JUST IN CASE there was ever any doubt, Rob Penney learned a valuable lesson last season.
In Ireland, and particularly in Munster, the Heineken Cup is king.
By the end of the season, it didn’t really matter that the Kiwi’s first year in charge had been punctuated by infuriating inconsistencies and a finish well behind the challengers for the Pro12 title – pride had been restored in Europe.
The methodical heist at The Stoop made sure of that much, and then they went and pushed the darlings of Europe every step of the way in the Montpellier semi-final to give the whole summer a surge of positivity despite the loss of the province’s greatest ever player.
“A bounce of the ball, a couple of different things over in Clermont, it could have been one step further,” says Rob Penney as he looks back on his first season in the northern hemisphere
“The expectation every year is that Munster will be there or thereabouts, and so it should be. I think there is a really good group here building and desperately keen to do well – there is no reason why they can’t be there or thereabouts again.”
While you can never set your watch by the Pro12 to predict a Heineken Cup pool, it’s a useful barometer at this stage of the season. Bar what Penney calls “15 minutes of carnage” in northern Italy, Munster are in very good shape indeed.
Second in the table, only Ospreys have crossed the try-line more, the defence has tightened up with no maximum score conceded since the Treviso defeat and last weekend’s home win over Leinster was just the confirmation the southern province needed that everything is on the right track.
“As a management group we are always discussing where we’re at and how far along the learning path we are. That is a very subjective assessment, but we are happy with the direction we are going and the amount of effort the guys are putting in.
“They key is that it’s reflected in the outcomes. We are starting to get those a bit more consistently now. Certainly the performances in the early part of the campaign were really pleasing this year. Hopefully we can keep building.”
Brick number one in building towards a third Heineken Cup is tomorrow’s opener against Edinburgh. It will be Penney’s sixth time facing the side from Scotland’s capital, but although he has won all five to date, losing a 19 – 9 second half lead in Treviso has taught him, “you underestimate anybody at your peril.”
Of Edinburgh, the Kiwi says, “all the history goes out the window,” but he could so easily have saved the phrase for the return of Gloucester to Limerick. The Cherry and Whites have an unwanted role in European rugby history, the victims of the fabled Miracle Match, but Penney isn’t a man for watching old games – he’s got enough to soak up through his regular appearances at clubs across the province on top of his duties in the video analysis room.
It’s put to the coach that weight of history of this competition could become a burden on his young squad and its 24-year-old captain. “You can look at it in two ways,” comes the response.
“It can be a big weight on your shoulders, a burden, or a nice warm wind at your back. With the history of Munster in the Heineken Cup we are trying to say, it is something that will drive us on and really help us.”
“It is not about me as coach. It’s about the team creating their own history. There’s a couple of young guys in there coming through: Mike Sherry, Peter (O’Mahony), (Ian) Keatley, JJ (Hanrahan). They all want to be part of that. They all want to write their own little bit of history for Munster.”
And the Heineken Cup is the only place worth writing it.
