Munster’s problems not gone out the door with Rowntree

Peter O’Mahony during Munster training ahead of his return to the side for tonight’s game at Thomond Park. Pic: Laszlo Geczo/Inpho

Munster went back to the past this week to gird themselves for the task of facing a stacked All Blacks XV side at Thomond Park this evening, but it is a very recent ghost that shimmers over this most intriguing of tour matches.

A visit to Limerick by a crack team from New Zealand does not happen very often and selling out Thomond Park inside an hour of the tickets going on sale tells you all you need to know about the attraction of this fixture to both the Munster rugby public and those inside the camp.

The Munster management had long put in place plans to mark the occasion, 46 years and two days after the All Blacks had been defeated on the same turf, and 16 years on from the redeveloped stadium’s opening match against the same opposition.

Familiar faces from both those fixtures were at Thomond Park on Thursday as 1978 veteran Brendan Foley presented the jersey to this next generation of Munster men to face the haka, watched by alumni of both the 2008 team which had come so close to repeating the feat, and the 2016 outfit which defeated the Maori All Blacks on an emotional night soon after the passing of Brendan’s son, Anthony.

With video messages from, among others, Doug Howlett and Lifeimi Mafi, the Kiwis who had famously performed a Munster haka before that 2008 meeting, and former players present in person, there were plenty of reminders of heroic feats of the past, albeit with one crucial absentee.

The shock departure of head coach Graham Rowntree on Tuesday casts a pall over this fixture and while the team have a duty to get on with their day jobs and represent their province against elite opposition this evening, their former boss’s departure remains a puzzle to those outside the organisation.

No explanations have been forthcoming from Munster as to why, despite the poor recent early-season form, they would part company with a coach who succeeded where each of his four immediate predecessors failed, in ending a silverware drought by delivering a first trophy in a dozen years just two seasons ago.

Yet interim head coach Ian Costello and his shocked players must harness yet another dizzying chapter in the ongoing soap opera that is Munster Rugby, roll up their sleeves, and get on with giving their supporters their best shot in these most bizarre of circumstances.

Both Costello and matchday skipper Diarmuid Barron have attempted to turn the page and prepare as best they can for this match but the problems that surfaced over the first six games of the URC campaign — a rash of injuries, leaky defence, misfiring lineout, and slew of individual errors and poor decision-making that have left Munster 12th in the table with two wins and four defeats — will not have disappeared out the door with Rowntree.

They need to be addressed before the league resumes with a home clash against the in-form Lions on November 30.

The interim boss, Munster’s head of rugby operations, knows he will need every one of the 10 scheduled training sessions at his disposal before then to put those things right yet Barron is adamant supporters will see a vibrant response to the three defeats in a row on the road as his team returns home to Thomond Park.

“We have just lost three in a row but we went away to Leinster, away to Stormers, away to Sharks. They are not easy tasks,” said the Munster hooker.

“I wouldn’t be hitting the emergency buttons on those things. You go through these periods and I think this group of players has shown time and time again that when you go through a tough patch, we are going to come out the other side of it.

“You can be guaranteed there is going to be a reaction, you are guaranteed lads will want to give a better account of themselves. I wouldn’t be too worried. Absolutely it’s an opportunity, like every other opportunity it’s a chance to right some wrongs, to put a better foot forward.”

Easier said than done against a touring side with a clear mission of its own, to collectively put on a performance to impress the All Blacks management and parachute as many of them as possible into the selection mix for the Tests to come against Ireland, France, and Italy. Visiting head coach Clayton McMillan has selected six capped All Blacks players in his matchday 23 for this first of two tour matches, two years to the weekend since his New Zealand A side put their Irish counterparts to the sword in a 47-19 victory at Dublin’s RDS.

“Very similar actually, coming in quite late and conditions were a lot the same,” McMillan recalled to the Irish Examiner this week.

“We put in a good performance that night so if your mindset is in the right place and we can pull everybody together and get a collective buy-in to what we can get out of this week, then we can turn up on Saturday ready to go.”