MUNSTER DEFENCE COACH Denis Leamy is relishing the chance to watch his side run it back with Glasgow in Saturday’s URC quarter-final, just six weeks after the red-hot Scots inflicted upon Munster one of their lowest points of a promising season.
At Thomond Park in March, Franco Smith’s Warriors led Munster 31-0 at Thomond Park after just 44 minutes, eventually running out 38-26 victors and consolidating their position in the URC’s top four at the southern province’s expense.
Munster exited the Champions Cup at the hands of the Sharks thereafter but have since rebounded with a terrific tour of South Africa in which they became the first northern hemisphere team to beat the Stormers at home and then secured their Champions Cup spot for next season by fighting back to draw with the Sharks in the final regular-season round.
Graham Rowntree’s side have been boosted this week by the return of Ireland international lock Tadhg Beirne, who has resumed full training along with prop Roman Salanoa and hookers Niall Scannell and Chris Moore.
Leamy confirmed that Beirne is in contention to feature against Glasgow on Saturday, and that Munster may even explore the idea of utilising him at blindside considering their sudden upturn of health in the second row, where RG Snyman, Edwin Edogbo and Thomas Ahern have all recently returned to fitness.
“The way he communicates with the young players and how he drives standards in the group, it is great to have Tadhg back,” Leamy said of Beirne.
“We’ll consider all options. It’s a really good place to be now, to have these players back, really strong players coming back into the mix. It is a little bit of a headache in one way but it is a great headache because we have loads of quality. You think of Alex Kendellen, John Hodnett, Jack O’Donoghue, Peter O’Mahony, Gavin Coombes; all these players contesting against each other. And you go to the second row: RG, Jean Kleyn, Edwin Edogbo, Tom Ahern… It makes for a really competitive squad and that’s all we want. It’s great to have those selection headaches.”
The stakes are far higher than mere revenge as Munster renew their now-traditional hostilities with Glasgow on Saturday, though it remains a convenient lens through which to view the sides’ URC last-eight contest.
From Munster’s perspective, though, it’s not so much about avenging a defeat to Glasgow as it is setting the record straight among themselves that they can handle the heat when the Warriors inevitably crank it up this weekend.
“I don’t think we’ll look at it in terms of ‘we owe them a performance”, Leamy said of Saturday’s re-run, while reflecting upon March’s deflating defeat to the same opposition.
“Certainly on the night, we were very disappointed with the way that we played, the way we turned up.
We probably owe ourselves a performance more so than Glasgow. That night didn’t reflect what we would be about in terms of the standards we would set.
“We were off all over the pitch,” Leamy continued. “That culminates in a scoreline that we had to suffer, or endure.
“We just didn’t play well. We were under pressure at the scrum, we were under pressure up front. We lacked the calmness in attack that we would like to have, we were sloppy and turned over the ball. Then, some of our stuff in defence, as a defence coach, they’re not the sort of pictures that we want to see.
We had some really poor bits around the contact and we were outfought. Glasgow on the night just looked far hungrier than us, unfortunately. It’s not something that you want to say about Munster teams but on the night, we just weren’t where we wanted to be.
“The boys are conscious of that, they know that. We don’t have to go into a dressing room or into a team meeting; they feel that, understand that they were off.”
Leamy maintains that Challenge Cup finalists Glasgow are better even than their fourth-placed URC seeding, pointing towards the fact that they’ve lost just once in all competitions since late November.
He waxes lyrical about their ability to stress Scarlets at the edges during Saturday’s 35-17 Challenge Cup semi-final in Wales, pinpointing the Warriors’ collective footwork as being good enough to stress anybody.
He both looks and sounds equally enthused, however, by the daunting challenge of putting a stop to the likes of Jack Dempsey, Sione Tuipulotu and “these sort of players” when Munster seek an upset on the road this weekend.
“How we control the contact area will be very important, how we can slow down their ball, how we can slow down their reset,” Leamy explained. “That’s a key thing, and something we’ll definitely put a focus on.
“It’s a great challenge, isn’t it? These are the places you want to go in your career. You want to go into tough environments, you want to be challenged. We wouldn’t want it any other way.
We’re trying to grow something here, we have a lot of young players, and are trying to grow our own brand the way we play, the way we want to put ourselves out there… and going to places like Glasgow is a great test. You have to embrace it.
“Over the last few months, we’ve got better and better. Yes we’ve hot poor performances, but we’ve responded quite well. This is another great challenge and it’ll be a good indication of where we are going forward, and where we need to go and where we need to get better.”
