Graham Rowntree: 'If you're not going to get yourself up for this at Croke Park, when are you?

LEINSTER ATTACK:  Munster Head Coach Graham Rowntree can see Tyler Bleyendaal's fingerprints on the Leinter attack. Picture: ©INPHO/Ben Brady

Graham Rowntree and Tyler Bleyendaal were like ships passing in the night during their overlap at Munster in 2019-20. Yet though their working relationship was brief, the experienced coach learned enough about the then-fly-half to see his fingerprints on Leinster’s current gameplan.

The pair will be in opposing coaches’ boxes at Croke Park when Leinster host Munster at home of the GAA for the first time since 2009 in regular season URC fixture that will set a new attendance for the league with more than 75,000 tickets already sold.

Rowntree was a newly arrived forwards coach, joining Johann van Graan’s ticket after completing his duties with Georgia at the 2019 World Cup as Bleyendaal’s injury blighted playing career was being wound down to its enforced conclusion.

The New Zealander would manage only four more games as Rowntree was settling in, the neck injury which had followed the fly-half from Canterbury and the Crusaders to Ireland four years earlier playing his 62nd and final game for Munster against Ospreys in November 2019.

It would be six months before Bleyendaal, then only 29, would admit defeat and retire during the covid lockdown in May 2020 but Rowntree, now Munster boss, spotted the tactical and strategic instincts of man he will be trying to shackle in Dublin on Saturday evening.

"He had a bad neck, didn't he?” Rowntree said this week of the newly appointed Leinster attack coach. “Retired with a bad neck. Half a season (at Munster together), if I'm honest, lovely man.

"You could see he was going to be a coach. Steve (Larkham) had already had him helping out with a few of the backs sessions.

"You can see his touch in how their playing, his little twist on how they're attacking.

"He was a good speaker. A nice, quiet manner. A listener. He'd come and sit with the coaches; he clearly had an interest in coaching. I'm looking forward to seeing him after the game."

Rowntree and his own coaching staff will be just a little preoccupied with the prospect of defeating the unbeaten league leaders and earning a first victory over them since their URC semi-final victory at Aviva Stadium in May 2022.

The Munster head coach’s only previous success over Leinster came in a Rainbow Cup match at the RDS on van Graan’s watch in 2021 and he acknowledged this week the added intensity brought to their defence by the addition last season of World Cup-winning South Africa head coach Jacques Nienaber to Leo Cullen’s backroom as a senior coach.

Munster’s former defence coach Nienaber had only been back in Ireland a month following the Springboks’ successful title defence in Paris in October 2023 when Rowntree’s men encountered his influence in a 9-3 derby defeat at Thomond Park that Christmas.

"Stephen's Day in the rain last year, you could see the swarming, choking defence that Jacques had brought in.

"That's continued. On some occasions to a lesser degree, if you look at the way they're never off their feet. They're back to their feet, challenging the ruck, their work-rate.

"I can see Tyler, his imprint, on some of their phase attack, some of their plays. They're very good off launch.

"You don't want to give them a load of lineouts, because they're very good.

"It comes down to penalty access, they love mauls and breaking out of mauls. They've got great ways of challenging you around lineout, around that outside centre channel.

"Yeah, so it's going to be a hell of a challenge.

"If you're not going to get yourself up for this at Croke Park, when are you?"

Munster will need a strong tactical kicking game from half-backs Craig Casey and Jack Crowley and others in order to successfully beat the blitz and not concede possession cheaply. Rowntree said it was about giving his nine and 10 “the license to take that space when they see it.

“They’re good at showing you space but then beat you back to it, Leinster more than any other team really, their scramble, the speed at which they can scramble back and work for each other is very impressive.” 

It promises to be an absorbing encounter with the URC confirming that with 75,000-plus tickets already sold, Leinster and Munster will be playing in front of a new record league attendance, surpassing the previous best of 68,262 for the Judgement Day Welsh double header at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium in 2016.

Munster supporters contributed to the highest figure for an individual match, which was 56,344 for their 2023 grand final win over the Stormers in Cape Town.