Ronan O’Gara: Munster and the identity that’s somewhere out there
FAMILIAR STORY: Munster players, from left, Peter O’Mahony, James Cronin, Joey Carbery, Mike Haley, and Andrew Conway reflect on where it all went wrong in last Saturday’s PRO14 final defeat to Leinster. There’s one Irish powerhouse that French-based players speak of and it’s not Munster, according to Ronan O’Gara.
Darren Sweetnam had his first La Rochelle training session Wednesday. He’s a good, educated west Cork man and he had his opening few words in French well prepared for the rest of the squad. Fair to say he brought the house down. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it, but he wasn’t the only one in the room with a few butterflies.
Darren is the first Munster man I’ve signed as a coach. That is a big deal for me too. You’ve only got one real home and we are all proud of where we come from. He’s come over to France to reignite his career and I’m the one who’s brought him here. I guess those things strike a little closer to the heart when he’s one of your own. It was a proud moment. Whenever I look back, he’ll be the first player I’ve signed from Munster.
The practicalities of the move were thus: He has potential and a career to build. From our standpoint, it’s initially a three-month deal. We needed a problem fixed, and fast. I could have gone anywhere in the world but someone from New Zealand, South Africa or Australia introduces quarantine issues. And then how long does a visa take?
One of the big positives of Darren was he was ready to go. He had to leave Ireland with a negative PCR test and then when he arrived here, he had to get tested straight away.
I know his standard. He hasn’t shot the lights out at Munster, with injury and a loss of form hampering momentum and confidence. But if you play for Ireland under Joe Schmidt, you have to have a lot of quality.
My role is to get his belief back and I’m pretty confident I can do that. Whether that’s good enough to displace a starter in our best team I don’t know, but I want that problem because I don’t have it at the minute.
He is ineligible for Europe but will play in the Top 14. Darren is big and rangy and needs games. Every coach looks at a player differently and the objective here for La Rochelle is not to prove Munster should or shouldn’t have kept him, but to ensure we have a tough decision to make on his future come season’s end.
Some coaches go through hoops trying to prove other coaches wrong. That’s a dangerous card to be playing.
Sometimes it is what it is. We let one lad go because we thought his attitude was well off. Then he went to another Top 14 club and now he’s off to a third, so sometimes the conclusions are universal. I know enough about Sweetnam’s background to bring him in. What happens in the summer is largely down to him.
JJ Hanrahan has secured a one-year deal at Clermont. Initially, he will be playing second fiddle to Camille Lopez and depending on how he does in that regard, there’s a second year on the table. That won’t be easy.
He is battling the age-old tradition of trying to usurp an incumbent who’s been there a long time. Strictly on ability, it’s an even call between JJ and Lopez but as an outsider can he take the jersey off someone who is practically a club legend? That’s the challenge, but realistically the door was closed for him at Munster.
They are keeping Joey Carbery on the big contract and have two pretenders on smaller contracts. He wasn’t in Munster’s plans so to get a club like Clermont is really big, because it’s harder to get into France now than it ever was.
It turns up the heat nicely in Munster, and that’s never a bad thing.
Now they will give Jack Crowley his head, and he will relish being thrown straight into the firing line. It’s time to be ambitious. You want Jack playing for Ireland, so put him out there and see what he is like. You have to set him up to succeed — and provide good feedback.
People who are quite measured were aghast at what they saw from the province last Saturday in the PRO14 final and were left wondering what is going on at Munster. Leinster have moved into the patronising phase.
As an ex-player, you’d be worried about the club now, and whether they are losing their identity. What do Munster stand for now? It is at the stage where they need to draw a clear line in the sand and decide what they want to do.
And how they are going to do it.
And with who they are going to do it.
They need to formulate a plan that feeds into what Munster is about and then shut up and do their talking when they’ve achieved something. Because at the RDS they didn’t deliver on any of what they talked about last week.
The irony is that Paulie is now coaching the Irish forwards when the club is crying out for someone like him. And of course, I hear the voices saying, ‘if Rog is so bothered, why isn’t he back here doing something about it?’ To which one might reply that I’m on my own career path and I don’t have any role in solving Munster’s problems.
Indeed, I may never have.
Tomorrow’s round of 16 Champions Cup tie with Toulouse is even more awkward for the fact that Ugo Mola’s men lost an important Top 14 game at home to struggling Montpellier last weekend. That’s sport. They obviously didn’t respect the game and got caught.
But good sides rarely lose two weeks in a row. Munster might refer to that, but in this context I’m referring to the French side. Munster hasn’t won a trophy for a decade. There’s one Irish powerhouse that players over here speak of and it’s not Munster. That hurts.
Toulouse have lost Rynhardt Elstadt for Thomond Park due to Covid regulations. He’s a good player, but there’s plenty more at Toulouse ready to step up.
The thirteen, Sofiane Guitoune, is a miss though after doing his cruciate, as he forms a really effective midfield with Pita Ahki, who is also doubtful. Everyone knows about Cheslin Kolbe but Dupont and Ntamack are the hub of the operation, and though they were average at best against Scotland, they are real competitors.
All the things that Munster are looking for should be in evidence this evening as Leinster set up against Toulon in Dublin. They will be too smart for the visitors, too well organised, and have too great a trust base between the players. They are years further into the cycle than Toulon, who have good individuals, but rely heavily on Baptiste Serin.
La Rochelle, meanwhile, are prepping for tonight’s meeting with Gloucester at Kingsholm. We’d lost two in a row before last weekend’s win away to Bordeaux Begles. But can we back it up? It’s all in the top two inches now, that’s what the next three months is about.
This club is in its infancy in terms of European history, so a last 16 fixture should be a massive deal for all of us. There’s no tomorrow in terms of the Champions Cup. Leinster may be able to periodise, but this is exciting, uncharted territory for us.
We had some great days at Kingsholm, it’s a cracking rugby town. A dozen or so years ago, Munster were there for a big Heineken Cup quarter-final and Marcus Horan suffered a back spasm in the warm-up, with Mushy Buckley coming in to start. That meant Freddie Pucciariello was added to the bench, but no-one could find Freddie.
Eventually he was tracked down around the back of the stadium at a hamburger stall, pouring into a quarter-pounder.
He came on before half-time and had a stormer. Now that’s Munster.
We won 16-3.
