MUNSTER’S WIN in Glasgow was not flashy but it has injected another dose of confidence into the side as they gear up to tackle Leinster at the Avila Stadium on Saturday in the United Rugby Championship semi-final.
It was not just they were the first team since January 2022 to win at the Scottish fortress at Scotstoun, but Graham Rowntree, the head coach, feels there he has a definite shift in the defence and that is a foundation he can build on.
“I’m seeing what we’re doing in training coming out on the pitch,” he explained. “Leams (Denis Leamy, who is in charge of defence) is going to be an incredible coach. Our men, they all follow him. They’d jump off a cliff after Denis Leamy.
“He found some chinks in our armour, defensively, and he fixed them. I’m seeing that on the pitch and we’ve got to keep driving that.
The test will be whether that is enough to defeat their Irish rivals in the same way as they undercut the Scots. “We’ve got some momentum,” he added. “We’ve got some momentum given what we did in South Africa (winning 26-24 away at the Stormers and then drawing 22-22 at the Sharks)
“We just keep growing our game, looking at ourselves, keep getting better. We’ll see what Saturday brings. ‘We’ve got to be better with what we’re doing. Decision-making — we’ve got to be better. You come to Glasgow, win a game of that magnitude and still be frustrated with a lot of what we’re doing — that says a lot about where I think we can get to.”
“Everyone knows the calibre of Leinster, you saw the team they put out against the Sharks — the (nine) changes they made and look at that result (a 35-5 win). We know the challenge, but we’ll do what we can control, get up there and go for it.
“Our ruck can still be better, our decision-making can still be better, our handling can still be better — all stuff under pressure. We train a lot quicker than we did before, that’s testing skills under pressure, so we keep driving that and driving our standards.
“We’ve got to keep getting better, driving the stuff that’s under our control — as boring and old-school as that sounds.”
Rowntree is bound to hope to get more out of his attack but the fact is that Glasgow dominated possession and territory. They spent long periods camped on the Munster line but the men in red neutered the opposition maul, one of their most effective weapons all season, and won the breakdown battle.
“We talk about physical statements, both sides of the ball,” Rowntree added. “They (Glasgow) kept going to the maul. I was saying ‘take the points will ya’. They kept going to the corner and we kept repelling them.”
The big blot on the horizon is what sort of team he will be able to pick. There were four payers taken off with head knocks plus Peter O’Mahony who seemed to injure his arm and all will inevitably be doubts for next week, though Rowntree insisted it was still too early to know how bad any were.