Rowntree expecting 'a hell of a battle' against Ulster in their first Interpro of the season
FIRST INTERPRO: Munster Head Coach Graham Rowntree is expecting a battle in their first Interpro of the season. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie
Munster’s bid for continuing momentum following their BKT URC Grand Final success last May faces its stiffest challenge tonight when Graham Rowntree’s champions travel north to face Ulster at Kingspan Stadium (7:35pm).
Three games in, with two home wins racked up with try bonus points, Munster are already showing the away-day resilience which proved pivotal in that dramatic run of five consecutive road games unbeaten en route to a first trophy in a dozen seasons. Their round-two visit to Treviso in north-eastern Italy was not exactly a finest hour and two minutes for the men in red but the draw they scrambled against Benetton at the death points to a mentality that will serve them well in Belfast tonight, just as it did 11 months ago on January 1.
Shane Daly this week described that 15-14 win, secured with the clock past 80 minutes when Ben Healy converted his own try, as “one of the swing points for us last season” and its relevance to the way the rest of the campaign progressed into the second half of the season is not lost on his head coach.
“It was a significant win in period of a long run of games going back to the autumn series where we only dropped games against Toulouse and Leinster,” Rowntree told the Irish Examiner this week. “It was a good way to start the year and the manner in which we did it.
“I think it was 83 or 84 minutes, it took us that long to crack them. Ben Healy scored then converted his own try. It was good for our patience. We put a lot of work into cracking teams and scoring in the last quarter, you saw that in the semi-final and the final of the URC, so to beat Ulster at the end of the game like that showed some great resilience.
“It was a nod to our resilience. It was very pleasing. We’d lost people through injury, Keith Earls, Pa Campbell, so it was certainly a nod to us staying in games… That run we had at the end of the season was incredible.”
Yet Rowntree’s memory a little further back in time, to Thomond Park in the previous October, has not deserted him either, when Dan McFarlane’s Ulster notched a 15-14 win of their own and that informs his approach to this match just as much as the New Year’s Day win.
“We need to control the ball well, deal with their kicking game, their pressure game. They’ve expanded their game somewhat but up there it’s access. You can’t give them access in terms of discipline, penalties, maul, access to your 22. They caught us out here at home last October.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for them and their coach and you can see by their selection down in Connacht what they were thinking for this week, so we’re expecting a hell of a battle up there on Friday night at Ravenhill. Can I still call it Ravenhill? I always remember it as Ravenhill but it will be a real challenge for us, a great challenge for us.”
While Ulster have brought back a number of their Ireland World Cup squad members to their matchday squad for this evening’s north-south derby showdown, with inside centre Stuart McCloskey starting and forward duo Iain Henderson and Rob Herring among the replacements, Rowntree has resisted the temptation to bring the majority of Irish contingent, only loosehead prop Jeremy Loughman, lightly used in France in the last two months, returning for Munster’s first interpro of the new season in addition to last weekend’s returnees Craig Casey and Jack Crowley.
There are five changes and four positional switches from the team which started the 45-14 home victory over the Dragons last weekend with in-form wing Calvin Nash providing some much needed good news following the gloom of the last few days regarding extended lay-offs for RG Snyman and Joey Carbery and an enforced retirement for Andrew Conway.
Nash has overcome the knee problem which ended his man of the match performance after his second try against the Dragons and is retained in an unchanged back three alongside Daly at full-back and summer signing Seán O’Brien, the wings switching flanks from last Saturday.
Antoine Frisch returns at outside centre to form a new midfield combination with summer signing Alex Nankivell, who moves from 13 to 12 as Rory Scannell moves to the bench as fly-half cover.
Jack Crowley starts at fly-half having made his return from Ireland’s World Cup campaign off the bench last Saturday, and moves ack into the number 10 berth to replace academy player Tony Butler, who drops out of the matchday squad following a successful first senior start against the Dragons.
“It would be brilliant (to keep our momentum going),” Rowntree said, before adding: “It’s building it, isn’t it? Getting our game right and stopping them. We’ve got to be very tidy, around our ruck and our discipline, so it’s really tidy.”
E McIlroy; R Baloucoune, S Moore, S McCloskey, J Stockdale; B Burns, N Doak; E O’Sullivan, T Stewart – captain, G McGrath; C Izuchukwu, K Treadwell; D McCann, Marcus Rea, N Timoney.
: R Herring, C Reid, S Wilson, I Henderson, D Ewers, J Cooney, J Falnnery, J Postlethwaite.
: S Daly; C Nash, A Frisch, A Nankivell, S O’Brien; J Crowley, C Casey; J Loughman, D Barron - captain, J Ryan; E Edogbo, F Wycherley; A Kendellen, J Hodnett, G Coombes.
: S Buckley, J Wycherley, S Archer, T Ahern, B Gleeson, P Patterson, R Scannell, B O’Connor.
Frank Murphy (IRFU)
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