Taking the Payne out of management

LINING OUT in tonight’s Magners League season-opener against Llanelli Scarlets at Musgrave Park (5:30pm) was not what Shaun Payne had envisaged when he signed up as manager this summer.

But part of the deal was he’d play a handful of matches for Munster if required. With nominal full backs, Denis Hurley (ankle) and Mossie Lawler (back strain) injured, Payne will pull on the red jersey for the 94th time. Yet he won’t look out of place. Just last month, he was training “full on” with Munster in Chicago, so this SOS call would not have come as a surprise. He’s in great shape and will also be playing AIL rugby with UL-Bohs this season.

His main role, team manager, has been “easier than I thought,” he said, as Munster streamlined their management structure during the summer. Former manager, Jerry Holland, will remain on temporarily in an advisory capacity, but the South African is relishing the role.

“As manager, I’m a facilitator for the players,” said Payne, “making sure everything is in place for them. Having been a player myself, I understand where they’re coming from and their concerns. To be honest, we don’t really have discipline problems here — we don’t have guys going out boozing. It’s very seldom a player would have to be taken aside — it’s just the nature of what we have in the squad. The fear factor is there especially amongst the younger players who don’t want to put a foot wrong at all.”

As well as training with the squad, he pitches in with the coaching, which is what he did with Limerick AIL division two club Thomond last season.

When he decided to step down from a full-time playing role, returning home crossed his mind. “It was always a consideration when you’ve got kids,” said Payne. “They’re not around their grandparents. The family is missing you and you’re missing the family. That’s the only thing that would make us consider moving back to South Africa. But we’re very happy here, especially bringing up our family in Ballina (Co Clare).”

It’s understandable why he loves Munster and why the fans built a strong bond with him when he arrived from Swansea in August 2003. As an outsider he bought into the ‘Munster Way’ of doing things very quickly. “To be accepted in Munster, what you really need to do is to give everything you’ve got. Fellas never asked anything more than that — if you’re seen to shirk, if you’re seen to not try your best or pull out of a tackle here or there, you’re gone.

“If they see that you’re honest and not just over for the big bucks, you’ll be fine. If you show that, it’s the best bunch of lads ever. There are some guys you have to drag off the training pitch because they’re doing too much. Paul O’Connell is an example.”

He is tremendously excited by this season’s new signings — Paul Warwick, Niall Ronan, Kieran Lewis, Rua Tipoki and Doug Howlett will be huge additions, adding that a younger player, like Denis Hurley, and heir apparent to his fullback position, will develop into a top class player. More than anything he wants these players — outside of Howlett, who arrives in January — to put down a marker in the first six games of the ML.

“We’re looking at the first six games of the season when theoretically we’ll be without our World Cup players. We’re not looking past that at the moment. The group of players we have needs to concentrate on the Magners League. We’ll need to do as well as we possibly can and make it as hard as possible for those guys coming back from the World Cup to get in.”

He also feels Munster need to start paying the Magners League more respect. “I think we’ve reached the stage where we owe the Magners League a bit more than we have in the last season or two. As a competition, it’s developing and gaining a bit of momentum. I think it will develop very well as a tournament. We maybe have to pay more respect to it than we are doing now, than we did in the last season or two.”