Munster face emotional weekend in grief-stricken Paris for Champions Cup match
The Irish province go to the Stade Jean Bouin in south-west Paris on Sunday to continue a Pool 4 campaign which got up and running at the weekend with a 32-7 bonus-point victory in round one at home to Treviso. French champions Stade, meanwhile, opened with a 33-20 loss at Leicester Tigers on Friday night as their home city was coming under siege at the hands of terrorists, the terrible outcome of which saw 128 people murdered.
All Champions Cup fixtures on French soil over the weekend were postponed, with games elsewhere in the competition preceded by a minute’s silence as rugby paid its respects to the victims but emotions will remain close to the surface next week and beyond as both Stade and Racing Metro struggle alongside fellow Parisians to come to terms with the shocking and deadly events.
“What happened is tragic,” said man-of-the-match Stander after the win over Treviso. “We saw what happened. It was very bad. I don’t know if you saw it but we wore black armbands. It’s something we have in the back of our minds. It’s difficult but we have a job to do. It’s not going to effect what happened anyway. We just have to go out there, play our game and respect the people of France.
“It’s really tragic. This is something that can really gel a team. Especially from their side. It’s quite emotional. The French are emotional people anyway and we know that. We’re just going to concentrate on our game.”
Munster head coach Anthony Foley echoed the try-scoring No.8 when he spoke of the difficulty of asking his players to treat next Sunday’s fixture purely as a game of rugby.
“You often hear we live in a different world than most people but everybody was touched by what happened,” Foley said. “You try and keep a ban on Twitter and stuff like that but I think a lot of people were quite open about the shock they had at what was going on. It’s about getting a focus on a job.
“You understand it’s not the most important job in the world, it’s not like that, but we’ve got to go and represent our people on Sunday and make sure we do it in the right manner and get it done.
“During the week we’ll have one media day and there’ll be a lot discussed in that but other than that it will probably be the only day it’s mentioned within the group.”
Stander watched Stade score three tries at Welford Road and still go down to a Leicester side that finished the game with the maximum five points. The Irish-qualified No.8 said playing last season’s Top14 winners, led by Sergio Parisse, will offer a young Munster side a good litmus test as to where the province stands in the current European order.
“They played good rugby at stages,” Stander said of Stade. “They made a few small mistakes here and there that cost them. We’ll probably look into them in depth on Monday. We’ve said it as a group, we’re a new team, we’ve a few new players. We wanted to start the competition off well.
“I think the boys came out tonight and showed what we can do. We just want to focus on the next round now and see what happens. On to Paris.”
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