Munster can still make Pro12 play-offs, says Billy Holland

Billy Holland believes Munster can still make the Guinness Pro12 play-offs despite Sunday’s home defeat to Ospreys.

Munster let a 17-10 lead slip at Musgrave Park and saw their hopes of qualification dwindle as four of the five teams above them all won over the weekend.

But stand-in skipper Holland isn’t about to give up on sixth place Munster: “Look we have a game in hand and plenty to go.

“No panic buttons have been pressed yet but next Friday against Glasgow is (admittedly) huge in terms of keeping in touch with the top four and staying ahead of them (Ospreys and Glasgow), so that’s hugely important.”

Being so close and yet so far away in the Ospreys clash (17-21) was a body blow though, as Holland conceded: “We played some good rugby, we had the lion’s share of possession and dominated a lot of aspects of the game for the first 55 minutes. Ospreys are a quality side and they were going to always have a purple patch.

“They got momentum, our discipline let us down and they got pitch position; our defence wasn’t up to scratch then and we didn’t stop that flow of momentum which they had.

“That was really disappointing. Seven points up with the wind behind us in the second half and they’re the type of games we need to put away.

“A lot of that is (down to) individual responsibility. I can’t remember all the penalties but if you’re on the half way line defending there’s no need to give away a penalty in a 50/50, you let it go.

“Concede and then you’re the team under pressure.

“We had a tough month of December but we had won four out of our last five games and were on a bit of an upward curve; to lose (was disappointing) when we had done a lot of the hard work, maybe sub-consciously we had switched off. We’ll come back in tomorrow and we’ll review and reassess.

"There’s no time for moping around. Recovery is a huge part of it now, there’s not a huge amount of time to be spent on our feet this week and it’s going to be a lot of mental prep for us.”

Munster face another challenge in having to play Glasgow on Kilmarnock’s 4G pitch at Rugby Park, the game switched from unplayable Scotstoun.

But Holland isn’t worried: “Plenty of teams have them. We’ve played Cardiff a few times over there and it’s probably a quicker game, so we’ll probably train on 4G, we have 4G facilities ourselves at UL.

“It’s a slightly different bounce of the ball for the kickers and the back three, but that’s something we’ve got to get our heads around.

“Our aim is that we want to get back into the top four again and to get there we need to get a result against them, nothing more or less, we need to start getting results and not being just close.”