WHILE IT IS all well and good to be told a team is setting the world on fire in training, it is only when fans see a few flames on the pitch on matchday that they start to believe.
Saturday brought a spark. It wasn’t just the 31-17 win, although the result was welcome; it was the nature of the performance, a have—a-go attitude that has often been missing on their bigger days.
Joey Carbery was good, so too Tadgh Beirne, a reminder that Munster really click when their best players are on the field rather than in the treatment room.
In that respect, it was worth noting that they started the game without Simon Zebo, Andrew Conway and Keith Earls, and ended it without Calvin Nash, who went off injured. Will any one of this quartet be available this weekend against Leinster?
“I have a sit down with the medics at 10.30 every Monday morning which I’m always anxious about because I know how good the week is going to be by their faces walking into the office,” said Graham Rowntree, the Munster head coach. “We’ll see. There’s a lot of things in the mix. They’re not ruled out by any means.”
One thing pencilled in is a retention of their new attacking plan, one that failed to click in their opening four games of the season but which worked impressively on Saturday, Carbery the game’s dominant figure.
“There’s elements of it (our attack) coming through, what Mike [Prendergast] has been doing. He’s been doing some fantastic work, but more importantly I enjoyed our goal line defence at the end. Being a forwards’ coach, I thought the way we kept them out was admirable.
“The Bulls are very good, they have a meticulous amount of tap-penalties, little clever tap-penalty moves near to the opposition goal line, and we stopped them. That element pleased me.”
And yet other aspects of the win did not. For starters there were two tries for the Bulls that stemmed from a lack of concentration and poor positional play.
“We weren’t perfect, so there is improvement required,” said Rowntree. “We will have to be even more clinical around some of our lineout possession. I’m confident we can put pressure on any team if we can keep the ball when we are in their 22. Factually, we are very good with limited minutes, we can score tries. That has been a big focus. But we have to be better, we know that.”
Helping them improve are the Emerging Ireland guys who returned from South Africa, where they were on a three-game tour, to sneak into Munster’s match-day squad for Saturday’s Bulls game. They were needed.
“Jack Crowley, off the bench, was very good,” said Rowntree. “Thomas Ahern, rampaging in the wide channels; Diarmuid Barron, carrying well close to the ruck. There’s some big headaches and those guys have been good coming in.
“They only trained from Thursday onwards, the Emerging Ireland guys and they loved that tour and they came in energised and they brought a different energy to the group. So, selection is going to be hard but that’s how we want it.”
