GIVEN HIS TEAM’s first serious hit-out is still two weeks away, it’s understandable that Rassie Erasmus is somewhat tight-lipped about how Munster will play under their new director of rugby.
The South African uses the word ‘philosophy’ freely enough, but it’s more in reference to the effort his new-look coaching staff have made to align their ideas.
Erasmus paints a picture of a hybrid game for Munster: he won’t force an expansive approach on the team until some of the sturdier elements are good and ready. Scratch that, excellent and ready.
“If there’s a standard way of doing things, and that way is world class,” comes the thick, broad yet amiable South African accent when asked what he wants to see evidence of from day one.
“Then you say, ‘do we train world class’? If we have an education system, is it world class? When you’re one-on-one with a player, when there’s a presentation from a coach or he does his fundamentals…
“It’s easy to say we want to win so many games, we want to win a cup, but some teams do it with a bit of luck and they’re nowhere after that.
“So if you can bolt (on) that world class mentality — I’m trying to, not dissect, but to look at each individual thing. And if they are world class the result will come.
“Some things we do outstanding here. Some things we do are average, which I think we’ve seen some improvements so far, but a lot we’ll have to work hard to get right.”
The very first step Erasmus planted on that road to making Munster world class again was to clarify his position. It’s a brand new role after all, and ‘director of rugby’ is anything but self-explanatory when you consider the huge variation in job description which different clubs attach to the position.
Erasmus came to Limerick six weeks ago. He flew over before Ireland’s final Test against the Springboks. Defence coach Jacques Nienaber took a plane the day after the Port Elizabeth season-closer. Their haste was an effort to make sure the coaches were all on the same page in the unusual situation of having the previous boss still among the personnel.
“I also discussed it with the panel when I was interviewed. For me, Axel is still the head coach. He worries about the day-to-day things and setting up the team for the next opponent. I put the tactics in place and make sure we have the right strategies, but he puts it in to action.
“On the field, I’m involved with certain parts of the coaching, all the players and management are clear with how we’re going to run that.”
The rest of Erasmus’ remit will unfold in time. The academy, he admits, has been edged onto “the back-burner” for now, but he will be examining the coaching methods and structures, player pathways and the position-by-position depth chart they have coming through the ranks. That level is as far as the ex-Springbok’s reach will go for now. The club and grassroots scene is an issue for another day.
Recruits
On the other end of the scale, Munster have an NIQ (Non-Irish Qualified) spot still unfilled in their playing squad. Jean Kleyn looks like a very smart addition to the second row, but Erasmus was quick to caution against any notion that he would usher in a few more of his countrymen.
“What I say, most people won’t want to hear: there is no point in bringing in a bunch of guys because you know them really well. It’s a slap in the face to those who are there already and you haven’t worked with them or coached them the way you work as a coaching group to get the best out of them.
“Maybe a small little thing triggers a player to do better and be more focused and has aspirations to be better. I will be very conservative with that until we see if we really need (someone).
“If you bring somebody in, he must be so much better than the guy that’s here and I’m not in the position to do that currently. We are in a position obviously with the blessing of the IRFU and David Nucifora that we can strengthen in certain positions, but we want to make sure it is the right guy when we bring somebody in. The moment we are sure about that we will do it.”
So he will look to recruit, but if we take out-half as an example: the presence of Johnny Holland and Bill Johnston on the injury list mean he will have to wait a while to gauge how great the need is before locking in his target.
“In the next two or three weeks I will look at it and say ‘OK, it’s serious thing, the guys are not reacting to the injury’.
“I think the moment the player has got time off the pitch to understand what we want him to be, and then on the pitch to have the time to prove that… some guys you feel are so close, (but) that could be a warm-up game while others we have to get conditioning right physically and mentally. One player might be a switch (on) while other guys you might have to grind, but there are not a lot of players we worry about.”
The message from the new director is clear. He has all the tools, he just wants to make sure everyone is using them right, and to that end the early brainstorming session between himself, Foley, Nienaber, Felix Jones on behalf of the attack and scrum coach Jerry Flannery was key.
No room for egos in the room, just honest arguments.
“We didn’t see the players for the first two weeks, we just sat and said ‘listen guys, we have to align our coaching for the rest of the year, we have to be 100% right. Everybody presented on their specific area and the other guys could shoot holes into that and say ‘that won’t work’ and then we all worked it out and agreed.
“It won’t be a mixture , if I can put it that way,” not in the end at least.
“It’s what we have in players, what has worked for us in the past, what has worked for Munster in the past and reduce that to where can we get to.
“Then we gave it to the players and said ‘let’s have a bash out here’ and now we’ve been coaching it that way. I think it will always be evolving, but I can’t tell you we’re not going the running way, the kicking way, the conservative way.
“In certain facets of the game we’ve got certain principles and hopefully you can see when the matches start that that’s the way the guys are going to play.”
Erasmus is an ambitious man, who refuses to hide his aim of being an international coach in or around his 50th birthday. He’s 43 now, so that leaves plenty of time for a Rassie era to take hold in Munster.
And yet the province’s first director of rugby isn’t preaching patience. He takes a sledgehammer to lip service beloved of struggling coaches.
I would be naïve to think that if we don’t show massive, massive improvement from last year, I don’t think people will accept us saying that: ‘we’re trying hard’, ‘we’re improving slowly and we’ll get there’.
“If we don’t see a massive improvement, we’ll all be under massive pressure.
“Massive improvement is probably relative, but for me massive improvement is winning more games than you are losing and winning more than you won last year.
“I don’t want to have the standard answer of saying: ‘here, we are inheriting a squad’ I don’t want to say that. I want to optimise the players and coaches we have now to give the best possible results and I don’t want to say, ‘next year I will have developed the group because I have worked with them longer’. That would be a normal answer.
“I would say: ‘with this group now I want to get the best of them now and get the results as quick as possible’.
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