Mike Prendergast pleased Ethan Coughlan and Tony Butler sign senior Munster deals

“They’re two good lads that understand how we want to play and have worked hard to get to where they are at the moment,” Prendergast said.

Tue, 27 Feb, 2024 - 19:27

Simon Lewis

Munster coach Mike Prendergast has welcomed the signing of academy half-backs Ethan Coughlan and Tony Butler to senior contracts from next season, describing them as ideal fits for the province’s game plan.

Munster on Tuesday announced that 21-year-olds Coughlan and Butler, both products of Ennis RFC, and 22-year-old prop Mark Donnelly, originally from Midleton RFC, would all graduate from the academy to the senior squad for 2024-25 along with lock Edwin Edogbo, whose promotion to a two-year professional contract next season was confirmed recently.

Former academy graduate Scott Buckley has signed a new contract extension, the URC champions said.

Attack coach Prendergast, speaking ahead of Munster’s URC home game against Zebre Parma in Cork this Friday, said he had been impressed by the progress both half-backs have made since their respective senior debuts in the Champions Cup pool win at Wasps in December 2021.

“They’re two good lads that understand how we want to play and have worked hard to get to where they are at the moment,” Prendergast said.

“Good to see they’ve both signed on as well, which is really positive for us.

“In the position of half-backs, there’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders as a nine and a 10 and both of them are very calm in what they do. Both good technical players as well so their skills sets allow them to suit what way we want to play as well.

“The good thing about those two lads and a few of the younger lads is I suppose the beauty of training together as well. We train together, in terms of our academy (with the senior squad) and so they’ve been used to what we’re trying to do over the last year and a half.

“They’ve probably upped a bit more speed now than they were, which is only natural, from a year ago, and when they don’t play with us they’re back playing and performing with Shannon (and Butler at Young Munster), which is really, really important. So they’re playing rugby consistently and last week I thought both of them performed very well.”

Munster boosted by return of Ahern, Casey and Loughman for Zebre clash

With scrum-half Conor Murray and fly-half Jack Crowley both in Ireland camp ahead of the Six Nations trip to England on Saturday week, both Butler and Coughlan could be involved this Friday night at Virgin Media Park with Craig Casey, released from the national squad for the weekend, and Joey Carbery the likely starters against a Zebre side Prendergast believes are better than their 13th place in the URC table suggests.

“They’re maybe a small bit underrated, not by us. We’ve seen what they can do, they score tries, they’ve got some very, very good individuals and have a lot of poachers in their team so they create turnovers and they’re good at that unstructured stuff.

“They’ve recruited a couple of extra players this year and they’re definitely a team that’s moving forward and you can see it. They’re maybe on a bit of a journey, progression over the last couple of years and so we’re well aware of it.

“That’s something we were very good at over the last couple of weeks, our ruck has been quite good, very clean in terms of speed and we want to impose our game. We want to play fast but we know they will pose threats around that ball, around that breakdown, that contact so we need to be really, really accurate there.

“We’re massively excited, it’s a home game down in Cork and we’re really looking forward to it on a 4G pitch so hopefully we can play with a bit of tempo and speed.”