SLOWLY BUT SURELY, Munster appear to be moving in the right direction. After a concerning start to the season under Graham Rowntree and his new coaching team, there have been encouraging signs of progress across the wins against South Africa A, Connacht and Edinburgh, while there were also positives to take from Sunday’s Champions Cup defeat to Toulouse.
While the province struggled to deal with Toulouse’s impressive power game, they enjoyed some nice moments in attack as Mike Prendergast’s gameplan begins to take shape.
Naturally, it can take time for new ideas to sink in, and with each passing week Munster are beginning to look more comfortable and ambitious with ball in hand.
Mike Haley was one of Munster’s most lively attacking threats against the French side, running some nice lines from deep and breaking forward with real intent, his 14 carries the highest tally across both sides.
“I love running with the ball,” Haley explains.
“For me to run with the ball, I need to space in front of me and if I don’t see space then I need to be thinking of the best option for me at that time, whenever I’m catching the ball or the area of the field that I’m in and I make my decision based on that.
“But yeah, you’re playing against Toulouse, one of the best teams in Europe and I love playing in those games. So when I get my hands on the ball I just want to do as much as I can to help try and set up a try for my team.”
It helps that he’s now had the time to get more familiar with what attack coach Prendergast is asking from him.
I think it’s just work off the ball. Maybe to the average viewer it is unseen, but it’s getting off your wing, working the extra 50 metres to end of a pass and to be square on to it or to stay and hold the edge, give a kick option to the first receiver.
“There’s so many variations to it but it’s trying to blend it all into one so that when it comes to games on the weekend that’s where it actually flows a little bit easier.
“That’s from the hard work that has been done from July onwards. Obviously it wasn’t the best start to the URC for us, it took a bit of time just to get used to it and for everyone to be comfortable in that shape.
“I think from the South Africa game, everyone has just seemed to have come together a little bit more.
“Obviously there’s going to be moments in games when it doesn’t go as we want but no, it’s just a good way to play the game. You just have to get your head round it, and the work you need to do to do it.”
Haley looks back on those early sessions with Prendergast in the summer, and explains how the former Racing coach has since been able to begin adding more detail on the training pitch as Munster look to implement a new-look, more effective attacking system.
“You see it like you are building different blocks and it starts with the foundations. But nothing crazily changed. It wasn’t like discovering a new world. It was more just a little variation on how we were running things and how he wanted us to run things differently, and then maybe a different mindset on different areas of the pitch, and how we can approach attacking the game.
“It was just this was how we were going to run things now, and we needed to start doing this at every single training session, every single rep and it takes time. You have got to almost un-train yourself out of a certain way of playing the game to how we’re playing now.”
This weekend sees Munster head to Northampton for a round two Champions Cup clash at Franklin’s Gardens. It’s a ground Haley knows well from his days playing Premiership rugby with Sale.
“Even back then it was a great pitch, always a really nice surface,” he explains.
“And they have really good support. They have really engaging support that get behind their team and in Europe you love to go to places like that, almost that cauldron environment when you go in there and you know you’re going to have to play your best rugby, otherwise you’re going to be on the back foot.
“You want supporters who are going to be engaged and singing, and that’s what they give to their team so it’s a really exciting prospect.”
With both teams losing last weekend – Munster beaten by Toulouse while Northampton shipped 46 points at La Rochelle – the pressure is on to get a first win of the campaign.
“I think the nature of this tournament now it’s almost – I don’t want to say knock-out rugby immediately – but you have to win all your games, you have to put yourself in the best spots’ possible. I know there’s eight teams that go through from each pool but yeah, we need to go away to Northampton and win, and to be honest, Munster in Europe there’s no other expectation than to go over and win a game in Europe so yeah, that’s just par I suppose.”
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