Time to brush-up on the rules

MUNSTER’S concession of aplethora of penalties against New Zealand and Clermont Auvergne has many fans wondering if the players are familiar enough with the current laws.

Few need reminding how Frenchman Romain Poite whistled them off the Thomond Park pitch in the All Blacks game and England official Wayne Barnes was similarly harsh at Stade Marcel Michelin on Sunday.

While Munster coach Tony McGahan was philosophical enough after the All Blacks match, he wasn’t quite so kindly disposed towards Mr Barnes and commented afterwards that “I don’t know the exact penalty count but again we were on the wrong side of the ledger there and it’s something that I will certainly have to address with the referee“.

Hopefully, the information gleaned will help the coach and his players as they prepare for the all-important, sell-out return fixture at Thomond Park on Saturday (3.30pm). If they get on the wrong side of Chris White, an official who knows Munster and all their wiles for many years, it could well be curtains as far as the defence of the title is concerned.

You have to expect the players were a chastened bunch after Sunday’s game. It wasn’t that they played all that badly but the concession of all those penalties was a serious blight on their performance. And that’s why people are suggesting they should take time off this week to study the rule book and even invite a former referee of the standard of Dave McHugh, who happens to be an employee of the IRFU, to go through Sunday’s video and point out just where they are going wrong.

The penalty immediately after half-time that sparked the home team’s revival was maddening. Munster had won clean, quick first phase possession in midfield, which Ronan O’Gara and Lifeimi Mafi would love to have used. Instead, they opted to break off the back of the scrum, were stopped on the gain line and then inevitably penalised. James took full advantage from a situation where a likely Munster attack should have been underway.

That was the kind of thing McGahan was referring to when he noted: “I thought we pushed too much ball without going forward. You really need to know when to go with the flow of the game and I don’t think we did that in the first 20twenty minutes of the second half.”

A repeat of Sunday’s errors, especially with a marksman of Brock James in the opposing lineup, will land Munster in all kinds of trouble.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Munster can take some solace from the first-half display on Sunday when they could have scored three tries.

The let-offs clearly lifted the home side and no doubt prompted their devastating opening 20 minutes of the second period.

While nobody was looking for excuses on Sunday night, the illness that had knocked a fair bit of steam out of Horan before the game obviously weakened the loosehead prop and he had to be replaced with quarter of an hour to go. In the first half though, he had produced a wondrous piece of dexterity in scoring his ninth Heineken Cup try.

On top of that, Alan Quinlan slipped on icy ground on Saturday morning as he stepped off the team bus and had to have six stitches in an elbow wound. That setback combined with a three-week suspension affected his all-round contribution and he also had to be replaced as the pressure came on in the second half.

It is unlikely that McGahan will make too many changes at this crucial stage of the season although after the last two games in Llanelli and Clermont, this does look like a Munster team in need of an injection of adrenalin and firepower. Players like Mick O’Driscoll, so influential against the All Blacks but now not deemed worth a place on the bench, should come into the reckoning, while the coach will also look at the back row and whether David Wallace is best employed at number eight.

Many believed Paul Warwick was harshly treated at being dropped having produced “blinders” against Sale Sharks and the All Blacks. He could now return in a re-shuffled back division at full-back with Keith Earls switching to his best position in midfield where Rua Tipoki was badly missed in Clermont.

The reality, though, is that Tipoki won’t be available again until the new year and that anything but a win on Saturday will almost certainly mean the end of the Munster dream of joining Leicester as the only team to retain the Heineken Cup.