Johann van Graan: The expectation is always there at Munster - but we have the hunger to match

The Munster head coach is perplexed by the criticism which has followed their signing of South African, Jason Jenkins

TURNING UP THE POWER: The one thing that we know, that most teams know, you have to adapt your plan but currently the power game is winning big games, says Munster coach Johann Van Graan. Picture: Dan Sheridan

If the past couple of seasons have taught Johann van Graan anything at all it is that power wins rugby matches and an inability to deal with it has precisely the opposite outcome.

Which is why Munster’s head coach is more than a little perplexed when the subject of Jason Jenkins comes up in this exclusive interview with the Irish Examiner.

The South African’s signing for next season, concluded with a one-year contract and the approval of the IRFU in the aftermath of CJ Stander’s surprise retirement announcement, was met with a barrage of criticism, with concerns that Munster were prioritising an overseas import over the ongoing development of an exciting crop of young homegrown forwards currently being churned out of the academy and into the senior ranks.

We will get to van Graan’s bemusement at the criticism the signing attracted in a little while because the Munster boss is excited by the player set to arrive from Japanese club Toyota Verblitz and the contribution he can make in either the second or back row.

Aged 25 and capped by the Springboks in 2018, he is a former team-mate of RG Snyman at the Bulls and if his size and highlights reel is any indication the 6ft 7ins, 19st Jenkins will help Munster’s efforts to avoid the sort of bullying being dished out in Europe by the likes of La Rochelle’s Will Skelton and Toulouse’s Arnold brothers.

He may not be a direct replacement for Stander positionally but speaking in an interview conducted before the firepit accident that left Damian de Allende, Mike Haley, Snyman, and Stander with superficial burns, and also the cancellation of the Benetton-Ospreys game that saw the Italians advance to the Rainbow Cup final, van Graan offered his thoughts on the way Jenkins can help replace the outgoing Munster favourite in a number of other ways without impeding the progress of young bucks such as locks Thomas Ahern and Fineen Wycherley or back-rowers such as John Hodnett, Jack O’Sullivan, Alex Kendellen, and Jack Daly.

“He’s a lock/flank. We’re going to use him mostly as a blindside flanker,” the Munster boss said of Jenkins. “CJ’s been a phenomenal ball carrier in Munster and Irish rugby and we felt we had a very good balance with CJ and Gavin Coombes coming into the team with Jean Kleyn and James Cronin. So the more ball carriers we have we feel the more competitive we are.

“We always speak in these instances of ‘when everyone’s fit and available’ but there’s going to be some big international windows. We’re going to lose RG and Damian to the southern hemisphere, and hopefully a lot of lads playing for the Irish team.

“Then you’ve got to look at injuries and then we are losing players like Billy Holland and Tommy O’Donnell so we needed a ball carrier, a very good defender, a lineout option which is all the things that CJ is good at and that’s why we got the permission from the IRFU to sign Jason.”

With Keith Earls and captain Peter O’Mahony re-signed to their central IRFU contracts and 13 senior players that would have been out of contract this summer inking new deals while nine academy players have been awarded development or senior terms for next season, van Graan believes Munster have done some good business in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and dire financial warnings from the governing body.

There will be departures, not least loosehead prop James Cronin and hooker Rhys Marshall, while JJ Hanrahan leaves for Clermont but the arrivals this summer of Jenkins and Leinster scrum-half Rowan Osborne, a direct replacement for Nick McCarthy going the other way, and the return of Simon Zebo makes for what van Graan sees as well-balanced succession planning.

The fears for the future of Munster’s brightest prospects, he believes, are misplaced while the reaction to Jenkins’ signing appears to him to be out of kilter to similar signings for next season made by other provinces, though Ulster’s signing of Fijian forward Leone Nakawara collapsed yesterday following a medical.

“You do your succession planning every single year, you’ve got the (IRFU) performance director David Nucifora who we are very well aligned to and we want to make sure there’s players that can play for Ireland, players than can play for Munster and then on top of that you’ve go to win.

We want to keep Munster Munster. We’ve got a proud history of foreign players coming in and making a big difference and you just think of Arno Botha, Alby Mathewson, Tyler Bleyendaal over recent years.

“Once you’re part of Munster you’re not working against the other guy, you’re working with him to make the team and the club better.

“You know, Connacht have just signed a lock (31-year-old Tongan Leva Fifita from Grenoble) and there’s no outcry that he will stand in the pathway of certain other players — they have some brilliant young locks coming through. When Leone Nakawara signed for Ulster, he’s certainly going to work with (the younger players); when (Michael) Alaalatoa signed for Leinster, that’s just professional rugby.

“From a Munster point of view, we’re a squad, we’re a club that is very well aligned to the IRFU and a lot of thinking and planning goes into signing and I think there’s a very good balance with the 24 guys we’re retaining and the three guys we are bringing in in Jason, Rowan, and Zeebs.”

With an underwhelming performance in losing the PRO14 final to Leinster and a spirited performance in the Champions Cup round of 16 tie at home to Toulouse that saw the eventual champions go up through the gears to get over the line, van Graan’s mission to deliver a first trophy since 2011 will have to stretch into the final year of his current contract next season and the former Springbok assistant accepts Munster must continue to evolve their gameplan to be able to live with Europe’s powerhouse teams.

“The one thing that we know, that most teams know, you have to adapt your plan but currently the power game is winning big games. You’ve just got to look at the World Cup final when South Africa went with a 6:2 bench against England, you lose one tighthead prop (Kyle Sinckler) and you are under pressure.

“If you look at Toulouse and La Rochelle, two world-class teams in terms of personnel, if I’m not mistaken both of them went 6:2 in the final so the power game is on top.

You’ve got to find ways to match that power game and you’ve got to find ways to get through that power game, over that power game, and around it.

“We’ve planned pretty well, I thought, from a recruitment point of view, within what we can and can’t do in the Irish system. We know we are bringing up nine lads from the academy and seeing how they are going to fit into our system going forward and we’ll hopefully have a pretty settled team for next season.

“If I just take you back to our first game after lockdown, RG Snyman was going to be one of our big pieces in our puzzle going forward and he’s played seven minutes of one game so I’m really looking forward to getting him as part and parcel of the group. He’ll miss the first part of the season because he’ll play for South Africa hopefully against the Lions and in the Rugby Championship but he’ll be a big part of our team; Gavin Coombes, hopefully at 8, and then another thing is Joey (Carbery) is still coming back from a big injury.

“I thought he played his best game against Cardiff, so hopefully we can get continuity in our game and then with the continuity of the squad and then the lads coming in, building in from the start.

“I have to say we are losing some pretty big Munster men from our squad, specifically from a leadership point of view so that’s something we will need to address and we’ve already started with our planning there.

“We’ve got to keep evolving our game but by saying that if you look at what the top teams are currently doing, the power game is dominating so getting better at how we deal with that and then making sure we are on the right side of the result in a knockout game.

“The positive is we are getting to those knockout games. The hunger for a trophy will always be there and we’ve got to keep striving for that. From a Munster perspective, that expectation is always there and that’s something we’ll always keep embracing. That’s just part and parcel of being Munster.”

ZEBRE: J Trulla; G D’Onofrio, F Mori, E Lucchin, P Bruno; C Canna, M Violi; A Lovotti, L Bigi, M Nocera; D Sisi - captain, L Krumov; I Binachi, P J Leavasa, R Giammarioli.

Replacements: M Manfredi, D Rimpelli, N D’Amico, S Ortis, G Licata, N Casilio, F Di Marco, M Biondelli

MUNSTER: M Gallagher; A Conway, C Farrell, R Scannell, L Coombes; J Carbery, C Casey; D Kilcoyne, N Scannell, J Ryan; J Kleyn, F Wycherley; P O’Mahony - captain, J O’Donoghue, G Coombes.

Replacements: K O’Byrne, L O’Connor, R Salanoa, T Ahern, B Holland, N McCarthy, J Flannery, C Cloete.

Referee: Andrea Piardi (Italy)