Varley’s view of the future
Three semi-final defeats in two seasons under Rob Penney might represent success to some teams. Yet Munster need to be in finals, their status demands it and that Magners League success over Leinster in 2011 is fading from memory as the most recent silverware to enter the trophy cabinet.
Sure, there were some justified gripes from both Penney and his captain Damien Varley in Scotstoun who were rightly frustrated by some questionable officiating from Marius Mitrea and a television match official hamstrung by an insufficient number of camera angles.
Yet Glasgow deserved their victory. They were the better disciplined, more accurate and better able to execute the skills necessary to get the job done while Munster lacked penetration when they needed it most.
Yet Varley believes the distances to be covered in getting a developing squad within touching distance of silverware are matters of inches rather than miles.
“Losing by a point is tough but they’re the fine margins to win these competitions,” the hooker said on Friday night.
“They were a few unforced errors and a few discipline issues that kept [Glasgow] in the game at half-time and we need to take that on the chin but it probably shows us the level of difficulty it takes to win competitions.
“We’re a relatively young side, we’ve improved vastly over the last 12 months from the way we finished the league last year and the way we finished against Clermont last year in the Heineken Cup.
“There was a lot of progression throughout the year so if there’s anything to be learned, it is the difficulty in securing victories at this stage of competitions and we need to work on the discipline and how we approach these things day in, day out.
“It’s probably the sum of a lot of small things that we need to get right throughout the year.”
Change is inevitable in any professional sports outfit and as well as Penney’s tenure ending on Friday as he heads to Japan’s NTT Shining Arcs, backs coach Simon Mannix will depart for Pau while Casey Laulala is heading for France and centre partner James Downey is also believed to be on his way there. Ian Nagle will exit the camp and Niall Ronan has been forced to retire.
New head coach Foley will welcome Irish No.8 Robin Copeland from Cardiff Blues, Brumbies centre Andrew Smith and former All Blacks U20 captain and fly-half Tyler Bleyendaal from the Crusaders while his backroom staff is expected to be finalised this week barring any last-minute hitches.
A new broom is set to sweep through Munster but for Varley and those players already in place there are clearly issues to be addressed about how they will rebound and get into a position where they can compete for trophies.
“It’s going to be disappointing for the next few days, looking at it,” Varley said.
“Some guys’ careers have finished within the Munster organisation and for those of us that are left we need to regroup and learn the difficulty of winning by fine margins at these stages of competitions. We need to constantly improve.
“In sport you lose a lot more than you win and that’s what makes winning sweeter and we haven’t achieved that.
“Most of this group, the last thing we won was the Magners League a few years ago and a lot of the group weren’t there for it, so we need to grasp it and we need to understand the failures and analyse the little things so that we can improve and bring Munster back to where it should be.”
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