Ronan O'Gara: Things have deteriorated... Frankly, I don’t remember Munster as low
Munster's Jack Crowley interacts with fans after the defeat by Exeter. Pic: INPHO/Dan Sheridan
I had a strange day on Wednesday. The fundamentals of this job mean you are always planning for next season even when the six inches in front of your face is all that matters for now. The players were off. It offers thinking time, reflection time.
I took a call from a friend in Munster and we shared anxieties. We have six Top 14 games remaining to achieve a Houdini act and make it into the play-offs and the top eight to ensure Champions Cup rugby next season. We currently sit ninth.
Munster’s plight isn’t dissimilar, they’ve four games left. They’re all finals now.
La Rochelle have a glamour tie Saturday against neighbours Bordeaux-Begles who’ve just put Toulouse to the sword in the Champions Cup. That may work in our favour but you don’t get many favours when points, and play-offs are on the line. Not to mention the future direction of the organisation.
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La Rochelle has had a bizarre campaign. Frequently we have been without 20-plus front line players through injury. In February our fitness coach Thomas du Toit announced he was departing for the Stormers in South Africa. We were both frustrated. For 24 months we haven’t been able to put our best players on the pitch, and the interrogation into that continues. Are we just unlucky? Are we doing something wrong?
It’s an ageing group for sure but that’s a negative interpretation that I am not comfortable with. Experience is critical for me. Whether it’s a hungry group is a different conversation. It’s pretty ease to peddle the narrative of winning back to back European Cups and then taking your foot off the pedal. Then going after it to get back to your levels and bodies breaking down, left, right and centre.
When Steph left we filled the gap internally but it’s something we need to take a fresh look at and while doing so, see how we could reconfigure the management structure to best use the opportunity this challenge presented us. Given the disproportionately large number of injuries it would be remiss of us not to interrogate all possibilities. Which brings me back to Wednesday and the changes afoot.
There will be players coming in, and we’ve done some sensible business for next season, but that means players going out too. The likes of Judicael Cancoriet, Reda Wardi, Ihaia West, Joel Sclavi and Tolu Latu have achieved a lot here. Do we want to finish in a mess, and not get into Europe or do we want to fight for something, and allow them depart with a very positive sense of our culture here?
One certainty: I’m hitched to this project again next year, and as I’ve written here previously I am not getting into conversations about fictional jobs elsewhere.
But the thought of playing Challenge Cup again next year frightens me, especially after the experience of Newcastle and Ulster, two days borrowed straight out of a bad December. It was borderline hilarious.
Munster’s season is on a hinge too, and they don’t want the prospect of Challenge Cup rugby to be clouding their horizons either. They have to chase Champions Cup but confidence comes back quicker in an environment that knows how to win.
My Munster friend made a good point this week: people too easily forget what an extraordinary success that URC final win in South Africa was in 2023 under Graham Rowntree and the stunning sequence of away results that took them there.
The sense then was that the trophy had delayed rather than arrested the province’s slide into mediocrity but when you examine the success from the perspective of now, it’s a level Munster would bite someone’s hand off for.
Things have deteriorated and the notion that Munster ‘aren’t far away’ comes off as a little fanciful now. Frankly, I don’t remember Munster as low. They have to be careful because Welsh rugby is the de facto cautionary tale of what can happen when a totemic institution goes bad or goes the wrong road.
There are decisions made at that club that any former player worth his bacon would look at and scrutinise harshly. Just because Munster are a big brand does not mean that the brand can’t fail. Business and the pages of history has shown us that the unsinkable is anything but. When do they stop taking on water, and who’s going to stop it?
Right now it’s on the playing group to finish their URC season with a flourish and secure Champions Cup Rugby next season, starting in Italy on Saturday. The other three games are all in Ireland, making victory this weekend non-negotiable. That stands alone as the priority.
But inside the building, you are hoping that they are making a plan beyond the end of this campaign. I saw enough of their Challenge Cup exit at Sandy Park and for some of the Exeter tries, the defence was a holy disgrace. That’s a playing/coaching issue.
Munster still has cachet for a potential player, but the brand is as weak as I can remember it in terms of a recruitment tool. The world is small and players talk – if you are offered Toulon or Munster, the considerations will be potential for success, the package and the lifestyle. Where are you going?
However, a reminder: there is this fallacy that the French Top 14 is swimming in money and largesse but well I know from agents, player enquiries and the like that the Munster lads are hardly slumming it in the bargain basement either. They are unbelievably well paid. Maybe that’s a potential issue in itself.
I had a conversation with a player in Ireland about possible terms and conditions coming over here to France and I broke out laughing at his figures. Are ya dreamin, kid? Just look at the salary cap investigations in France, and you get a sense of the reality here.
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It’s a grind now all the way to the play-offs. Bordeaux may be heavily rotated coming to our place on Saturday. Before the Champions Cup quarter-final, I thought Toulouse’s forwards would beat up Bordeaux, but the opposite happened. It was an unbelievable performance. But we finally have a few lads back from injury even though we won’t have Uini Atonio again, Will Skelton remains out with an Achilles and Levani Botia has a bad calf injury. Without them you have to play a different way, and people will see our team in a different light without a big scrum and maul energy.
The extra percentages are to be found in culture and standards. They count for so much. In Munster as in La Rochelle. Local voices and good professionals are a potent mix and when you have them in the same individual, you must cherish them. That’s the north star. Local lads driving the project. Driving the culture.
Give me that and I’ll drive anywhere to sign him.
