Casey relishing Sarries battle
Despite losing back-to-back games to Clermont in rounds three and four, Munster left Stade Marcel-Michelin on Sunday evening with a precious losing bonus point to keep alive their hopes of qualifying for the European knockout stages. Casey played his part, pouncing for an intercept try five minutes from time, Ian Keatley converting and then delivering a penalty with the last kick of the game and move Munster inside the magic seven-point losing margin barrier at 26-19.
With both their rivals failing to gain bonus-point wins at the weekend, it leaves Anthony Foley’s side four points adrift of Pool One leaders Clermont and three behind second-placed Saracens, just about in with a chance of reaching the last eight. Nine points from the remaining two games would give them a chance, as Saracens also have to go to Clermont in round six, but that means the least they must do is win at Saracens’ Allianz Park on the weekend of January 16/17/18 and then hope for a home win in the final pool fixture against Sale Sharks the following weekend, with a four-try bonus point essential in one of those games.
Casey believes it is an achievable goal given the way Munster finished Sunday’s game in France.
“It’s obviously a difficult position and not one we’d usually find ourselves in but fortunately we got ourselves into a position tonight where we were able to get something out of the game,” Casey said.
“Historically down through the years, Munster have found themselves in this sort of position at times and we’ve had a bit of luck and things have gone our way in the past and hopefully it will be a similar story this year.”
Casey, though, is under no illusions at the scale of the task against the two English premiership sides and the front-row forward added: “They will both be very difficult fixtures. They were both very difficult games in the opening rounds but the fact that we’ve beaten both of them already gives us a good degree of confidence, particularly going away to Allianz Park. That will be a very tough encounter, it’s a very tough place to go but we’ll certainly be relishing it.
“We can be very encouraged by certain aspects of the game tonight. I think the rugby we played in the first half in particular was very damaging to Clermont and I think they struggled to cope with us.
“Then the fight we showed despite making a lot of errors, both in terms of the clinical nature of our attack and the very soft tries we gave away in defence, that wasn’t up to scratch and we’ve very disappointed with that but we showed very good heart to come back and get ourselves into a position to get something out of the game.
“We’ll certainly be encouraged by that and we’re by no means dead and buried.”
Munster are not the only ones heading into the final rounds with confidence, with Saracens wing Chris Ashton claiming the north Londoners can reach another level following Saturday’s 28-15 home win over Sale.
Saracens failed to get a bonus point, like Clermont coming up one short of the necessary four as they recorded back-to-back victories against the Sharks.
“The result is the positive,” Ashton insisted. “We’ve won home and away now, so we can go into the Premiership on the back of two good results. Going into these games against Sale we had lost two (league games) on the bounce, and that doesn’t happen very often to us, so it’s it good to be back to winning ways.
“It was a little bit frustrating not getting the bonus point. I think our discipline let us down from time to time, it’s definitely something we have to work on.
“We left a few tries out there, a lot of mistakes and I think we have a couple more gears in us yet. We’re happy with the win but we can still improve.”
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