Breathing space has allowed Munster coaching ticket find rhythm
Munster head coach Johann van Graan alongside forwards coach Graham Rowntree, senior coach Stephen Larkham and performance analyst George Murray during the Guinness PRO14 match between Munster and Ospreys at Thomond Park in Limerick. Photo by Diarmuid Greene/Sportsfile
When you look at the bald facts, no-one should have expected too much from Munster in Europe 12 months ago.
For all the positivity floating around the High Performance centre following Johann van Graan’s coup of capturing assistant coaches of the calibre of Stephen Larkham and Graham Rowntree to replace Jerry Flannery and Felix Jones, the odds on a smooth and successful Heineken Champions Cup pool campaign were firmly stacked against the province.
Head coach van Graan and defence coach JP Ferreira had been holding the fort since the surprise departures of the homegrown favourites until Larkham arrived from Australia in late summer, days out from the new Guinness PRO14 campaign. Rowntree’s arrival as forwards coach would have to wait until after the pool stages of the 2019 World Cup when his stint with Georgia came to an end.
Ireland’s campaign in Japan lasted just a week longer but it meant the newly-assembled coaching ticket had very little time to work with international players on whom they would need to get them through a European group containing the defending champions Saracens and French heavyweights Racing 92.
Getting the new coaches to buy into Munster and the players to do likewise with the vision van Graan and the incomers were laying out for them was not the issue. The head coach had been an instant adopter himself since Flannery, Jones, team manager Niall O’Donovan, and the late Garrett Fitzgerald had grounded him in the Munster way from his first day here in November 2017. Ferreira had arrived three years ago this Christmas and was similarly converted, as were Larkham and Rowntree.
After years of much coaching turnover since the last trophy was won in 2011, there was also an appetite from the players for a period of stability. While after four seasons of failing in semi-finals in both the PRO14 (where there was also the 2017 final defeat) and Champions Cup, under both van Graan and his predecessor Rassie Erasmus, there was also a sense that it was time to ramp up the gameplan and turn Munster into genuine contenders once more.
Yet the clock was against them and van Graan told the recently that a year on, things are finally settling down nicely after, in his words, deciding to “just kind of get through this first season”.
“We’ve taken our time, we’ve gotten to know each other, we wrote the plan for the future together, the four of us know exactly where we want to take our team.
“Steve’s the senior coach, responsible for attack and the kicking game; Japes (JP Ferreira) is responsible for the D, Graham and I share the forwards responsibilities and the overall selection and gameplan stays with me, but we are very, very integrated.
“Rugby is not about silos anymore, you can’t only have attack and defence, you know, if the defence does something it’s got to have a direct correlation with the attack. If you want to play more and you concede more turnovers that’s going to put more pressure on your D, so we are very integrated, very open.
“Everybody’s got a voice from the four coaches. The final call always lies with me but we’re so aligned to what we want to achieve.
“I’ve got to give the playing group points there as well, our player rep group and our coaching staff are very closely aligned. We want to improve, obviously we want to win a trophy but we said we want to improve every single week of the season and we’ve made a pretty good start to the season that will hopefully turn out to be a good season for us.
“Hopefully we get into a play-off game, and then we perform in that play-off game.”
Senior coach Larkham concurs completely and the way his attack is taking shape is starting to produce results as Munster prepare to face ASM Clermont Auvergne at Stade Marcel Michelin this evening off the back of an eight-match winning start to the 2020-21 campaign, including last Sunday’s opening European fixture, a 21-7 home win over Harlequins.
The Australian World Cup winner acknowledged the benefits of the breathing space this year’s disruptions have afforded the Munster coaches.
"As a coaching team, we've finally had a bit of time together,” Larkham said this week. “Wig (Rowntree), JP, Johann, and myself, the combination is working really well. It has just taken a bit of time to find our rhythm and I wouldn't say that one area has improved over the other areas.
“I think we've got a really good balance to the way we're playing the game now. We've certainly got a very good defensive record.
"If I look at where our attack is, disappointed with some of the games in terms of not scoring enough points or tries, particularly last weekend — we felt we could have done a better job there — but that's a work in progress.
"Roles and responsibilities around who is taking what area and where to put our focus. Normally when coaches come together for the first time, each coach wants to have his piece in the sun and we've got over that honeymoon period and we understand that we need to allot a certain amount of time to each coach, so I think we're doing that a lot better. The planning has been a lot better."
Stretching that unbeaten streak to nine games today would be some achievement given it would mean a historic first win at Clermont but there is a sense that whatever happens this evening, this is Munster coaching ticket ticking all the right boxes.
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