Rowntree: 'Season fizzling out? I'm not detecting anyone ready to fizzle out'

THUMBS UP: Munster's Jack O'Donoghue at training on Wednesday in Hamilton RFC, Cape Town

Graham Rowntree has reacted strongly to the suggestion Munster’s season is in danger of “fizzling out” following back-to-back defeats in the BKT URC and Heineken Champions Cup.

Speaking from Cape Town on Wednesday as Munster began preparations for their penultimate URC regular season game this Saturday at the Stormers, the head was asked to draw comparisons with last season’s lacklustre end to predecessor’s Johann van Graan’s final campaign with the Reds which ended with a desperately poor league play-off quarter-final defeat at Ulster.

Munster’s hopes of a home knockout draw next month have been all but ended by a 38-26 Thomond Park defeat to fourth-placed Glasgow Warriors three weeks ago which was followed by a 50-35 Champions Cup Round of 16 hammering by the Sharks in Durban seven days later.

Now back on South African soil after an unwanted week off as the Champions Cup knockout stages continued without them, fifth-placed Munster, just eight points clear of ninth-placed Benetton, face crucial league games against both the defending-champion and second-paced Stormers this Saturday before a final-round encounter back at Kings Park against the Sharks on April 22 with the focus on hanging onto both a top-eight finish to reach the URC play-offs while also attempting to qualify for Europe next season.

Yet the Munster boss bridled at the suggestion his squad’s campaign could be fizzling out once more.

“We’ve significantly changed how we do things. I think on the field, you’ve seen that,” Rowntree said. “Fizzling out? Well I won’t be referencing that in my team talk, with all due respect.

“There’s no one in this group ready to fizzle out. We've got to be better. We have shown what we can do this year. For all our wrongs and things we’ve had to do better in our last three games we’ve still scored a lot of tries.

“Obviously, we’ve got to stop the opposition scoring more. That’s what we can control but no, I’m not detecting anybody ready to fizzle out in this group.” 

Munster have scored 16 tries in their last three matches, including a 49-42 win over the Scarlets in Cork on March 3, but conceded 18 in the process, and Rowntree admitted his team had contributed healthily to their recent problems.

“We can’t hide away from our own mistakes. We are the masters of our own downfall when we lose a game and that’s no disrespect to the opposition but a lot of it has always been down to us. What else can you do? You’ve got to get better, you take it on the chin, work hard and that’s what we’ve been doing.” Asked to expand on his use of the phrase masters of our own downfall, the head coach referenced the Sharks defeat and a third quarter in which Siya Kolisi’s team blew Munster away with four tries between 44 and 57 minutes to extend their lead from just 17-14 at half-time to 43-14.

Rowntree said: “Discipline and breakdown. We speak about giving the opposition access to our try line through the maul and that comes through our making mistakes at the breakdown. That’s comes down to our discipline, not sticking to the system, and then you find yourself chasing the game.

“We got loose between 52 and 59 minutes in that last game. We got loose and against a team like that any scraps, any loose ball on the floor, bam! They’re gone. (Makazole) Mapimpi loves us throwing loose offloads so that’s what I mean ‘masters of our own downfall’.

“We’ve got to cut out those mistakes. The top teams don’t make those mistakes. They don’t. We don’t train like that, we train at intensity to try and force those scenarios. In game we’ve got to be better than that.” end