Niall Scannell: We’d be foolish to change lineout over Grobler

By Michael Moynihan

Some familiar faces await Niall Scannell this Saturday at Thomond Park. Gerbrandt Grobler was a teammate last year, and now he’s a Gloucester player.

Will that change Scannell’s as he looks at the first lineout?

“Look, it’s one of those things, it takes weeks and weeks of the pre-season to get a lineout functioning to the level that it gets to for the games, so it would be foolish to try and change our whole lineout now in a week.

“It is just not doable and it would just be foolish of us, so we will certainly stick to more of the same. Obviously there will be certain things that he will have an eye out for that maybe we will have to tweak, but on the whole we probably will just have to be a bit more discreet about how we actually physically call things on the day, but in terms of what we call.

“I think it would be foolish for us to deviate too much ‘cos of GG. Obviously he knows our system, that is just the nature of professional rugby, fellas move on, they don’t forget things, so it is something we will have to contend with, but hopefully it won’t be a big factor for us.”

They dealt with it last year when Donnacha Ryan was with Racing, of course.

“I think we probably tried a lot of different things against Racing for different reasons, not just because of Donnacha, but things that we saw that we thought we might get joy out of, and look, the lineout didn’t function well on the day, so I think we will probably take a bit from that we won’t be deviating too much.

“Our maul went really well at the weekend, so I think if you are posing a question to a team like that, then we will probably ask the question again and see how Gloucester answer it and that will be our primary strategy.

“We will have other plans obviously, but I think we need to get a bit of confidence from what we are good at and not deviate from what we are good at and I think to step away from what we have been doing well just because of one player would be tough even though he was our lineout caller and does have in-depth knowledge.”

Last Saturday’s draw has been widely seen as a good result in the circumstances, though the hooker can see the pluses and minuses in the 10-10 final score.

“Yeah, we did draw and it is what is being asked, ‘are we happy with a draw?’ It is one of those things where we certainly could have gone on to win the game and gave ourselves opportunities to do that but, at the end of the day, when they were camped on our line for the last few minutes we would have taken a draw.

“It was one of those things where it was so windy that I tried not to adapt too much because you nearly go away from your own technique too much and you end up then with nothing to rely on, so I just tried to keep my own technique and probably put a bit more pace on it, put the ball through the air a bit quicker.

“Other than that there is not much you can do in those conditions. They were pretty savage. You just have to hope for the best nearly when it comes out of your hands to an extent.

“But it went well, thankfully, and Tadhg (Beirne) called really well which was brilliant.”

Scannell acknowledged that Munster must improve up front from last weekend’s draw against Exeter: “We definitely have to sharpen up. We’ve taken it on the chin, obviously it’s a bit of a pride thing as a pack when you don’t dominate a scrum.

“We started off well, we got that penalty and then those two crucial scrums before half-time where we conceded penalties gave them a fairly strong foothold going in at half-time.

“We probably should have changed our plan a bit more at half-time and rectified it, that is something we will learn from going forward. We’ve had a good scrum and there are certain things we will have to tweak, definitely, it wasn’t a perfect performance. Going into this weekend, we will have to be better.”

Scannell is coming off the back of appearing for Ireland against Australia last summer, which is bound to boost confidence.

“The first game went well, then when I ended up starting the second game, it was huge, just to get those two back to back, hopefully I can put my hand up to Joe (Schmidt), but it was a huge year and everyone is going to be scrambling for that hooker spot.

“You just need to keep building from there.”

Part of that is looking after his fitness - Scannell pointed out that he had surgery at the start of the season: “I had to get my shoulder done, my AC after Australia and I only got back for the Ulster game. I have had three games now, a huge chunk of game time, so I am feeling less sore every week, which is a good sign.” He now does tailored fitness work to ensure he can see out the full season.

“The medical staff have been sitting down with me, and I had to say to them, ‘look I am obviously getting injured, and you are rehabbing me really well, I’m getting fit, but then I am getting injured again’, so we kind of came up with a more proactive approach now whereby I am doing my mobility and stability stuff.

“They are fairly specific things to me rather than do my mobility. They are using a lot of (their own) time to do that and while I may not see the benefits for a few weeks, hopefully if I can stay fit until the end of the season, I will stay fit.”