Men in red show how to get job done after Aussie heroics
After the romance of last week’s win over Australia in Thomond Park, last night’s Magners League outing for Munster against the Scarlets at Musgrave Park had an air of back to business, with business the operative term.
In the professional era, the event flash of beating Australia didn’t appear to last much longer than the froth on your more reasonably-priced bubbly. It was interesting over the weekend to read James Coughlan’s description of his Tuesday night – the man who led Munster to that win was tucked up and safe in the land of nod by 1am, enjoying the sleep of the just, or the just-victorious, at any rate.
Previous Munster victories over touring international sides would have been put to bed by 1am as well, though it’s doubtful whether that would have been the same night as the game.
Autre temps, autre moeurs. Professionalism means more than a wage, or a job description on your passport. Last week we carried an interview with Anton Oliver, the cerebral New Zealand hooker, who told our man Simon Lewis that when he left professional rugby a couple of years ago, he’d never had a formal job interview.
Desk, chair, suit. Where do you see yourself in five years’ time, that sort of thing.
(The fact that we are now rearing an entire generation in this country for whom that experience may become equally unfamiliar is a story for another part of the paper, of course).
However, Oliver added one crucial modification to his admission: “So I was 33 and never had a job interview. My job interview was eighty minutes every week in front of millions of people.”
If he’d failed a couple of those he’d have been gone: in the bear-pit of New Zealand rugby, where we are regularly bored with – er, transfixed by the entire population’s rugby literacy, Oliver’s comments weren’t an exaggeration.
Thus the challenge for Munster last night. After the epic poetry of last week, what appetite for the prose of the league?
Early on in the game Sam Tuitupou looked like someone with appetite on his mind, fairly hurtling into the contact zone. It probably wouldn’t be wise to come between the big man and the bread rolls when the soup is put out.
Scarlets couldn’t have been surprised by the physical welcome, mind you. Before the game even started, for instance, the throb of the old Talking Heads classic, Psycho Killer, on the Musgrave Park PA would have removed any doubts about what was coming up, but you can overdo that sort of thing.
Also reverberating through the skies were on-message songs such as Going In For The Kill and All These Things That I’ve Done (by the Killers). The effort may have been in vain, anyway. That kind of set list was hardly going to unnerve a team which named a Lou Reed in the second row, as Scarlets did.
The focus last week on the Australia win had a necessary flip side, of course – the support that kind of victory gives to a team’s self-esteem can be used as kindling by determined opponents.
The high-functioning cliche that could be applied to Scarlets was that they didn’t show too much respect for the last team to beat the Wallabies in a competitive game, and at the break it was even, thanks to a late, late try by the visitors.
The home side got down to business when their wing-forward Peter O’Mahony went to the bin early in the second half; Munster showed enterprise, retaining the ball until a decisive midfield burst by Tuitupou yielded a try under the posts. Soon afterwards Barry Murphy added a second try with an even better cut back against the cover, and O’Mahony was being advised to stay on his touchline seat by some helpful supporters.
The Welsh didn’t die then either. They whittled Munster’s lead down to a point, and though there were some nerves late in the game, the men in red closed it out, running the clock down with the ball in their possession.
Afterwards try-scorer Murphy met the press. He was happy to be back after 14 months out injured, and happy with the win. He was also happy to outline the challenge of last night compared to the Australia game.
“We didn’t want to put too much of an emphasis on that, obviously it was a massive result on Tuesday but it’s no mean feat to come here today either – Llanelli are second in the league and we had it drilled into us from Wednesday afternoon by Tony (McGahan) and the management. It shows the character we have in the squad that we can put in a performance like that. It was a dogged one, but we’re happy with the result.”
Performances. Results. Leave it to the professionals.
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
