Rugby: Munster pray for ‘miracle’ repeat
However, for Munster’s penultimate training session yesterday, it was a different story.
The gates were locked and you needed to have official business to gain admittance as the squad worked on putting right the failures of Kingsholm. The strategy was puzzling, but it demonstrates the importance of the game to the Munster management.
Saturday’s comprehensive defeat may be history but skipper Jim Williams is adamant the lessons of the failure will be acted on.
He insisted: “It’s pretty obvious what went wrong. We had certain goals, the set pieces were very important and also the discipline, and looking at the video, it was astonishing - they were the two areas that let us down most. They are things that we worked hard on today and will work on for the rest of the week.”
Coach Alan Gaffney tries to laugh it off with the quip they all got out of bed on Sunday morning and nobody had died, but that is being too simplistic.
However, he is relieved to have such an early opportunity to set the record straight.
“We just didn’t get into our patterns and didn’t make any forward momentum,” Williams admitted while dismissing tiredness was a factor. “It was obviously a difficult period over Christmas with all the disruptions and with only one Celtic League game.
“That doesn’t help the cause. It’s difficult coming in and out of different training set-ups and makes it hard to get any cohesion in the team. It’s something we’ve worked on but it’s not happening and it’s something we’ve got to keep working on and try to get out of the paddock.”
The enormity of Saturday’s failure didn’t dawn on the side until they watched the video.
They’re not for making excuses, no matter how great the temptation. And, anyway, Jim Williams is a typical Aussie who believes in action rather than words. Even though he passed his 35th birthday last month, he has the spring of a teenager in his step.
It was his example that enabled Munster to present a defensive wall so strong and well organised that they were able to “tie” the try count at one apiece in spite of Gloucester’s overall dominance.
“We spent a bit of time watching the video and pointed out fairly obvious mistakes and things we’ve got to fix, the discipline and the set pieces were probably the two biggest things,” said the captain.
“It didn’t help that I stuffed up the first line-out and I take responsibility for that. I was so pumped up and basically misread the call. It didn’t get any better as the game went on and that surprised me.”
The line-out wasn’t the only area of concern. There wasn’t a segment of the forward battle where Munster enjoyed parity and a surprising developments was the manner in which the scrum creaked from the outset.
A repeat on Saturday and Munster will be missing from the Heineken Cup quarter-final line-up for the first time in six years.
“Again, it was something we worked hard on during the week and didn’t translate it on to the paddock”, Williams accepted.
“I don’t know the reason, we weren’t switched on, we weren’t working well together as a pack and as a team. We’ve got to translate what we do on the training pitch onto the paddock and get a good start.”
And then there was Munster’s inability to cope with the dinks and kicks through by Duncan McRae and Henry Paul which eventually proved their undoing.
Gaffney said: “It’s very difficult when you’ve got such a flat line of defence and McRae stands so deep. You’ve got to stand up in a line, especially on the outside, and obviously it’s one of the things we’re working very hard to fix.
“McRae comes from a Rugby League background and he’s got very good ball skills.”
There is no disputing the Kingsholm atmosphere was a major plus for Gloucester last Saturday. The noise on the “Shed” side of the pitch was so loud that it helped to undermine Munster’s line-out calls.
Jim Williams is hoping that the situation will be reversed this time.
“Playing at home is always a big influence with this team”, he said. “When your backs are to the wall, it’s more important than ever. We will try to get the Thomond Park atmosphere working for us and I don’t think there should be any problem with that.
“But it will be different from last year. Four tries are going to be hard to come by. I will be happy with a win.”
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