SIMON LEWIS: Young stars making their own history
The canny Yorkshireman felt the images of Giles and Bremner, Lorimer and Charlton delivering success after success more than 10 years previously was suffocating the potential of the squad he had inherited, languishing as they were in the depths of the second tier of English football.
Munster’s glories are much less far removed, and the current squad of players have not fallen anywhere near as low as the hapless journeymen Wilkinson first managed, but there was a growing feeling among this younger generation of rugby men in red that the time had come to emerge from the shadows of yesterday and start making some history for themselves.
The Heineken Cup successes of 2006 and 2008 are as difficult to escape at Thomond Park and the Munster training ground at the University of Limerick as Revie & Co were to Wilkinson but instead of ripping down the homage, this breed of young Munster men want to join their heroes on those walls.
Yesterday, in reaching the Heineken Cup quarter-finals with a five-try win over Racing Metro, they did it their own way and made their first steps towards that goal.
In the build-up to this make-or-break game, scrum-half Conor Murray spoke of the need for he and his fellow U25s to take ownership of a team that bears very little resemblance to the glory years, such has been the turnover of personnel. Only two players, Donncha O’Callaghan and Doug Howlett started both the 2008 final in Cardiff and yesterday’s game in Limerick, while Paul O’Connell has featured just twice this season and Ronan O’Gara was suspended due to his errant flash of the boot in the direction of Sean Cox’s legs the previous weekend.
So step forward Murray, to marshall a Munster pack inspired by a new leader in Donnacha Ryan, and featuring the rampaging assets of flankers Peter O’Mahony and Tommy O’Donnell, loosehead Dave Kilcoyne and unleash the attacking verve of Simon Zebo, whose name was chanted around Thomond Park thanks to his hat-trick heroics and will likely be for many more years to come.
Losing O’Gara to a one-week ban will not spell the end of the veteran fly-half, any more than back surgery will banish O’Connell to the periphery but in losing both men and still reaching the knockout stages of the only competition that matters to Munster supporters is a significant step in the right direction for the current and next generation.
James Coughlan, the third impressive member of a dynamic back row, certainly thinks so.
“I think it’s something we spoke about at the start of the season that it was our time now,” Coughlan said. “There’s plenty of pictures up around the place but none of them are of us and that’s a motivation for the group.”
Munster’s future starts here.
