LAST WEEKEND’S BITTERLY disappointing defeat at home to Leinster triggered the usual soul-searching from some Munster supporters.
While Munster had enjoyed a 10-game unbeaten run at home before Leo Cullen’s side came to town, Johann van Graan’s men look limited and predictable against the URC leaders, the one-sided nature of the second half suggesting the gap between the two great rivals continues to grow.
Next up, it’s Exeter away in the Heineken Champions Cup round of 16, and the English side have had their own issues this year. While injuries haven’t helped, Exeter’s progress under Rob Baxter appears to have stalled at the moment.
Double winners in 2020, Exeter haven’t quite looked the force of old of late, struggling for consistency while losing nine games from 21 in the Premiership – including five at home – and currently sitting fourth in the league table.
However Munster senior coach Stephen Larkham is wary of the threat the English side pose, pointing to the talent in their ranks and knowing they are well versed in producing late season charges, having watched them find some timely form in recent weeks .
“They’ve got world class players and I think over the last month, they’ve found their game again that you’re talking about in Europe a couple of years ago,” Larkham says.
“I think they’re back to that form. We’ve analysed what we think is going to work against them, but they are a very dangerous side.
I think they’ve got threats, they’ve got international players, they’ve got world-class players in that backline. Like I said before they’ve got the ability to hold the ball. They’re actually very good at utilising the backs in general, not just the outside backs, but the balance in general.
“They’ve got a very set way that they play in attack, generally with their forward carrying and then they try and get their backs involved in that next phase off the sideline. They’re getting a lot of touches in the game and they’re a very dangerous outfit.”
Munster have plenty of threats themselves, but the frustration among supporters is that too often, they don’t use them to full effect.
The province have come in for heavy criticism for the manner of their defeat to Leinster, which in many ways gives this week the classic ‘Munster in Europe’ feel – heading into a massive game away from home with their backs against the wall, and out to prove a point.
“We’re extremely disappointed in the (Leinster) game,”Larkham continues.
“We’ve had a really good review, a real honest look at ourselves. And yeah, we’re hurting. There’s no doubt we’re hurting. But we’ve got to move on. That’s the game that we’re in. It’s a high performance, pressure environment where you get judged on a performance, but you’ve got to let that go and you’ve got to move on straight away because if you let it linger, then it’s going to affect your next performance.
“From our perspective, we’re trying to move on, we’re trying to take our lessons from that (Leinster) game, we’re trying to identify strategic, tactical areas, physical areas, mental areas from that game that we felt we weren’t good enough in, and we’re trying to work on those this week.
There’s short-term goals and long-term goals. We’ve obviously got to get stuff ready for Exeter, and then looking longer-term and knowing that we’ve got Leinster down the track and knowing we’ve got finals hopefully down the track, you’re working on little things through the week that are improving your game longer-term as well at the same time.
“So that’s our process. We go through our review process and identify things that we feel we could have done better, and we try work on those. Whether that’s in the short-term or over a longer period of time, it really depends on what the turnaround is and what your focus needs to be for the next game.”
Munster head to Sandy Park without the services of Tadhg Beirne, Andrew Conway, Gavin Coombes and Dave Kilcoyne, meaning they’ll have to dip a little further into their reserves this weekend.
Against Leinster, Van Graan made interesting use of his bench, bringing Ben Healy on at out-half for the closing 20 minutes as Joey Carbery shifted into fullback – a move we’ve seen Andy Farrell use with Ireland.
There have often been calls to see Carbery play more at 15, but Larkham insists Munster won’t be considering starting the former Leinster man at fullback any time soon.
“Not at this stage, no, but he’s certainly giving us that coverage throughout the 80 minutes.
“It gives us coverage in that area. Joey is very good in terms of covering full-back as well and it eventuated in the game that way.”
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