Munster’s golden opportunity for a home quarter-final

Did it really matter what sort of team Racing 92 would send? The French champions could have brought a squad of U16s to Limerick for this evening’s Champions Cup pool finale at Thomond and there would still be no sign of a let-up from Rassie Erasmus’s players.

This is all about Munster.

With 11 wins accrued from the last 12 games, the bit is now firmly between their teeth and their mission to secure a home quarter-final will not lose any intensity because the opposition has switched its focus away from Europe to matters domestic. Racing will field a side featuring all their France squad call-ups as their contingent of homegrown stars play one final game before going into Six Nations camp with Les Bleus.

Yet they have left at home the overseas contingent they will rely on to get them past Lyon and back into the top half of the table when the Top 14 title defence resumes next weekend. All of which means Conor Murray will be facing France rival Maxime Machenaud in a battle of Test scrum-halves while the Munster front row will pack down against Eddy Ben Arous and Camille Chat. Fly-half Tyler Bleyendaal, however, will not get to go head to head with Dan Carter, but instead will vie with Benjamin Dambielle and replacement Franck Pourteau, a 20-year-old rookie with limited experience of even training with Racing’s senior squad.

Not that any of that will permit Munster management to stray off the week’s theme of making complacency the worst crime in the playbook.

The prospects of a home quarter-final come April, guaranteed with a victory over Racing this evening, may appear to have increased with the news from Paris of an understrength team but Rassie Erasmus will not countenance any suggestion within his camp thoughts have turned to the margin of victory rather than the securing of it.

“Complacency is definitely not a problem,” Erasmus saidbefore referencing the contrasting fortunes between rounds three and four.

“Leicester at home and away is a prime example of us not handling the intensity of a team doing its best to try and turn its season around. This weekend we will face Racing, who we beat solidly on that side but they smashed Leicester last weekend and they are trying to turn their season around and that’s a very dangerous team.

“They have individual brilliant players who can rip you apart. Even the Glasgow game at home they could have scored four tries in the first 20 minutes which they didn’t and that would have presented a different situation for them.

“Our guys are definitely not complacent with what is at stake. If we win this game we can have a home quarter-final and repay the crowds who have been supporting us at home and away with a home quarter-final. So complacency is not a problem, it’s just about making sure that energy is channelled into playing well because I didn’t think in Glasgow we played well tactically. The intensity was right up there but tactically we weren’t at our best.”

And then there is the Rog factor. Visibly smarting after Munster ran Racing ragged in the Parisian suburbs with a bonus-point 32-7 win two weeks ago, Ronan O’Gara will be keen to protect his blossoming coaching reputation in a stadium where his legacy as a player is virtually unrivalled.

He will be the homecoming hero in that regard, and rightly lauded. Nor will any one of the sell-out 26,200 deny him the right to seek some vengeance for the mauling his players received at Munster’s hands at Stade Yves du Manoir. Erasmus certainly expects the former fly-half to ensure Racing throw down the gauntlet at Thomond Park.

“I’ve met Rog a few times when I was playing against him but I’d never met him socially,” Erasmus said. “He came to visit us post the game over there ... I can see why he was such a big part of Munster, he lives, breathes and speaks rugby, and also a lot about Munster, so I don’t think it will be a big challenge to him. He is such a competitive guy, I think he will come here and try and beat us and also enjoy the situation. I think it will be a nice trip for him.”

Conor Murray, whose first steps as a senior scrum-half were taken with O’Gara on his shoulder, concurred with Erasmus about his former team-mate’s thirst for revenge.

“You could see in the interview after that game over there, he was very angry and a little bit embarrassed by the performance they put in,” Murray said. “I know Rog and he’ll have them revved up and he’ll want them to give a good account of him and the coaching staff and there’s no doubt about it, they will be improved. They’ve played against us once and they’ll know a bit about us and they’ll be ready for that too.”

With O’Gara in the stadium in which he forged his legend and lighting fires in the Racing dressing room, Erasmus is expecting a team eager to atone for their embarrassment of a fortnight ago and Machenaud gave him all the evidence he needed this will be a side intent on showing their true colours.

“It was a non-match on our part, we let Munster play,” Machenaud said of their Paris meeting. The whole group was disappointed with our performance, so it’s up to us to show another side in this return match. Okay, Munster is a good team, but we are able to do much better. And that’s what we’re going to try to show on Saturday. “

Munster will take note but for all their pre-match caution, they have been presented with a golden chance to secure a return to knockout rugby at Thomond for the first time in three seasons. Their form, momentum and home advantage in front of another sell-out 26,200 crowd should ensure they grasp it.