Penney: No legislating for mistakes made against Glasgow

Munster coach Rob Penney yesterday declared that no coaching could compensate for some of the mistakes made by his charges in the build up to Sunday’s Heineken Cup quarter-final clash with Harlequins at the Stoop.

As Penney contemplated Munster’s crushing defeat to Glasgow last weekend, he did so wary that Doug Howlett is struggling to overcome shoulder and knee injuries that will probably rule him out. The New Zealander has been given a 40-60 chance of making the cut when the team is announced tomorrow.

The good news is that Paul O’Connell is now moving into top gear, Conor Murray is ready to go at scrum half, Donnacha Ryan appears to be coming back into good shape and Simon Zebo has a better than average chance of making it back for his first game in nine weeks.

But all of that hasn’t stopped Penney admitting there had been failings all round in Munster’s season of discontent. Much of it has been brought about by injuries to key players but the coach laid the blame on individual mistakes when his side crashed to an untimely 51-24 defeat away to Glasgow last weekend.

Already out of the equation for RaboDirect Pro12 semi final places, Munster simply must beat Harlequins to prolong their season.

“It’s interesting,” he said.

“Without going into too much detail about the ‘going wide at all costs’ there were two intercept passes that were thrown from nine or from 10 throwing it back, so that’s in a very narrow channel in the middle of the field, both of those.

“And Casey [Laulala] basically just threw a bit of a wobbly one inexplicably. There’s no drive from the staff to tell people to be throwing those sorts of passes in those situations.”

Such criticism might not be well received by the players concerned, although Penney said the talking would be kept in-house.

“Good players made some unusual decisions and there have been some discussions behind the scenes.

“At one extreme you could say ‘goodness that’s not going to be good for the confidence and self-belief’ but on the other hand history would tell you this team has been in this situation before with a poor performance leading into the Heineken Cup and has been able to dip into the DNA and draw some strength out of that.

“I haven’t been here long enough but I do know from listening to other people that what you’re talking about has been evident in the past. This is a new group. They’ve got to try and find their own way of getting there to a performance which is credible and respectable.”