O’Connell salutes de Villiers

MUNSTER’S Springbok centre Jean de Villiers and Australian forwards coach Lawrie Fisher have endured some heavy criticism over the past few months but captain Paul O’Connell was quick to praise the duo after Sunday’s remarkable Heineken Cup hammering of Perpignan at the Stade Aime Giral.

Second half replacement De Villiers silenced his critics with a brilliantly timed run that carried him through a barricade of Perpignan defenders and over the line. As he picked himself up, he was almost knocked back down again by an avalanche of team-mates anxious to add their congratulations. !

“Everyone was delighted for Jean,” said the captain. “He’s an incredible guy … he got dropped and his reaction to it was to carry water bottles and spare jerseys for everyone.

“Remember this is a guy who has won a World Cup, won a series against the Lions, he reacted incredibly well. You saw when he scored his try how delighted everyone was for him and it gives us great competition for places.”

And then there is Fisher, the Aussie tasked with turning out a succession of forward packs capable of performing in the traditional Munster fashion. Admittedly, they haven’t done so on a regular basis this season but some of the barbs directed at Fisher subsequently seemed ill-informed and unfair

So when O’Connell was asked to explain how Munster managed to turn over so much Perpignan possession on Sunday, he was quick to apportion credit to Fisher.

“He is one of the best coaches I have ever had at that facet of the game,” he admitted. “He’s been incredible for us at the breakdown. A lot of the time, we’re not putting into effect what we’re working on at the training ground but a lot of it came through this time. That’s the way it goes some days, other times you lose at the breakdown and it becomes a lot harder.”

Fisher, Tony McGahan and Jason Holland aren’t the only wise heads in the Munster think-tank. Another key man is former leader Anthony Foley, who carried out the water bottle duties on Sunday and had some crucial advice for the players at a key moment.

David Wallace revealed that Foley: “came on after we scored the third try and, as only Axel can, focused the minds and told us, ‘let’s go and get this bonus point, we’re in a great position here and it would be huge for us’.

“The game was going a lot looser and it could have gone either way with a pass. It was our attitude in reacting to the ball first that got us those turnovers.”

Quite sensibly, O’Connell pretends not to listen when informed that the only teams to beat Perpignan at home, Leicester and Wasps, went on to win the Heineken Cup.

Instead he supports the view of McGahan when he stressed that “this can’t be a finishing point, rather a starting point”.

Munster will know today the exact dates of their next two Heineken Cup games against Treviso (January 15-17) and Northampton (Jan 22-24). For now, though, they realise that two wins will send them through to the quarter-finals with no need for bonus points while the prospects for a home quarter-final are pretty bright.

And with a fortnight in which to rest his weary bones, O’Connell has time to muse about where Sunday’s result stands in the table of great away Munster results.

“It’s very hard to say how this win rates among the many others we’ve had down here. But in the context of how we’ve been playing and where we’ve been coming from, it’s a great win.

“I would like to make a big mention to the supporters. In the time of recession, they paid the money to make the journey. We heard them out there and they were great. Perpignan is a very tough place to come to, an incredible stadium with great supporters and to come here and come up with the bonus point in the dying minutes was a great achievement. With 12 minutes to go and three tries in the bank, we were hopeful of getting a fourth but coming down here, it was all about getting a win and if it was a one point win, we didn’t care.”

One of the most gratifying aspects of the Munster performance was how they fared in the set pieces. Whatever about the line-out, where O’Connell, Donncha O’Callaghan and Alan Quinlan are always likely to give them an edge, there was concern about the team’s capacity for dealing with the highly rated Perpignan scrum.

O’Connell said: “We’re missing Jerry Flannery who is an outstanding hooker but we’re lucky to have two young guys coming up in Denis Fogarty and Damien Varley. Denis seemed to be poaching at every single breakdown and that’s fabulous work rate. You’re missing people of the quality of Marcus Horan and Jerry, two guys with probably more than 100 caps between them. Without them, coming up with a performance like this makes for a great feeling.”