NIALL SCANNELL HOPES Munster have turned a corner after finally showing what they are capable of last weekend.
While the fixture list shows they kicked off their campaign a month ago the truth is we waited until Saturday evening before we saw Munster finally play.
Against Cardiff, Dragons, Zebre and Connacht they were poor but on Saturday they showed grit as well as a bit of flair in their impressive 31-17 win over last year’s URC runners-up, the Bulls. Just as well, as this weekend they travel to Dublin to take on Leinster.
“I wouldn’t say it’s all come together,” said Scannell, “as there’s a lot more in us but we have been training really hard and it has been clicking in training and you know, sometimes when you’re seeing some of the external stuff (criticism) you’re nearly going ‘I’d love to show them what we’re doing in training’ but you can’t, you’ve got to put it out there on a Saturday.
“That’s the game we’re in, we’re professional players and we weren’t putting it out there on a Saturday. We knew that and it was frustrating but it was trying to stay positive and not put too much pressure on that because that inevitably doesn’t help. But we saw parts of it (against the Bulls), which was pleasing and I hope the fans saw part of it.
“And we’ll keep building, there is a lot to work on and we know that and we’ll keep working but it’s not that any one thing clicked. It was great to see that what we have been doing was a bit smoother.”
It needs to be because the URC is a much more difficult competition to win than its predecessor, the Pro14, not just because of the addition of South Africa’s big four, the Bulls, Sharks, Stormers and Lions but also because of the condensed fixture list.
Now operating off an 18-game regular season, Irish provinces play six interpro derbies, four games against South African opposition, with an additional four home and four away matches against the Scots/Welsh/Italian teams.
As Munster have already discovered in Cardiff and Newport, away games are no longer easy day outs in this league. That leaves four games out of 18 where they pretty much know they just have to turn up to win. Under the old Pro14 system – which included the hapless Southern Kings – two/thirds of the games were straightforward.
“The quality of opposition is just so high now and you know it’s brought in the whole league on,” Scannell said. “Players from around the world want to play in the league and teams that traditionally weren’t as competitive, now we’re seeing that they are and it’s certainly not the narrative we’re seeing when we’re previewing teams.
“You can see teams, these guys are really attacking or these guys have a serious defence. I think sometimes the perception is that Munster should be going and beating these teams but there has to be an appreciation that the league standard has lifted across all the competition.
“The Irish derbies, they’re still special in every way. We saw against Connacht last week and we saw Leinster against Connacht at the weekend. They’re hotly contested and we know next weekend will be as well. We’ll be ready for it.
“We haven’t been playing as well as we know we can play and I think you have to go out there and earn it. But when you look at the teamsheets we’ve had over the last few weeks, there’s a lot of good players on our team and we just weren’t playing to the level we should have been and we knew that.”
Certainly the Bulls offered a stern test. But Munster survived a siege in the final 10 minutes to see out a game they controlled for the first 70. “We can’t beat around the bush, they’re a hugely physical team. They’re big men and that’s an area of the game they pride themselves on and it’s an area of the game that we really pride ourselves on, so we knew there would be a bit of warfare in there and to come out on top of the two big exchanges was huge.
“Yeah, you just don’t want to put yourself in that position where they score and all of a sudden now there’s a lot more in the game and more on the line, so it was a good positive to just close that out and that’s a big boost to the confidence as well.”
