Coughlan gearing up for fiery French test
Hot on the heels of a hard fought bonus point RaboDirect Pro12 victory over Treviso, Coughlan believes the French team will bring a similarly abrasive style of play on their travels, despite the fact their qualification hopes have already been ended.
One way or another, Coughlan sees Castres as a major physical barrier to Munster’s progress and for that reason hopes to be able to thank Treviso for their efforts last Saturday.
“They [Treviso] are a fantastic outfit, they’ve beaten Biarritz at home in the Heineken Cup, Ulster, Glasgow and Connacht away in the Rabo; they came here with a full strength side and stuck to their task really well, but we outlasted them. Italian teams are always really physical and base their effort around the set-piece. We knew what we were doing was going to work eventually; it was a matter of sticking to it and keep taking it through the phases. They are a very big side.”
Coughlan expects more of the same this weekend. He said: “Yeah, they base their game around the scrum and the lineout, like most French teams. They are big, strong ball-carriers and we know that from having played them in Toulouse a few weeks ago.”
While Castres may now be tempted to concentrate on improving on their current fourth place in the French Top 14, Coughlan is not prepared to take any chances on Saturday.
He said: “If we start worrying about what they are going to do we are in trouble,” he said. “This is about us, it is a home game here in the Heineken Cup and we hope it is a sell-out and the crowd will get behind us.”
Coughlan believes Munster must show considerable improvement on their form of these past couple of weeks, particularly on the road in Ulster.
“We let ourselves down in the second half of the Ulster match. Anyone who was up there would hold their hand up. You have a look at yourself after a performance like that. Those of us who got a chance [against Treviso], I think, put the hand up and made up for it.
“It definitely hurt a lot in Belfast. We beat ourselves. We had a good look at ourselves during the week and it was fantastic to get an opportunity to fix it, but for this week our set-piece accuracy needs to come up.
They [Castres] are [still] a quality team and they will not come over here and be overawed.”
Last year’s early Heineken Cup exit is a subject few of Munster’s number wish to talk about, but with a rich history of qualification for the knock-out stages, it’s something that is there in the back of the mind.
“Yeah,” says Coughlan, “it is one of those things, you can say forget about it, you move on and it is in the past … but we all know we didn’t qualify last season. Call a spade a spade.
“Whether it is a motivating factor is down to an individual, but certainly you don’t like being told you didn’t qualify last season, let’s just put it like that. There is an opportunity to put that right this year.”
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