CJ Stander: 'We as a team like the pressure. I think we perform better as a team'

CJ Stander believes Munster can thrive in the pressure they find themselves under as they battle to keep their Champions Cup hopes alive at Leicester this Sunday.

A defeat to the Tigers at Thomond Park last Saturday leaves Munster again under the cosh going into round four of their Pool 4 campaign. They are still to play their round two game in Paris against Stade Francais, postponed from November 22 in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the French capital. But, having lost at home last weekend, Anthony Foley’s side are up against it, just as they were a year ago following a Limerick loss to Clermont.

Last season’s return trip to France produced a losing bonus point at Stade Marcel Michelin but the home defeat seven days previously proved the death knell for Munster’s qualification ambitions.

Captain Stander knows they could be in a similar situation after this weekend’s trip to England but after three consecutive error-strewn defeats in the Pro12 and into Europe, the back rower believes his side have no choice but to embrace the pressure of a must-win fixture, get their act together and start closing a nine-point deficit to Leicester in the pool standings.

“We as a team like the pressure. I think we perform better as a team. I know I perform better when I’m under pressure,” Stander said following Saturday’s 31-19 loss to the Tigers.

“There are four games to go but you need to be at the top of the table and you need to do that early and we have to do that and stop those easy tries.

“You want to win all of your games and this is our first loss, there are four still to go but we need the wins to get to the quarter-final and you need to do that early. I won’t say it is in the balance but it’s going to be an interesting game on Sunday.”

Munster enjoyed the lion’s share of possession against Leicester last weekend but were masters of their own downfall as they conceded three avoidable tries to Niki Goneva, Mike Fitzgerald and Ben Youngs through sloppy play at a maul, lineout and breakdown respectively.

“We made mistakes, you know, and mistake went on mistake. We made three mistakes and they got easy tries... that four-man lineout, we overthrew it (for Fitzgerald’s try) and you can’t make a mistake against a team like this because they are going to punish you and they did.We’ve been talking about mistakes for the last two weeks and we have to cut them out and play our game on Sunday.”

Not for the first time this month, Munster’s performance was undermined by poor handling and inaccuracies across the park. Having pledged to put things right following the league defeats to Connacht and at Newport Gwent Dragons, Stander said he remained convinced the province can turn things around in time for the visit to Leicester.

“I’ve been talking about it for the last couple of weeks and we’ve got eight days to turn it around. It’s easy to tell the boys not to make mistakes again, just concentrate on what you need to do and work from there. It’s going to be a week where we have to dig deep and look at ourselves and look at what we want to fix. We know what we want to fix and we know what we need to do and we just need to do it now.”