Anthony Foley drives Munster on to sign off with vital victory

with high stakes in every game and tension etched across head coaches’ brows from Galway to Parma ahead of today’s 22nd and final round of the Guinness Pro12 league campaign, you would wonder why the men in suits had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a brave new word of meritocracy.

Six venues across Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy will this afternoon ooh and aah, swing and sway, and ultimately be left laughing or crying as the regular season reaches its conclusion and matters are finally settled in scenarios that are as wide open as when the league got up and running back on September 4.

Seven months on and little is decided. No definitive table topper, no settled quartet of play-off semi-finalists, nor even a top six of qualifiers for next season’s Champions Cup. Even the right to represent Italy in the competition remains on a knife-edge as bottom club Zebre host the Newport Gwent Dragons in Parma while Treviso, a point ahead of their compatriots in 11th, travel to Dublin to face a Leinster side chasing second place.

There’s a clash of the top two with a home semi in two weeks guaranteed to the winner when leaders Glasgow visit Connacht, while Ulster will look for the victory at Ospreys that will secure their top-four finish ahead of Scarlets who visit Munster in Limerick.

Thomond Park should be back to its bouncing best today with more than 17,000 tickets sold for Munster’s last hurrah as they seek just the point which will see off Ospreys and Edinburgh’s designs on sixth place but head coach Anthony Foley and his players have plenty of incentive to sign off with a more affirming victory at the end of a long, hard and often trying campaign.

Already resigned to being the fourth best province in Ireland after missing out on a top-four finish for only the fourth time in 15 seasons, Foley has already paid the price for a miserably inconsistent season. His title will remain but today’s team will be the last Munster XV he selects before he is usurped by incoming director of rugby Rassie Erasmus. Pride and an innate desire to serve his province well will have driven Foley to drive his players as hard as he possibly can to sign off with a victory that will provide a spring air of optimism for Munster’s brave new future.

“Everybody wants to finish with a win,” Foley said. “That’s our preparation this week, to make sure we get that. Unfortunately, there’s a crowd over in Wales that wants something else. So we’ve to make sure that we’re good about our jobs this week, coaches, senior player group, we’re all driving from within.

“We’re all conscious that it’s week 45, there’s a lot of work gone in so far and it’s about making sure the group is fresh and energetic and ready for the task in hand because it’s going to be a high-octane game.”

As Foley alluded to, Scarlets will not arrive at Thomond Park looking to make up the numbers. Wayne Pivac’s side has business of its own to attend to and like Munster, they will have an eye on events over in Swansea where seventh-placed Ospreys host Ulster in fourth.

“We’ve talked about the scenarios, in relation to our match and Ulster’s match with Ospreys,” Pivac said. “We’re going with focus of a quarter-final, it’s a must-win match if we’re to progress without worrying too much about other matches.

“We’ll take the same approach as last week, get out there and focus on the performance and everything else should fall into place.

“They’ve just had a good win against Edinburgh. They’ve got a very good driving line-out. They’ll be a tough side. They have some good attacking threats. They’re a side that’s going to be very challenging, especially at home.

“We talked about last year’s top four (Glasgow, Munster, Ospreys, Ulster), we’ve played three of them away and won all three. I think this game is slightly different from those – there’s no more next week or second chances. We all know what we have to do which adds a little bit more pressure.

“Certainly, we have got the confidence of going, in particular to Ireland, Ulster was one of our best performances this season. It’s going to require another massive effort.”

Like his boss Foley, captain CJ Stander, newly and deservedly crowned Players’ Player of the Year, is determined to put a tricky season behind Munster and secure the sort of victory at Thomond Park that has not been regularly forthcoming this past seven months.

“That’s what we let slip this year — you have to win your home games for sure. I think Thomond Park has been a fortress and it’s not this year. That’s the thing we need to get back to, making this a fortress and making this our place, make it tough for teams to win here.

“We don’t want to let it be down to other teams doing you a favour by winning, losing, a bonus point. We want to do it ourselves, because we want to win going forward.

“There’s a lot of guys that have done a lot of work for Munster and have put in a lot of hours that need to win stuff and have to win stuff.”

All season long Stander has shown he has the right stuff. Now his team must follow suit.

MUNSTER:

S Zebo; A Conway, F Saili, R Scannell, K Earls; J Holland, C Murray; D Kilcoyne, N Scannell, S Archer; D Foley, B Holland; D O’Callaghan, T O’Donnell, CJ Stander - captain.

Replacements:

M Sherry, J Cronin, J Ryan, R Copeland, J O’Donoghue, D Williams, I Keatley, R O’Mahony.

SCARLETS:

L Williams; G Owen, S Hughes, H Parkes, S Evans; S Shingler, A Davies; R Evans, K Owens - captain, P Edwards; J Ball, D Bulbring; L Rawlins, J Davies, J Barclay.

Replacements:

R Elias, D Evans, R Jones, T Price, M Allen, G Davies, A Thomas, M Tagicakibau Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales).