Davies: we still have role to play

RIVAL coaches Declan Kidney and Phil Davies and the Llanelli Scarlets captain Simon Easterby were agreed on one subject after Saturday’s Heineken Cup bruiser at Stradey Park.

Although the Welsh side are now out of the competition and pointless after three games, they are hell bent on making an impression in at least one of their three remaining matches.

The first of those takes place at Thomond Park on Sunday next when Llanelli expect to have Stephen Jones back at out-half and it’s an occasion to which they are avidly looking forward.

Davies promised that his side would give their all in each of the remaining Heineken matches. They are embarrassed at finding themselves at the very bottom of the so called pool of death and are desperately anxious to do something about it.

“We want to win the next three,” he asserted. “You have to take your hat off and give credit to Munster, they are a great team in this competition and tonight they put something like 27 to 30 phases together. That was terrific play in these kinds of conditions.

“They were more consistent than we were in managing the conditions. We were chipping away and got it to 22-16 and there was a penalty for us to go 22-19. There was some light there for us. There are fine margins. We are moving in the right direction and we’ll get some results hopefully starting with next week. We’ve got to keep going. These guys [Munster] have won this event and been in many finals and we want that experience as well.

“The other teams in the pool are all capable of winning or beating each other at any one time. It will be intriguing but we’re still in there as well, we’re not going to lie down and make it easy for anyone. We’ll be happy if we can come out of this pool with three out of six and that’s still in our hands at the moment. It’s a great challenge to play back to back games against such a great team, we did it last year against Toulouse, we’ve got to do it this year against Munster.

“I haven’t been to Thomond Park in a long time. I believe it’s in change but it’s a great place. When the Scarlets and Munster supporters get together on a special occasion, it’s fantastic. You saw that tonight in horrific conditions.”

Declan Kidney quietly accepted all the plaudits from his Llanelli counterpart and pays them due credit in return.

“The Scarlets aren’t gone, they’re going to have an effect on this group,” he maintained. “This is a back to back fixture and it was a huge achievement for us to come over and win here. There are very few teams who manage to get the better of them two weeks running. Scarlets are a very good side and if we don’t have all our players up and running, we’ll be in trouble.

“It was just extremely difficult for all 31 people out on the pitch and nobody realised that more than the referee. He had a chat with the captains after 55 minutes and told them we’d have to keep an eye on this. He had the players safety in mind and everybody had to see it through. There was no talking in the dressing-room afterwards, it was just a case of getting into the showers and getting healthy again.

“This kind of thing imposes demands on the body. For some of our players, it was the second time in eight days playing in this kind of weather and we also trained in it on Thursday. It was a night for forwards. We were in trouble in the first half when they got their scores. But we showed composure then and managed to get a point, then four points ahead and the try came from a bit of quick thinking. Once you’re eight points up in conditions like that, you don’t have to force the game, you don’t have to go after scores and that’s what we did. It was a case of owning the ball and playing the game out which I think we did reasonably well.”

Simon Easterby added his belief that the Scarlets still have a role to play in the pool of death: “We’re out of it now so we must make sure we front up on the next day. Hopefully the conditions won’t be the way they were tonight and give us an opportunity to play some rugby and show what we can do in this group. It’s the ideal time to go to Munster and play in a real hostile atmosphere and come away with a result. That would be fantastic for us as a group of players because we have put a lot of work in and are not getting the rewards at the moment.”