Munster must rise to next level

Over the next two weekends, Rob Penney is about to learn just how much progress has been made since he began his revolution of the Munster rugby philosophy five months ago.

The New Zealander has rightly and repeatedly urged Munster’s passionate followers that his is a long-term mission to develop a predominantly young squad into a group of intelligent, instinctive and clear-thinking rugby players.

So far the signs have been good, but they are just that. Signs. Glimpses. Passages of play that point tantalisingly towards a 15-man Munster gameplan where forwards and backs interact as equals, sharing the intensity and physicality required of the former as well as the ball-handling and decision-making qualities necessary in the latter.

Grunt and grace, across the park. A bit like the way Saracens can play, and as we may see at Thomond Park today when the English Premiership heavyweights come to Limerick looking to maintain their 100% start to their Heineken Cup pool campaign.

Saracens, with an impressive blend of English and Springbok heft and finesse, can be guaranteed to offer this transitional Munster side a very tough examination of the progress made by Penney in those first five months, although the former Canterbury coach insists these back-to-back games should not be regarded as a litmus test of his players’ development in that time.

“As the season progresses, the team’s getting more and more accurate and starting to become more and more instinctive, which is great,” Penney said yesterday.

“But it’s hard to say from the inside... So who knows, we’ll wait and see and the proof will be in the next couple of weeks, I would say.

“It’s still early days. If you think of the amount of people who aren’t in the group and who have left Munster in the last couple of years, there’s still a lot of learning and development to go on with this group before this group achieves ultimately what it’s capable of, so it’s early days in their progress, so I wouldn’t be using this as a measuring stick just yet.”

What would be significant today, and what is really needed if Saracens are to be denied and Munster’s own qualification hopes sustained, is a hitherto elusive 80-minute performance. Munster put in a Jekyll and Hyde display in their opening European pool game at Stade de France when Racing Metro were allowed to come back and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And while there were massive improvements in the following week’s 33-0 victory over a poor Edinburgh side to get the campaign back on track, it needed a late flurry of tries to get the job done.

Like the little girl in Longfellow’s poem, when Munster have been good, they’ve been very, very good and while not quite being horrid when they have been bad, Penney needs his players to click for longer periods against this Saracens outfit than has been seen to this point.

After the disappointing setback against Scarlets in the deluge at Musgrave Park, Munster successfully reintegrated some of their Ireland players and got a big improvement in the league win against Glasgow last weekend. They are clearly heading in right direction coming into two very important games against quality opposition but, as Donnacha Ryan pointed out this week, they will need to be at least 25% better than last Saturday when it comes to the performance required to defeat Saracens.

Mark McCall’s star-laden side can play the game any way they want, purely by forward power – and the best lineout in the competition to date — through the kicking boots of Neil de Kock, Charlie Hodgson as well and Owen Farrell, chosen at outside centre, or through their powerful and creative back five, four of whom contributed so much to England’s famous win over the All Blacks last weekend.

“They’ll be tremendously buoyed by that [England victory] and they’re quality players,” Penney said. “They’ve got maturity and experience right across their group. They have international players everywhere, and not only are they international players, they’re international players with a lot of experience so they are some real challenges in that Saracens group.”

Not least on the bench where quality of the calibre of John Smit, England’s latest loosehead find Mako Vunipola, scrum-half Richard Wigglesworth and rugby league convert Joel Tomkins lie in wait with the capabilities of turning the game.

Matching fire with fire in all departments, defending with intensity and keeping the error and penalty counts to a minimum are all vital to Munster’s hopes of victory. And there is still a lot to be said for the Thomond effect.

With feisty, experienced soldiers such as Schalk Brits, captain Steve Borthwick and Ernst Joubert, this is not a Saracens side to be overawed by the experience but the home side could well find that their bid to rise to the next level of their evolution is significantly boosted by evenings such as this promises to be.

As kids on the terraces, Conor Murray, Mike Sherry and their peers saw the energising effects the Thomond roar can have on those wearing the red jersey in those classic encounters with English rivals. Tonight they will experience it for themselves and who knows what powers it will give them.

Back in 2000, it took a last-gasp effort and the boot of Ronan O’Gara to squeak home against an equally talented Saracens side in added time. It could well need a similar effort tonight but Munster first have to get the preceding 80 minutes spot-on.