O’Connell: Munster’s morale as high as ever

MUNSTER skipper Paul O’Connell insists “the morale of the team is the same as it ever was” despite back-to-back defeats against Leinster and Northampton.

O’Connell and company bid to get their Heineken Cup campaign back on track on Saturday against Benetton Treviso and the squad have been pouring over the video of Saturday’s narrow defeat to the Saints at Franklin’s Gardens in an effort to rediscover the winning formula.

O’Connell was unequivocal when asked if he felt, in hindsight, that the wrong choice had been made at the death by going for a tap penalty instead of a set piece. He replied: “Our scrum was in trouble. We weren’t getting any great amount of good ball and that was the decision.”

French referee Christophe Berdos has been criticised for blowing the final whistle so quickly but O’Connell wasn’t apportioning blame on the official: “It was a bit of a non-decision. He should have let us get the ball back if he wasn’t going to penalise them. It was one or the other. He looked at it as the ball being stuck.

“But that’s not what lost us the match – we turned our backs on Geraghty, the penalties we conceded and the soft try after half time when we came out of our line and Geraghty went through a hole. That’s what cost us the match, our play and our decisions, not the referee.”

O’Connell could not conceal the squad’s disgust at some of the errors made Saturday and at the RDS, against Leinster, a week earlier.

“We’ve never given away points on the road like we did last week,” he lamented. “While there were signs of us finding a bit of form, we’re still giving up easy points. You can’t do that against good sides. I don’t think it’s anything that needs radical overhaul.

“We’re all making mistakes and if individually we can pull out one mistake each, it will go along way for us. If you look at the Geraghty try before half time, there’s nothing that needs to be practised in training to prevent anything like that happening and I think the same applies for the try after half time when Geraghty made the break.”

But O’Connell sounded a positive note: “I think the morale of the team is the same as it ever was. It really was a good comeback considering that for three of us in the pack, it was our first 80 minutes of the season. To finish strongly was a great thing. It was a good comeback but as Rog said afterwards, we allowed a chance to win the game slip.”

Any suggestions Treviso would be the whipping boys of the pool vanished with the Italians’ victory over French champions Perpignan. It rocked the rugby world and made all at Munster sit up and take notice.

“They were outstanding,” agreed O’Connell. “They have a very solid lineout, second-row Cornelius Van Zyl would have been the Cheetahs chief lineout operator and they had the best lineout in the Super 14.

“They have an excellent maul and scrum and seem to be very well coached. Watching their set piece, they know what they’re doing. The beat the French champions and no matter what way you look at it, that’s a very big achievement. They’ll be coming full of confidence and with nothing to lose.”