MUNSTER BOSS CLAYTON McMillan called on his players to continue ignoring the “outside noise” that surrounds the province as he and his team look to secure their place in the URC quarter-finals.

With Munster Rugby currently undertaking a process of voluntary redundancy offers and amid the fallout from the appointment of Roger Randle as the team’s new attack coach, McMillan’s side had an impressive win over Benetton last weekend.

The head coach was proud of his team’s seven-try success in Italy, and hopes to see them back it up by beating Ulster at Thomond Park on Saturday evening.

“It’s difficult to shut out the outside noise, there’s no denying that, but you have to do that,” said McMillan today after confirming just one change to his starting XV for Saturday.

“The thing that we can control is how we prepare and focus on what’s directly in front of us. I know that sounds pretty cliché, but the staff and the coaching group and playing group, I think, have done an exceptional job of doing that.

“I’m really proud of the lads, as always. They’re very good at focusing on what they can control, and that’s performance.

“We certainly saw and understood the importance of going over to Italy and getting a result, and that was a result of the hard work that they put in, and I was proud of them.”

McMillan offered his extensive and unequivocal support for Randle when speaking last week, praising him as an “outstanding human being,” as well as “a family man, an honest man, and one that I trust unequivocally.”

Since then, there have been fresh resignations from Munster’s Commercial Advisory Group, a voluntary group who provide advice to Munster on commercial matters, but McMillan’s position has not changed in the slightest.

“Yeah, I stand by the comments that I said last week, yeah,” he said today.

McMillan was keen to focus on the rugby, with only three more rounds of the regular season to go in the URC.

He was delighted that Munster gave themselves a boost of self-belief against Benetton ahead of this weekend’s Ulster clash.

“A confident team is a tough one to beat, and we’ve certainly taken a lot of confidence out of last week’s performance, and we hope that that stands to us,” said McMillan.

“But the learning really was how we applied ourselves in a big pressure week to be able to deliver that performance.

“It wasn’t perfect, but there were good learnings from that, and a repeat will give us a chance on the weekend. Ulster are a good side. I know there’s probably been a bit made about them bringing down… less than their strongest side.

“We wait to see. End of the day, they’re Ulster. They’ll be wearing a red and white jersey, and when you talk about confidence, they’re a team that’s full of confidence.

“We’ve seen their coach come out and talk about them being the number one ranked team in Ireland, and at the moment we’re the worst team in the world, so there isn’t too much problem for us to get motivated for the game.”