MONDAY’S VIDEO REVIEW session would have made for uncomfortable viewing for the players responsible for Munster’s abject showing in Cardiff last week, but it seems back-to-back away defeats have, at least, provided answers to some of Johann van Graan’s selection questions.
Facile wins over the Cheetahs and Ospreys in Limerick and Cork left early-season grounds for optimism, but the performances either side of those bonus-point routs have been a cause for serious concern.
Munster’s home form has rarely been an issue, but one of the areas van Graan identified pre-season was to improve their record on the road, thus acknowledging his side’s no-shows when playing anywhere other than Thomond or Musgrave Park, and in particular those painful semi-final defeats to Racing and Leinster.
It was, the South African said, ‘the big takeaway’ from last season for the southern province, yet the emphasis on fine-tuning technical elements and sharpening the mental approach has, so far, failed to function after heavy, and damaging, losses to Glasgow and Cardiff.
While the party line is that Munster are not getting down about it at this early juncture of the campaign, there would have been an element of soul-searching at their University of Limerick base this week.
Needless to say, they need a big performance and result against Ulster at Thomond Park in the first of their Guinness Pro14 inter-pros on Saturday evening [KO 7.35pm, eir Sport/Premier Sport].
“We have to put in an improved performance,” Peter O’Mahony says, matter-of-factly.
“Last week certainly wasn’t the standard we would be talking about, a long way off actually.”
Inaccuracy hurt Munster during a wretched second-half showing at the Cardiff Arms Park, as they eventually slumped to a 37-13 reversal, while the defensive systems completely malfunctioned, as the visitors slipped off 20 tackles on the way to conceding four tries.
O’Mahony was asked why Munster weren’t up to that standard he is talking about.
“It’s hard to put my finger on it to be honest,” the Munster captain continued. “Johann spoke already about us having a very good training week beforehand and I thought we had the tools to do it, to implement our game plan but we struggled in the first half.
“I said already we were still in the game, a point behind. Having played poorly-ish. And you know, you hand a team 14 points from two missed tackles, 21 points you could argue….and it’s always going to be difficult then. That’s the nature of this competition.
“In the Pro14, the games are savagely competitive and there just isn’t an easy one. Giving a team 21 points to start off with, you can forget about winning a game.”
The focus this week, then, is to produce an 80-minute performance.
“You can only worry about your process and your performance,” O’Mahony adds. “You’d like to think that if you put in an 80-minute performance with the calibre of players that we’ve got now, then we should be winning games.
“So that’s our focus. If we get anything like the performance we should be getting, we should be beating teams. It starts with your defence and it’s something that let us down massively last weekend.”
From van Graan’s perspective, the failure of certain players to seize their opportunity in the early weeks of the season has been telling, and ahead of a crunch block of fixtures which includes the inter-pros and start of the Heineken Champions Cup campaign, he now needs to settle on his best side.
“Certain individuals got some opportunities in the game, especially away from home and like Pete said, we were put under pressure by a team that were very desperate,” the South African explained.
“I thought we scored some good tries in the first half and there was only one point in it at half-time. Like you said, we wanted to do certain things in the second half…. Guys got opportunities, some of them used it and some of them didn’t. We’ve a pretty big phase coming up with two interprovincials and straight into Europe.”
He added: “Four weeks ago, we as a group spoke about giving guys opportunities over the next few weeks and we said the closer we get to Europe we’ll settle on our side.
“One or two guys will still be 50/50 for the side this weekend but once we get to next week, we’re going to stick to our best team. It’s a massive block of games for us, it’s no different to any other year, every year the start of Europe is huge, the inter-pros are huge.
“In our head, we’re pretty settled on what we want to do over the next few weeks and it’s about focusing on what we can, unfortunately it’s no good to do it on the training field, you’ve got to do it on Saturdays and Friday evenings so we as a group are looking forward to Saturday evening to go and perform on the field.”
Van Graan will name his team for Ulster at midday today, and the hand he reveals will give some indication as to what the Munster management are thinking ahead of their visit to the Aviva Stadium to face Leinster next week, and then their European opener at Exeter Chiefs in a fortnight.
With question marks hanging over their form, Munster are undoubtedly under pressure to ensure they make the most of their home comforts this week, as the serious business begins in the coming weeks.
First up, an Ulster side unbeaten under Dan McFarland.
“They’ve been very impressive,” O’Mahony adds. “Young squad, some young guys performing well for them along with some experienced guys as well in the mix. It’s a good combination.
“I thought some of their performances have been very impressive. Difficult place to go in South Africa last week and 39-39 shows they changed their brand of rugby this year.
“They’re attacking more, spreading the ball, counter attack stuff is impressive as well. I’ve been impressed with their start to the season.”
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