Kilcoyne admits discipline needs to be addressed

Dave Kilcoyne has warned his Munster teammates that discipline must improve before high penalty counts come back to bite them in the Guinness PRO14.

Munster welcome Glasgow Warriors to Thomond Park on Saturday for the resumption of the league campaign and have set themselves a mission to reduce the number of penalties conceded after a disappointing return in that regard in Champions Cup action.

Last Saturday’s bonus-point Pool 2 home victory over Gloucester lost some of its sheen as the penalty count reached 16, with Munster also losing Sammy Arnold and Stephen Archer to the sin-bin in the final three minutes, one for a deliberate knock-on by the former and a high tackle from the latter. Loosehead prop Kilcoyne admits that while Munster still came away with the victory, conceding double figures in penalties is usually a recipe for defeat and that his side are walking a disciplinary tightrope.

“I definitely think discipline, if we don’t tighten it up, can sting us down the line,” Kilcoyne said. “But it is something we are really trying to address. Unfortunately, over the past two weeks, our penalty count was higher than we wanted it to be.

The 10 penalties in the last 14 minutes (against Gloucester) was unacceptable, so we will really look at ourselves to try and improve that this week.

“We have been really trying to build a consistency of performance, not this up, down, good one week, poor the next, so discipline was one of our targets going into the game and it just got sloppy towards the end of the game.

“It is an area we will be looking to really tighten up going forward.”

Kilcoyne said a team like Glasgow was always likely to punish ill-discipline, particularly in the good form they have started the season with, winning five of their first six PRO14 games to top Conference A, 10 points clear of fourth-placed Munster. “We see their away form has been very good, beating Connacht away and Cheetahs away, so unless we fix our discipline we will be in for a very tough game on Saturday. It is going to be an extremely tough encounter anyway with their form, but if we give away cheap penalties like we did at the weekend, we won’t stand a chance against them.”