Old failings bring Johann van Graan's Munster era to a painful end
Munster head coach Johann van Graan following Friday's season ending defeat to Ulster at Kingspan Stadium
There are still three weeks left on Johann van Graan’s contract as head coach at Munster Rugby and he will likely spend most of his time at the High Performance Centre in Limerick wondering what should have been.
Instead of plotting the next step of a march to a glorious denouement to his five seasons at the helm of a once-great province, the South African will go through the motions of keeping Munster’s Ireland international contingent ticking over ready for the summer tour to New Zealand and pondering why many of them played themselves out of contention in front of Andy Farrell and Paul O’Connell at Kingspan Stadium on Friday night.
Some people, certainly if social media channels are to believed, will point the finger of blame for Munster’s abject performance against Ulster which ended in a 36-17 United Rugby Championship quarter-final defeat and the end of the road for 2021-22, solely at van Graan.
They will zero in on the style of rugby he employed in his time at the province for failing to end a now 11-year trophy drought.
They may have a point given the consistent failure to perform in the latter stages of the season and what appears to be a calcifying inferiority complex whenever Leinster are the opposition that following this loss to a brighter, sharper, more clinical Ulster side now clearly demotes their province to third in the Irish rugby pecking order.
That in itself is a charge van Graan will find difficult to shake off. Yet it is more nuanced than that and while the Bath-bound coach declined to reflect on his five years in charge during his post-match press conference on Friday night, he repeatedly urged every one of his players and staff to “own” this season-ending defeat.
He will face the media one more time before he departs, when the dust has settled on quite possibly the worst performance of his tenure. Yet very few system errors were apparent in Munster’s approach on Friday night in Belfast, indeed they created almost as many chances as Ulster and scored three tries.
No, what undid van Graan was his players’ failure to execute under pressure when it mattered most in stark contrast to their clinical opponents. Ulster took their chances with decisiveness and accuracy, Munster botched theirs and struggled to get any rhythm in their game right from the first whistle.
However, whatever accountability lies at the door of van Graan and his coaches must also be shared by their players.
That is the frustrating legacy van Graan will leave when he departs at the end of the month, taking defence coach JP Ferreira with him to Bath and parting company with Stephen Larkham at the exit gate.
Supporters will have seen those players excel time after time and claim some impressive, sometimes remarkable victories under van Graan. They know this Munster side was capable of beating Ulster, they have witnessed the type of running, expansive and multi-dimensional rugby that can undo the best of opponents. Yet when it mattered most, at the crucial point of the season, those same players, and coaches, could not get the job done.
Now that is Graham Rowntree’s problem. As one of those coaches he will own that defeat as he has done as forwards coach since he arrived at the end of 2019 and though he will be a first-time head coach when he takes over this summer, his vast body of work in dressing rooms from Twickenham to Tbilisi suggests he has some ideas of his own to implement and they are oven-ready.
They will have to be and the fresh impetus and thinking he will bring alongside incoming assistants Mike Prendergast, Denis Leamy and Andi Kyriacou may be just what this squad needs to turn the page and shake off their stupor.
Johann van Graan, meanwhile, will exit with the good grace and dignity he arrived with from the Springboks.
There is no doubting his decency as a human being or that he gave everything to the Munster cause.
In leaving for pastures new he deserves the same respect he gave to his adopted province.
v Zebre (away) 26/11/17 – won 36-19
Zebo; Sweetnam, Arnold, R Scannell, Wootton; Hanrahan, Hart; O’Connor, Marshall, Archer; Kleyn, Holland – captain; O’Donoghue, Cloete, Copeland.
P21 W13 D1 L7 – 62% win ratio
P31 W22 D1 L8 – 71%
P22 W13 D1 L8 – 60%
P25 W20 L5 – 80%
P26 W16 L10 – 62%
P14 (3 R16, 5 q-finals, 5 s-finals, 1 final) W4 L10 – 29% win ratio
v Ulster (away) 03/06/22 – lost 36-17 Haley; Conway, Farrell, de Allende, Earls; Carbery, Murray; J Wycherley, N Scannell, Archer; Kleyn, F Wycherley; P O’Mahony – captain, A Kendellen, G Coombes.
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