Rowntree: 'We know we weren’t at it tonight, they don’t need me to tell them that. We’ll drive on'

ONTO NEXT WEEK: Munster Head Coach Graham Rowntree quickly turned his attention to next Sunday’s Champions Cup Round of 16 visit to English Premiership leaders Northampton Saints, describing the knockout tie as “a pivotal game for us.” Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Graham Rowntree said he would not over-analyse Munster’s poor performance after his side scraped a 20-15 victory over Cardiff to stretch their unbeaten United Rugby Championship run to four wins in a row on Saturday night The head coach was philosophical following the win which consolidates the defending champions’ place in the top four of the table with five games of the regular season remaining and keeps them on course for a home play-off quarter-final in June. 

And the Munster boss quickly turned his attention to next Sunday’s Champions Cup Round of 16 visit to English Premiership leaders Northampton Saints, describing the knockout tie as “a pivotal game for us.” 

Munster had scrapped their way to a 3-0 half-time lead over a Cardiff side that has not won in any competitive fixture in 2024 and started the weekend lying 12th in the URC table well adrift of the top eight play-off places.

Yet while the handling errors continued after the interval, it was a more open second period and the two sides traded two tries apiece, Tadhg Beirne opening the try-scoring for the home side before a 90-metre Ben Thomas intercept try and maul score from Tom Young pushed Cardiff into a 12-10 third-quarter lead. Jack Crowley’s 64th-minute try, which he converted himself and then a 74th-minute penalty saw Munster home, despite a late Jacob Beetham penalty for the visitors.

“Do you know what, it happens,” Rowntree said afterwards. “We’ll get on with it. We spoke about it at half-time.

“We couldn’t get our game going, it’s not like us, we were making mistakes and errors that weren’t like us and in the end we found a way to win the game. It got a bit squeaky towards the end but we found a way to win.

“We won’t over-analyse it, it was just some glaring mistakes we don’t normally make. At half time it felt like we’d taken 50 (points) for the guys because we couldn’t get our game going, we hadn’t scored a try.

“I told the lads I played loads of games like that in my career, dogfights where all that matters is getting the result. We’ll have a look at what we can do better but I’m not going to get hung up on it too much.

“We’ll look forward to next week to a pivotal game for us.” 

Rowntree praised his players for finding a way to win and ending a run of three matches at Thomond Park without a victory having drawn with European pool opponents Bayonne in December, lost to Leinster in a URC derby on St Stephen’s night and then went down to Northampton in their final Champions Cup pool game in January.

“It takes nous, it takes guts. Our goal-line defence at the end there… obviously the intercept was a bit of a turning point for them, then we had the yellow card and they maul us. That changes the context of the game but after that we found a way back in through our defence.

“We still dropped the ball. We spoke a lot about our performances here, our record here recently and at least we won.

“We know we weren’t at it tonight, they don’t need me to tell them that. We’ll drive on.”