Jack Crowley interview: 'We're not perfect but we fight to the end'

At one stage, it seemed fanciful to consider that Munster could finish the season with silverware and Leinster wouldn't

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT: Jack Crowley gets ready for kicking practice at the DHL Stadium on Friday. Pic: James Crombie, Inpho

It is 18 months since the majority of the Munster squad were trapped in Cape Town, beset with a covid outbreak and eager to see the back of South Africa after their tour ended with an enforced period of quarantine.

The outlook on their return to the Mother City for the second time in six weeks is very different with a URC Grand Final to play against the Stormers at DHL Stadium and the warm memories of a pivotal victory in the same arena against the defending champions that Jack Crowley believes changed the province’s fortunes, sending them on a five-away game unbeaten run to Saturday’s decider.

Munster, you may recall, had been in Durban two weeks earlier and on the wrong end of a Heineken Champions Cup hammering at the hands of the Sharks, which itself had followed a heavy home league defeat to Glasgow Warriors. Out of the European competition, struggling to qualify for next season’s tournament and on the brink of failing to reach the URC play-offs with two very difficult away games of the regular season remaining.

Yet Crowley says that returning to South Africa for those fixtures against the Stormers and the Sharks was the making of their season, propelling Munster to an unexpected final appearance after galvanising a suffering squad at a low ebb.

"I think if you take it back to when we played the Sharks in the Champions Cup, an unbelievably good side, and we came away short, we were hurting after that week,” the fly-half said. "We didn't want to get knocked out but you focus on the next game and say, 'right, where are we in the league?' That’s not something you ever want to do as a team, you always want to be at the top not talking about needing to get a result to get qualification. But we had to. We had to recognise the situation at hand and as rugby players you've got to rise up to the pressure.

"That was the expectation, the pressure of needing qualification for the knockout stages of URC and for Europe next year. So we went down to South Africa to face two unbelievably good teams as they've shown in both competitions, and to go down there and get the results, it wasn't winning a trophy or anything like that but I think it just showed the attitude of this squad, the never-dying attitude that there's always a chance if you buy in and really put the work in.

"It’s not always pretty but digging your teeth in and getting those results probably will stand to us in the long run in forming that mental resilience to pressure. Sometimes you've got to recognise the situation, there's no point in batting it away and playing it down when it is something that big.

"That’s when you see, as a group, if you're up for it or not and I think we showed the resilience and the mental strength to get those results against unbelievable competition."

Given their run-in to the campaign, all of it on the road with a quarter-final in Glasgow and semi-final success at hot favourites Leinster two weeks ago, the 23-year-old from Innishannon, Co Cork acknowledges his side have had to do things the hard way with a sixth successive away game to come back in Cape Town.

"I suppose from the start of the season we were disappointed that results weren't going our way but we kept the belief and the confidence and the right attitude going forward that we were going to grow and get better and we all bought into what we were doing.

"I think you're seeing the results of that now but the strength of this group is coping with adversity and dealing with change and the last few weeks haven't been easy but you can't make excuses, you've got to get on with it.

"That’s part of the competition now and there's elements of it where it's unbelievable, travelling with your mates, going on tour. It's special being together so there's a lot of upside to those away games, spending a lot of time with this group, with the staff and the players and forming those connections.

"I think those away games might show the unity and strength to stick in it. It's not always perfect but we fight right to the end and sometimes it's not pretty but we need to win and we're willing to do that at all costs and those away games and trips have brought us together.” 

And so to the final, a rematch with a Stormers side whose 15-month unbeaten home run Munster ended with that season-rescuing 24-22 victory on April 15.

"It's going to be tough, definitely,” Crowley said. “We've got to show them the respect they deserve and they've warranted that respect from their record. Their record at home is unbelievable since 2021, they were unbeaten until we got the result down there but that was not at all easy and since we were there they've lit up.

"So that respect is needed. Physically, they've Springboks in their team and the skills they have in their backline and their forwards but the confidence we get is our wins in the road.

"We don't ever get ahead of ourselves. We don't ever, ever go into a game thinking we've this won. We go into a game knowing the situation, knowing the opposition and then focusing on ourselves. We have to perform if we want to get a result, we can't just show up, especially against teams of this quality and at this stage of the season.

"So we have to get our stuff right and that's why it's so important we get our preparations right and take our learnings from the Leinster game because as much as it was good to get the result it wasn't pretty in certain areas. We know we have to work on them if we want to come down to Cape Town and have a crack off the Stormers."

When Crowley eventually looks back on this season he can do so with pride, at his breakthrough with Emerging Ireland, also in South Africa last autumn, his Test debut and first start for Ireland in successive weeks in November, and his Aviva Stadium heroics for Munster only 14 days ago that has since earned him the Rugby Players Ireland Nevin Spence Young Player of the Year Award from his fellow players. Yet there will also be a recognition of those closest to him in a Munster squad ready to give it their all in this one last shot of the campaign.

“I suppose in a few weeks I'll look back in reflection. Your peers, you wouldn't be capable, it wouldn't be possible, without having such a special group around you. That's the most enjoyable thing, the environments you're playing in. And that's the most important thing, isn't it?

"An environment of growth and learning is just so positive to be in and to be around peers who are of the quality they are learning off each other, it just makes you want to come in in the morning and learn and get better.

"For me, I'm so fortunate that this season I've been surrounded by the best players in the world and I'm getting to learn off them. To say that I can do that and train and try to get to their level is something I'm so fortunate to ever be exposed to that opportunity. Now it's about how I can get better because there are definitely levels I need to go up.

"So hopefully one more to go and then you might me smiling a bit more."