WITH THE PAIR of them in the same group since Munster returned to pre-season training last week, captain Peter O’Mahony has been able to get a close-up view of RG Snyman, who he had watched helping the Springboks to World Cup glory last year.
O’Mahony hasn’t been the same group as South African centre Damian de Allende or new fullback Matt Gallagher yet, but he’s excited about the impact they could make for the province when rugby returns in August.
Hawaiian tighthead prospect Romana Salanoa is the fourth summer addition, having joined from Leinster, and O’Mahony is enthusiastic about the reinforcements as Munster go about attempting to break a run without a trophy that stretches back to 2011.
Munster are due to return to action against Leinster at the Aviva Stadium on the weekend of 22/23 August in a Pro14 inter-provincial clash and the reinforcements will be of central interest.
“I’ve come across them just to say hello to but RG is in my group, the other lads aren’t,” said O’Mahony this afternoon.
“He’s an impressive-looking man. He’s certainly a second row anyway, 6ft 10ins or 6ft 11ins, whatever he is, he’s a big man and he’s fairly athletic from what I’ve seen so far.
“It’s great to have guys of that calibre on board. You’ve seen teams that have won in the provinces over the last 10 or 12 years, we’ve had some spectacular signings, be it Munster, Leinster, Connacht or Ulster. They’ve been incredibly important to us and I’ve no doubt the calibre of signing we’ve done this summer is going to be very important to us going forward.
“It’s great to have guys of this calibre being signed and they can’t do anything but add to the group and add to the competitiveness and the drive to win things. It’s certainly good timing to have these guys on board.”
Munster are into their second week of training at their high performance centre in Limerick following the extended lockdown of professional rugby due to Covid-19.
While Munster have expanded the number of players in each training group this week, strict sanitisation and health monitoring protocols are part of their routine now, making this pre-season very different to the ones before.
“The main thing is that we’re back,” said O’Mahony. “It’s different. We were in sixes last week and 12s on Monday and Tuesday, so we’re getting back to some normality.
“Obviously, there are going to be things that change for a long time, the way we can gym and that kind of thing, we’re still practicing social distancing and all of those guidelines.
“It’s a very different environment at the moment with regard to no meetings, that’s all across things like Zoom. It’s very different but it’s really refreshing to be back in amongst the lads.”
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