Challenge Cup could be the right spot for Munster
Munster have dropped into the Challenge Cup for only the second time. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
When Clayton McMillan walked through the door at Munster Rugby last summer dreaming of taking his new club to uncharted frontiers, the New Zealander could barely have envisaged the Challenge Cup quarter-finals being one such destination.
Yet six months into a project that drew him from serial Super Rugby final appearances with the Chiefs to undertake it, Munster’s head coach finds himself raking over the ashes of Champions Cup elimination after a helter-skelter Saturday night at Thomond Park, and planning a trip to Exeter Chiefs on the weekend of April 3/4/5.
An enthralling contest between the competition’s most frequent rivals was a delight for the neutral and a nail-biter for those with skin in the game but ultimately it left the majority of the 20,043 in attendance in a stunned silence after Castres ripped up the script and were rewarded for their ambition with a rare qualification for the knockout rounds.
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It was what McMillan’s predecessor as permanent head coach Graham Rowntree would have called a punch on the nose and he absorbed a couple of those in his two and a third seasons at the helm, but none as devastating as this European exit for the two-time champions on an evening when Munster’s frequent flirtations with calamity finally fell on the wrong side of the ledger.
It has been one of those pool campaigns, and an instructive one for McMillan on his first lap around the Northern Hemisphere’s premier club competition. Perhaps it never recovered from that first-quarter shellacking in Bath and subsequent 40-14 defeat to the English champions.
Or was it the loss of a winning position late on in Toulon in round three which put Munster’s backs against the wall? Either way, the final instalment six days on from the 27-25 loss at Stade Felix Mayol was a whole new level of frustration for the first-season boss as his players appeared to gather up all the faults of the previous three rounds and assemble them into one performance with disastrous consequences.
Sloppy defence, inconsistent decision-making, wayward goal-kicking, and poor discipline all combined to allow Castres into this contest and undermine Munster’s own moments of attacking excellence as the French Top 14 side took a 10-0 lead after 11 minutes, then trailed 12-10 in the 34th and then went into half-time with a 17-12 advantage.
Craig Casey had been a serious doubt for this match having appeared to sustain a significant AC joint injury in his left shoulder at Toulon the previous Sunday but his pair of first-half tries might have been the game changer. They erased that visitors’ early lead and should have provided the platform for victory heading to the interval with a two-point lead, only for Munster to let Castres back into the contest with their third try scored brilliantly but out of nothing by the chip and charging full-back Theo Chabouni.
The second half saw the same narrative arc play out, wonderfully executed scores from Thaakir Abrahams and replacement lock Edwin Edogbo bringing up the desired try bonus point for the home side only for Munster to throw it all away again. Tom Farrell’s yellow card invited Castres’ double whammy as the home defence were stretched in his absence, with wings Geoffrey Palis and Christian Ambadiang doing the damage to leave McMillan’s side reeling.
Crucially, replacement fly-half Enzo Herve’s goal kicking was right on the money, as was his predecessor off the tee, scrum-half Jeremy Fernandez, and the number 22’s touchline conversions were in stark contrast to the errant efforts from similar positions by Munster’s Jack Crowley, whose three missed kicks left points out there his side could ill afford to do without.
It was not all Crowley’s fault that Castres had the final say but the upshot is Munster have dropped into the Challenge Cup for only the second time, having beaten Brive and lost to Harlequins in the semi-finals of the second-tier competition on their debut outing in 2010-11 under Tony McGahan. That had been Munster’s first failure to progress from the pool stages of the top-flight tournament in 13 seasons and was also experienced in 2014-15, 15-16, and 19-20 when the outbreak of Covid and a six-month hiatus for the competition during lockdown softened the blow somewhat.
No such luck for the current Munster head coach, who fronted up well when facing the reality of the situation on Saturday night.
“It doesn't sit well with me at all,” McMillan said, before insisting his new job of rejuvenating Munster was not bigger than he had first anticipated.
“No, I'm well aware of the expectation of the club and where our aspiration lies. We've had good moments and not so good moments and this was one of those ones we have to accept and live through and learn from and get better.”
The not so good moments have begun to outweigh the positive ones at this stage of the season, the high point having come back in October with an excellent performance to beat URC champions Leinster convincingly at Croke Park. Saturday’s defeat by Castres was the fourth in a row following Leinster’s revenge in Limerick on December 27, a second derby loss in a row six days later at Ulster and this pair of European setbacks, beginning in Toulon the previous Sunday.
“I don't know if we've gone backwards but other teams have certainly got better, and our challenge is to continually get better.
“There's elements of our game that have progressed, our scrum is in a much better place than it was a couple of months ago and that's a real positive. That's stacking more positive moments that we are creating in games that will ultimately be enough to get across the line and win.”
Ahead of this game McMillan had acknowledged the fast start to his three-year tenure that had delivered five league wins in a row and a victory over an Argentina XV was not a true reflection of Munster’s place in the world and that their current placing of sixth in the URC table at the midway point in the regular season was the par position for his squad, still very much a work in progress.
You would back McMillan and his backroom staff to turn this current slump around and indeed lead Munster to greater things. They remain a match for most teams when everything clicks but right now those are happening only sporadically. Given the quality of the performances in Champions Cup Pool 2 over four rounds, with their Páirc Uí Chaoimh victory over Gloucester the lone victory, perhaps the Challenge Cup is the right place for Munster as well.
S Daly; T Abrahams, T Farrell, A Nankivell (D Kelly, 59), B O’Connor (JJ Hanrahan, 57); J Crowley, C Casey; J Loughman (M Milne, 57), N Scannell (L Barron, 50), M Ala’alatoa (O Jager, 57); J Kleyn (E Edogbo, 50), F Wycherley; T Beirne - captain, J O’Donoghue (B Gleeson, 50), G Coombes.
T Farrell 63-73 Replacement not used: E Coughlan.
T Chabouni; C Ambadiang (A Manu, 17-28 - HIA), V Karawalevu, J Goodhue, G Palis; P Popelin (E Herve, 47), J Fernandez (S Arata, 47); A Sokobale (A Tichit, 47), L Zarantonello (T Durand-Pradere, 56), W Collier (A Azar, h-t); G Maravat, T Staniforth (L Nakarawa, 57); B Delaporte - captain, B Cope (T Ardron, 57), F Vanverberghe.
L Nakarara 75 mins
Matthew Carley (England)
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