Munster can't dwell on recent errors as season-defining month approaches

CRUNCH TIME: Munster head coach Graham Rowntree with Attack Coach Mike Prendergast and Tadhg Beirne. Pic: Ryan Byrne

The inquest into Munster’s Champions Cup pool defeat at Exeter Chiefs was conducted at their High Performance Centre yesterday as Graham Rowntree’s men looked ahead to a season-defining month and a challenging series of matches in both Europe and the URC.

Next Tuesday’s St Stephen’s night derby against Leinster at Thomond Park looms large as Munster’s URC title defence resumes, with another interpro, at Connacht, six days later on January 1, also coming hard into view.

Beyond that is the small matter of negotiating a way out of that Champions Cup group with the final rounds of Pool 3 coming at Toulon on January 13 and at home to Northampton Saints a week later, and a six-point gap to the top-two spots in the table that will secure a home knockout tie in the Round of 16.

With such a tough programme ahead to conclude a relentless 13-week stretch of matches there will be little time to dwell on past mistakes but Rowntree and his coaching staff need to ensure the errors that have riddled their recent performances are not repeated if Munster are to remain contenders in both competitions.

At times it has seemed that the head coach and his unit heads Mike Prendergast (attack), Denis Leamy (defence) and Andi Kyriacou (forwards) have been taking it turns one week after another to fight the fires being lit in a succession of matches.

A misfiring lineout in one game, a malfunctioning maul defence in another, and a lack of attacking fluidity the week after that. The one constant has been Munster’s failure this season to repeat the winning form on the road that was the hallmark of their run to the URC title on the road last April and May.

Against Exeter last Sunday came a third successive away loss as Munster let slip a wonderfully crafted 24-13 lead with a disastrous final quarter as the Chiefs came from behind for the second week in a row to keep their winning start to Pool 3 alive following an opening-round win at Toulon with a 32-24 victory at Sandy Park.

Both Rowntree and interim captain Tadhg Beirne pointed to a lack of composure in the red corner as error compounded error and the Chiefs grew in confidence to reel in the visitor’s lead and then match Munster’s four-try bonus point with the last play of the game, denying the Irish province a losing bonus point in the process.

Yet there was also an insightful analysis from Exeter’s director of rugby Rob Baxter who in praising his Chiefs’ character and ability to problem solve in turning around that 11-point deficit to record an eight-point victory unwittingly pointed to Munster’s failure to change tack when their means of attack was finally neutralised.

Munster’s four-try salvo in the first 50 minutes all came on the edges, through Calvin Nash on six minutes, Tom Ahern on 23 minutes, Antoine Frisch after 36 and Shane Daly in the minute 50. All were scored in the right corner with the first three featuring crossfield kick-passes after Exeter had been sucked towards the posts, leaving their fringes exposed.

Baxter admitted to screaming at his defence coach Omar Mouneimne to fix their problems sooner and then credited the South African with delivering the desired outcome and figuring out how to stop Munster.

“It took us too long to understand that Munster were pretty simple in how they were attacking us,” the Chiefs boss said.

“They would come once to one side of the field and then just play open, looking to get a floated kick on the end and we were too compact. We weren’t getting out of the blindsides quick enough, our wider backs weren’t holding enough width, our forwards were too compact – our first four forwards next to the breakdown were defending nobody. One pass was removing all of them and it took us too long to make that shift.”

Asked if Munster had been too patterned in their approach, Baxter replied: “It was patterned because it worked for them. It was a pattern that very nearly beat us.

“And fair play to them, they picked that out from watching us last week. We had crushing line speed that really hurt Toulon and to be fair to Munster they took the line speed on. They sat a little deeper and took it on, took some ball and man passes and some ball and man kicks and got the ball away.

“I thought it was a great attacking policy from Munster. I was having an argument in the middle of our grandstand with our defence coach, I was screaming at him, ‘you need to make a bigger adjustment quicker’. To be fair he did make the adjustments at half-time that dealt with most of that.

“We managed to get that bit more width. We didn’t hang in blindsides quite like we were and got that extra forward wrapping with a bit more fluidity and that just allowed us to have that little bit more width which just meant there weren’t killer moments in the second half.”

Munster attack coach Mike Prendergast had managed to expertly unpick Exeter with his gameplan, but once the Chiefs had worked it out it just needed a plan B with ball in hand, and some cool heads without it.