yet this was a team failure in which the shortcomings were wide and varied. Some were evident away to Bath and Toulon, but winning your home games is a must in this competition.
And even Thomond Park isn’t the weapon of old. In the lead-up to this game defence coach Denis Leamy admitted the ground has lost some of the edge it held in his own playing days. This was Castres’ first win in Limerick, having failed in eight previous attempts.
When the dust settles Munster will line up a shot at silverware in the Challenge Cup, with the province heading to Exeter in the round of 16 on the first weekend in April. They may even go on to win EPCR’s secondary competition, but whatever happens, McMillan will be fully aware there is a serious body of work to be undertaken before Munster become the team he wants them to be.
Post-game, the Munster boss insisted this setback hadn’t changed his thoughts about the scale of the task he took on last summer. Yet perhaps the floor he spoke of raising was lower than he initially realised.
“I’m well aware of the expectation of the club and where our aspiration lies,” he said.
“We’ve had good moments and not so good moments and this was one of those ones we have to accept and live through and learn from and get better.”
It all felt so very far removed from October’s win over Leinster in Croke Park, a night where Munster were ferocious without the ball and clinical with it.
“I don’t know if we’ve gone backwards but other teams have certainly got better, and our challenge is to continually get better,” McMillan added.
“There’s elements of our game that have progressed, our scrum is in a much better place than it was a couple of months ago and that’s a real positive.”
The most simple explanation might just be that this squad isn’t as strong as it was even a couple of seasons ago. While young players like Edwin Edogbo and Brian Gleeson are highly promising and the likes of Tom Farrell and Dan Kelly have been smart transfers, the overall strength and depth of the group has slipped. It’s worth reminding that last summer Munster saw veterans Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray, Dave Kilcoyne and Stephen Archer walk out the door. Joey Carbery, Simon Zebo and Antoine Frisch moved on 12 months beforehand, months after Keith Earls had called time on his career. That’s an awful lot of leaders leaving the dressing room.
There will be further rotation at the end of this season, with Jean Kleyn’s move to Gloucester opening up a valuable NIQ slot, but Munster need to be smart with their recruitment if they are to get back among Europe’s best.
None of this is new information, but Saturday felt like a harsh realisation as over 20,000 supporters witnessed those issues lead to a devasting January blow. In truth, this inquisition may have arrived sooner. Last season Munster only secured Champions Cup rugby by beating Benetton in the final round of regular URC games. Maybe this is the jolt Munster needed.
Trying to make sense of it all, captain Tadhg Beirne said the province’s exit highlighted the strength of the Champions Cup.
“It’s an incredibly difficult competition. Our group in particular, you can see that. We’ve lost two games now by one score in the last two weeks. It’s really nip and tuck, and we’re out of the competition, just like that.
“It’s incredibly disappointing, but it just shows how important it is to get your wins in this competition, particularly your home ones, and we weren’t able to do that. It’s incredibly disappointing, but the competition is still alive and well, for sure.
“It doesn’t sit well with me at all,” he added. “That dressing room, you could certainly feel it in there. It’s important we have to dust ourselves off.
“If we make the Champions Cup next year, we’ll definitely refer to this when we’re in our group stage next year. For now, our focus will move on to the Dragons and the URC. That’s our opportunity right now towards silverware.”
It will be a painful review at Munster’s HPC this morning, and for the coaching staff the challenge is to lift the group for Friday’s URC meeting with Dragons in Cork. It’s not the most glamorous fixture on the calendar, but on the back of four straight defeats across both competitions Munster need to get back to winning ways.
“It’s a bit of a cliché, but when you’re winning it becomes a bit of a habit and when you lose it can also become a bit of a habit,” McMillan said.
“What we know is that we’ve played some quality teams over the last four or five weeks and while we haven’t played our best rugby, we haven’t been that far away in most of those games either.
“So it’s certainly not throw everything out the kitchen window and start again. We’ve got a lot of confidence in the people in the room. We just have to learn the lessons and learn them fast because the same ones keep hurting us.”
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Champions Cup Clayton McMillan Munster Reality check Rugby