SIMON LEWIS: Opportunity knocks for new breed of reds

Heineken Cup survival at Thomond Park.

A do-or-die moment. We have been to this tipping point so many times before with Munster it is almost a cliché.

Yet as the two-time champions prepare to welcome moneybags Racing Metro to Limerick tomorrow, there will be one actor in the drama missing an episode for the first time in this perennial series of last-minute penalties, last-kick drop goals and last-ditch try-saving tackles.

Ronan O’Gara, the maker of European rugby miracles and for so long the dashing hero in the theatre that is Thomond Park, must sit in the stalls and watch his understudy take to the stage.

The rash flash of a boot that is normally so exquisitely under control has rendered O’Gara a bystander for his province’s latest day of reckoning and handed Ian Keatley the part he has coveted since he left Leinster’s academy five seasons ago and headed west to Connacht in search of the starring role.

For a developing team emerging from the sheltered wings of the 2006 and 2008 heroes and fuelled by a desire to make its own mark in Munster lore, this could be the match they look back on and say, ‘it started then’.

It is that sort of occasion and Keatley, Conor Murray, Donnacha Ryan and their team-mates are determined not to let this one slip. Four tries or more in a victory over the French side should be enough to avoid a second exit at the group stage in three seasons and seal progress to the quarter-finals as one of the two best runners-up. What is more, Munster have the benefit of kicking off tomorrow afternoon in full knowledge of the requirements with their qualification rivals, chiefly Leinster and Montpellier, playing 24 hours earlier.

Knowing what you need to do and going out and getting it are two very different things, of course, as Munster have been only too aware throughout this season of ambitious but so-far frustrated objectives. Yet perhaps this is Munster’s chance to move on, the moment it all clicks.

The Munster players certainly feel they are that mythical ‘one pass away’ and when they click, the error count evaporates and the tries begin to flow.

Perhaps it needed that awful nadir against Cardiff Blues in the league at Musgrave Park two weekends ago to start turning things around. Abject defeat was turned into a welcome if flawed win in Edinburgh last Sunday and no tries were followed by two. This is Munster’s chance to move on another step.

In more ways than one. This could be the moment to start preparing for life without O’Gara in those backs against the wall moments when the now veteran fly-half could always be relied upon to guide them to the win. O’Gara may well be still around for such days but for Munster’s sake, the province needs a big performance from Keatley against Racing. O’Gara needs a worthy successor and this is Keatley’s chance to stand up and stake a claim. He has had a good season under the tutelage of Rob Penney and backs coach Simon Mannix and some very good tries have been executed on his watch. Now he needs to engineer four of them while keeping the scoreboard ticking over with the penalties Racing cannot help but keep conceding.

For all their flair, physicality and strength in depth, there is something definitive missing from this Parisian outfit’s psyche. How else to explain a team that allowed Munster to run roughshod over them for half an hour at Stade de France in the opening game in October and only sparked to life when the visitors after going awol.

How else to explain a team that can go to the bearpit that is Toulon’s Stade Mayol and bring home a rare Top 14 victory, then follow it up with three quick-fire tries against Saracens the following week only to implode against the Pool 1 leaders in terms of discipline and clarity of thought.

Anthony Foley offered a reminder of the narrow margins at play at this level when he compared last season’s six wins from six in pool play with this season’s three wins from five.

It needed, the defence and forwards coach recalled, two last-gasp drop goals from, whisper it, O’Gara, to get through the first two games against Northampton and at Castres before Munster got into the groove that took them to their first 100% record of the Heineken Cup group stages.

And this year could have been exactly the same, he said, but for some poor decision-making in the away games at Racing Metro and Saracens.

“Trying to play too much rugby in Vicarage Road,” Foley said of the Saracens game in December, when he believes they should have ground out the points, “and probably the last five minutes in Paris when we got into a position to win the game and unfortunately we gave them two kickable penalties and they executed that.

“In this group, so far, we’ve been in a position to win all five games... There isn’t a massive difference from last year when we managed to get through the group stages unbeaten. If we win on Sunday and get a quarter-final it will be looked upon as success, just as it was last year.”

This is a team Munster can get in the face of, unsettle at the set-piece and build up a healthy lead over. They’ve already done it to them only to hand the initiative right back. With the Thomond roar ringing in their ears and a very definite sense of what is required, that should not happen again. This is a chance Keatley and Co have to take.