'If the culture’s slipping he’s not happy': new Munster head coach McMillan will have high expectations

Alex Nankivell played under Clayton McMillan for four seasons at the Chiefs. The team thought they had an identity until McMillan arrived as head coach and showed them what a real one was. 

Incoming Munster head coach Clayton McMillan will take advantage of a Chiefs bye week in Super Rugby to touch base with his future charges in Limerick. Pic:  Michael Bradley/Getty Images

Munster’s incoming head coach Clayton McMillan is set to meet his new charges in Limerick next week with his former Chiefs players John Ryan and Alex Nankivell backing him to make an instant impact when the New Zealander takes the helm in July.

McMillan was announced on February 26 as Munster’s choice to replace Graham Rowntree as the province’s next permanent head coach with Ian Costello set to return behind the scenes to a newly created general manager post while attack coach Mike Prendergast has been given an enhanced role as senior coach from the end of this season.

Having guided the Chiefs to a fifth win from six rounds of the new Super Rugby season in Auckland on Friday with a 50-35 victory over Moana Pasifika, McMillan, 50, is taking the first opportunity available to link up with Munster for a preliminary meet and greet as the interim boss explained to the Irish Examiner.

“The Chiefs have a bye week, which is great,” Costello said, “it gives him an opportunity to connect with people, probably develop some early relationships, get the lie of the land and everyone gets to meet him properly, which is cool.

“So fair play to him, he feels that's really important to set him up to hit the ground running in July.” 

Kiwi centre Nankivell played under McMillan for the Maori All Blacks and for four seasons at the Chiefs until his move north to Munster in 2023, while former Irish international prop Ryan spent the 2023 Super Rugby season at the Hamilton-based franchise when the head coach guided them to the second of three final appearances.

The former policeman and Bay of Plenty No.8 made a lasting impression on each of them with Ryan recalling his understanding of what made McMillan a special coach came in the immediate aftermath of two defeats in that campaign, a home game during the regular season and also the Super Rugby final loss to the Crusaders.

“We’re quite critical about ourselves and we’re quite hard on each other when we lose,” Ryan said, “and we were a bloody good side and we should have probably won that Super Rugby final but we had such a talented team and we played down in Taranaki against the Queensland Reds.

“They're probably a bogey team for the Chiefs over the past two years and they beat us. We got held up over the line in the last play and lost the game on the back of that. We came in on the Monday and we’d won every game, 14 in a row or something like that, and we’ve lost this game, it’s the end of the world. But Clayton came in and stood at the top, we barely reviewed the game, only looked at bits and pieces, and he started smiling.

“Then he said, ‘I’m glad that happened, we needed that’. He saw it as a bit of a wake-up call so there was positivity to it. You couldn’t be doing that every week but it was just a funny one, that everything negative has a silver lining.

“And we did go on and we did really well in the final. He was obviously disgusted after it but spoke well. It was Sam Cane’s 150th cap and straight after losing a final he flicked the switch, which was very soon after. We had to honour Sam, and we did the haka to him, which was hilarious to do that in front of Sam Cane. But the point was, we’d lost a final and everyone was down but we had to show respect to Sam Cane. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves, he’s got 150 caps and that doesn’t happen very often.

“So they do things a bit differently down there and he backs culture being a massive contributor to performance on the pitch and if the culture’s slipping he’s not happy.

“I know us Irish can get quite down on ourselves and maybe get a bit negative but hopefully he’ll bring that positivity to it.” 

Nankivell, 28, first played for McMillan following a call-up by the Maori All Blacks in 2019, and was part of Warren Gatland’s Chiefs squad which transitioned to McMillan’s command two years later. McMillan was also the All Blacks XV boss when he played against Ireland A at the RDS in November 2022.

He was excited when McMillan’s appointment as Munster’s next head coach was announced last month and told the Irish Examiner he believes his compatriot, whose nickname in New Zealand is “Donk”, will be a good fit for both the existing coaching staff and the playing squad.

“We've got a world-class coaching group and then to have Donk come in, I think he will mix really well with the lads we've got here now.

“To sum it up, he’s authentic. He's got high standards, he’s honest and he really dives deep into what drives the team and what drives the players, so like the identity piece.

“That’s pretty much what he did at the Chiefs, He came in and we kind of thought we had an identity but we probably truly didn’t have one. At the end of the day, there’s so much drive in a rugby player in terms of performance on the field and he didn’t completely change that but just rebranded it a wee bit for the group of players that were there. So we really knew what our identity was, like how we wanted to play, how we wanted to behave on the field and in the facility when you're at training but then also outside of the facility.

“So he’ll bring high expectations so that we'll all know where we stand and what to expect from one another. He’ll be really honest and he’ll make sure everyone's really aligned, too. There's no grey area with anything within the game or with the off-field stuff, so he’ll really drive that environment piece to the performance for Munster.

“He's really good at holding people accountable in terms of those different areas. He won’t mess around.

“He’ll make sure not just the coaches are aligned but everyone in the whole building, from medical to S&C about where we want this team to go and how we have to do that. That alignment piece is one of his big strengths.” 

The wider Munster squad is about to find that out and Ryan, 36, is expecting his team-mates to buy into the New Zealand-style culture epitomised by the Maori word ‘mahi’ – working hard for one another.

“I don't see why they wouldn’t embrace it,” the veteran prop said. “He's come from good stock and he’s going to be coming in to an already strong coaching staff, so I hope all that clicks together because if it does, I think it would be very effective. So I'm hoping, I’ve one more year to experience it so we’ll see.”