Injuries have afforded Munster's young guns a chance - one they've grabbed with both hands
FLYING HIGH: Munster's Tom Ahern taken in the air by Glasgow Scrumhalf Sean Kennedy. Pic: Kieran Ryan-Benson
It has long been a mantra within Graham Rowntree’s Munster coaching group that if a player is good enough, he’s old enough and nothing has changed in a Champions Cup match week.
Competition newcomers Bayonne’s first taste of European club rugby will come under the lights at Thomond Park on Saturday evening and though their hosts may be missing some key frontline players, assistant coach Mike Prendergast has seen enough of the next wave from within the Munster squad to be comfortable with the prospect of sending them into the cauldron during the upcoming Pool 3 campaign.
With Peter O’Mahony a week away from a return from the shoulder injury he sustained in his post-World Cup Munster comeback last month and South African World Cup-winning duo RG Snyman and Jean Kleyn set for longer absences through respective chest/shoulder and eye issues, there is a serious amount of experience missing from the home side’s pack this weekend.
Yet the last few weeks of URC action have allowed Rowntree and his staff to feel at ease with the prospect of dealing without them.
Academy duo Edwin Edogbo and Brian Gleeson, and second-year senior pro Tom Ahern have shone in the Munster pack in recent weeks, enough to allow Prendergast to look forward to another Champions Cup campaign with relative relish.
“You lose somebody like RG and Jean Kleyn, it speaks for itself what they’ve done in the game over the last few years and especially in the last number of months,” the attack coach said yesterday at Munster’s High Performance Centre at the University of Limerick.
“They’ve been very successful and losing them is huge but the blow has been softened in terms of great exposure for some of our players, the likes of Edwin, Tom, Brian Gleeson. It’s opened opportunities for them and they’ve been very good in what they’ve done.
“And they want to get better. They’ve tasted a bit of it now and they want more of it and that’s always a good thing, just those lads coming through and seeing what the older lads had to do to get there. And I’ve found they’re very diligent in what they’re doing. They want to get their roles right and be clear in what they’re doing and they’ve gone about their business very well.
“Even over the last couple of weeks, you look at their performances, Tom was excellent last week and so was Edwin in the closer stuff. So from losing two world-class players it’s been next man up and they’ve done very well.
“We’ve a couple of injuries and a few lads injured previous to that so our squad has been tested a small bit but it’s next man up and it’s given guys opportunities and over the last few weeks and last couple of months it’s been that way as well.”
A narrow defeat to Leinster at Aviva Stadium and a sometimes fraught 40-29 win over Glasgow in Cork last Friday have given those young guns plenty of exposure to the sort of tough, physical challenge they can expect from Top 14 outfit Bayonne this Saturday.
“The two games we’ve had have been good in the lead-up to it. You look at the URC and how competitive it has gone over the last couple of years and you can see it this year again. There isn’t much between the top eight or nine teams so we knew we needed to be on it, especially over the last couple of weeks.
“They were big fixtures, against a Leinster team that was very strong, there was a lot of good in our performance but unfortunately we just came up short and we were disappointed over that. We felt we’d left maybe an opportunity behind us.
“And then the Glasgow game, they’ve been very consistent this year, a physical side who hadn’t conceded much, I think it was only 10 tries up to our match. So we knew we’d have to get our contact area right because that’s a big part of their game and we managed to do that.
“Obviously the second half was a small bit disappointing but that’s the focus, trying to get all the parts our game right and we’re still working on that but in terms of our overall game, our flow is starting to come.
“And that takes a bit of time, and in a World Cup year, you can see it in the Premiership and the Top 14 as well, teams with international players coming back, it takes a bit of time, with combinations and flow etc, and it’s about the teams who can find their flow the quickest, especially with Europe now.
“We feel we’re in a nice enough position at the moment with margin to get better.”
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