Munster ready to do their talking on the pitch

Two weeks of talking a good game have done little for Munster’s performance levels so what better moment than a big European night at Thomond Park for stand-in captain CJ Stander to demand his team start to match words with deeds.

Old foes Leicester come to Limerick on Saturday night for a Champions Cup Pool 4 fixture that recalls the heady Heineken Cup campaigns of the noughties for both clubs.

It is the Tigers, though, that are currently showing all the signs of recapturing the glory years having secured bonus-point wins over French champions Stade Francais and Italians Treviso in the opening rounds to back up promising early-season form in the English Premiership.

In their last two league games since the trip to the group minnows, Richard Cockerill’s outfit from the East Midlands have seen off Bath and Worcester, a stark contrast to the recent dip in form suffered by the Irish province.

Since Munster’s round-two visit to Stade Francais was postponed at the request of Paris authorities in the wake of the terrorist atrocities in the French capital on November 13, Anthony Foley’s team has lost Pro12 games to Connacht at Thomond Park and on the road at Newport Gwent Dragons.

Back row Stander, who signed a new two-year contract with Munster on December 1 having qualified to play for Ireland following a 2012 move from his native South Africa, was rested for the 22-6 defeat at Rodney Parade last Sunday. He admitted he had been surprised that the errors made in the previous weekend’s 18-12 home loss to league leaders Connacht had continued for a second week in succession.

“After Connacht we looked deep into ourselves and said ‘this is wrong, we need to fix this, this and this’. It flowed into the Dragons game and kept creeping in,” Stander said.

“There was a lot of talk about ourselves, about the team and what we need to do all this week. We need to do it now. We talked a lot and we just need to go out and play our game. This is a big week for us. This week and the next six weeks is massive for us.

“It is going to define where we are going in the next few weeks in the season. We were disappointing in the last two weeks. We didn’t play our game. We made a lot of mistakes and it showed in our game when we lost against Connacht and the Dragons at the weekend. I think if we can cut out the mistakes and play our game like we did in the season prior to these two games then we can win stuff at the end of the year.

“We know exactly what we want to do, when we need to run, where we need to be and we just need to play our game.

“Sometimes there are a few mistakes in mental prep, boys in the wrong positions, but we need to fix that in the next few weeks and we will be flying after that.” Stander remains positive he and his Munster team-mates have what it takes to raise the level of their play, if only because the province is back on the European stage.

He believes he has the qualities to emulate former Munster totems who captained the province to the Heineken Cup victories of 2006 and 2008 by leading from the front. “Those boys, you always looked up to them during these weeks. They were leading the charge. Now it’s moved on. We’re a young group, so there’s a new leaders group and it’s upon me and a lot of the leaders to drive these standards.

“That’s the thing we drove from (Monday), going into Tuesday’s training, that we need to drive the standards. I don’t like a lot of talking, I just like to show them. That’s how I try to drive the standards. And that’s how we, as a team, are going forward this week.” “We’re a young group and there’s a lot of new faces, young guys in the squad and I think we spoke as a group about wanting to create our own legacy and win stuff. You can’t look back on what they did in ‘06 and ‘08. It’s not the same people, there’s a few of those players coaching now.

“For me, it’s not a burden at all captaining Munster, it’s a huge challenge because it brings a different level to my game, where I lead the team by the way I play. I just need to be more vocal now but there’s a lot of boys stepping up. You have Tomás O’Leary now, you have (Conor) Murray, you have Keats, you have Denis Hurley talking up.

“So we have a good group, a good core group that leads the team.”