Larkham’s lessons have won over his new pupils
You would expect a rugby icon like Stephen Larkham to lead by example. It is why Munster went after the Australian World Cup winner in the first place and also explains how he was walking gingerly around the High Performance Centre in Limerick last Tuesday.
“Playing tag rugby last night, I rolled my ankle. We played out in Garryowen. I’ve played three of four games now. I’d never played tag before, so I am still learning.”
As are the Munster players now under Larkham’s charge.
Needing to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Felix Jones as attack coach, head coach Johann van Graan went after a former coaching adversary to join his backroom staff and help take the Irish province to the next level, in terms of both attacking style and winning trophies.
Deficiencies in the former are considered a significant factor in Munster’s inability to achieve the latter and since his arrival in Limerick this summer as Senior Coach, Larkham, 45, has wasted little time introducing his ideas, with the players he inherited from Jones appearing to have afforded the former Brumbies head coach immediate buy-in.
“When the news came he was going to coach Munster it was pretty awesome, to be honest,” Munster fly-half Tyler Bleyendaal said last week.
“He would have been a player I’d have watched growing up. He was in a pretty great Wallabies team. He’s been a successful coach as well.
“He’s just come in and he’s a pretty unassuming guy but he gets to the point and I think the boys are enjoying having him around.
As a whole squad, we have been challenged to improve or just get the best out of ourselves, both skill-wise and decision-making-wise.
“He has given the whole team freedom and understanding of what we are trying to do and so as a playmaker that frees up a bit of time to make better decisions, to focus on ourselves as well, so I’ve really enjoyed it.”
The coaching ins and outs appear to have been a win-win for all parties.
The head coach gained a World Cup-winning Wallabies legend with an extensive coaching resumé. Jones earned a World Cup winner’s medal earlier this month after teaming up with Rassie Erasmus’s Springboks.
And Larkham is soaking up a Northern Hemisphere rugby culture while also working with players whose skills he earlier this month rated better than those from his homeland.
“I am not lying when I say that,” he said this week. “The guys pick things up really quickly here. They are very educated.
“They can come into a meeting, listen to what I have to say and then they go and put it on the park straight away. That’s been really refreshing.
“I guess what we are really trying to work on here is not changing the whole system because the system actually worked pretty well last year.
“It’s making sure that we are a little bit refined in certain areas. We know when we come up against the big teams in the competitions, our systems need to be a little bit better.
“If I look at our Saracens semi-final last year, we got out-kicked, our escorts weren’t good enough.
“They came through, put a lot of pressure on our catches. Likewise, when we kicked to them, they caught the balls quite easily because they did a pretty good job.
“Things like that, we just need to make sure are in place for games like this weekend.”
Munster welcome Racing 92 to Thomond Park in the Heineken Champions Cup tonight, enabling us to see just how far Larkham’s lessons have sunk in with his new pupils, with the province’s Ireland contingent still playing catch-up following their return from the World Cup.
“We had to reintroduce a few things,” the senior coach admitted. “I think we had a really good pre-season here. I was very impressed with the programme that Johann put together and the amount of time that we had to spend on the attack when I got here, obviously there was a fair focus on defence.
“We crammed a lot in, those first few weeks I was here and the guys picked it up really well. We’ve had to do a little bit of reintroduction to some of those things but the (Irish international) guys have picked it up well.
“We have sort of got the core of our game implemented with those guys now.
“There are other things that we have spoken about over the last three months that we haven’t spoken about with the internationals.
“So, it is a slow process. You can’t obviously dump everything on them in the first week. But over the next couple of weeks, they will get to understand everything we have been working on over the last three months.
It’s just putting some systems and structures in place so the players can actually play what is in front of them. When the players get comfortable with that, then it’s not about constantly evolving the game, it’s about making the right decisions.
Tadhg Beirne, one of Munster’s dozen World Cup participants who have been taking a crash course in Larkham since their return from Japan and relishing the opportunity to work on his skills, though he recognises it will take time.
“I think each game will improve and it’s early in the season and I’m sure Larkham still has big plans,” Beirne said.
“He’s thrown a bit at us and whether he’s going to throw more, who knows, but where we are at at the moment I think it’s coming together well and the lads are really buying into it and it seems to be clicking and, you know, we’re watching games every week and seeing areas where we can improve.
“You are never going to be the finished article and will always be looking to improve.
"You can never say when that is going to be but at the moment we are looking good and feeling good and if we can continue to improve then we will definitely be a force to be reckoned with in Europe and the PRO14.”
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