Keatley: We learned a lesson from defeat to Racing

A postmortem into Munster’s Heineken Cup loss to Racing Metro last week has revealed a startling statistic: Racing kicked the ball 61 times while Munster, despite the wet conditions, only punted the ball up field on 30 occasions.

Clearly, Ian Keatley wasn’t about to complain about the approach into which everyone in the squad has bought into, but he did muse that they might “have taken a leaf from their book”.

“I think it is pretty obvious what our game plan is. It is an expansive game plan and we are actually getting good mileage from it but once or twice it broke down.

“We’re obviously disappointed. We were in control of that game, I think we beat ourselves rather than Racing beating us, but then again at the end of the day they were the team that came away with the points and fair credit to them.”

But Keatley promised they would put the game behind them in time for the visit of Edinburgh to Thomond Park on Sunday.

“Yes, we were in a winning position with five minutes to go. We would have taken that before the game but we didn’t close it out. However, we still came away with a bonus point from France which is still a good result although we could have got more out of it.

“We will stand by our decisions. We took responsibility on the pitch and it didn’t come off. I know talking to the lads that we have learned a lot from that and we’re looking forward to Sunday.”

It’s a massive week for Keatley who will make his first Heineken Cup start at out half in place of the injured Ronan O’Gara.

“I’m learning a lot from Ronan. He’s a hugely experienced player on the top of the game for 11 or 12 years so I love learning from him.”