Trying to get continuity is a juggling act

CRISIS? What crisis.

That was the message from the Munster dressing-room in Galway on Monday night after their hard earned and slightly controversial victory over luckless Connacht sent them seven points clear at the top of the Magners League.

Even though it was an extremely poor game that Munster were more than a little lucky to win, the result was badly needed after the defeat by Ospreys in the Heineken Cup followed by the unfortunate happenings during the Christmas party and Paul O’Connell’s failed appeal against his four-week European Rugby Cup ban.

“Some crisis alright,” agreed coach Tony McGahan after he had dealt with some searching questions about the quality of recent performances, the Christmas party debacle and the manner in which Dave Ryan gave way to Wian Du Preez, the man he had replaced, as Munster desperately defended a series of scrums on their own line deep into stoppage time.

It was a call that angered Connacht coach Eric Elwood and for many smacked of gamesmanship.

While there is an ever widening view that the Munster camp should issue an apology to their fans for what happened on that night in Kilkenny, McGahan simply refused to comment when asked to do so.

He was, however, more forthcoming in his assessment of the current standing of his squad.

“If you look at last week (the Heineken Cup defeat by Ospreys), we came up short by four points but, look, we’re in a really tough pool,’’ he maintained.

“What Toulon did to win away was a great victory and now we need to do that in round five. We always knew this was going to go down to the last two rounds and that’s where we are. We don’t need to panic at this stage.

“There’s room for improvement from day one. We’re at a stage where we had a side last week with quite a few changes. Trying to get a flow of continuity from week to week is a juggling act we have to deal with. We came back off a defeat against the Ospreys so it was really important that we got a result against a side (Connacht) who’ve proved very difficult in all the derby matches. That was our main priority this week.”

The scrum clearly remains a major source of concern for Munster. While Du Preez seems comfortable enough on the loose head side, Tony Buckley and John Hayes have come in for a deal of criticism for their contributions at tight head and the introduction of Kiwi Peter Borlase against an unrated Connacht front line hardly improved things to any great extent.

Indeed, there were times when, to use Connacht coach Eric Elwood’s expression, they “were sent jogging backwards”.

McGahan, however, claimed “We’ve certainly made some progress”.

But having thought about it for a moment, he did acknowledge that “it’s been hard to identify where that progress has been.”

Munster now turn their attentions to the visit of Ulster to Thomond Park on Saturday night.

They go into that game without Alan Quinlan, who suffered a serious elbow injury in Galway. It also remains to be seen how many of the national panel members will be available.

“We hope to have a few back,’’ said McGahan. “It’s a two week window with regards to rest. There’s a national camp on Wednesday and Thursday for forwards and nines (scrum-halves) so we’ll lose players there and we’ve only one training session this week to accommodate a lot of forwards. We’ll have to mix and match and go from there.”