Durban date, but Munster can draw strength from erasing worst fears

Interim head coach Ian Costello is delighted with how the province pulled together to avoid missing out on the Champions Cup.

Munster's Peter O’Mahony poses for photos after the win over Benetton. Pic: Laszlo Geczo, Inpho

The long trip to Durban is by now a familiar one but it will be no less daunting when Munster pitch up by the Indian Ocean to face the Sharks in two weeks.

For now, though, a URC quarter-final can wait a couple more days, as far as players and management are concerned. Just getting into the end of season play-offs was the number one objective for interim head coach Ian Costello and the entire Munster organisation and given the effort to achieve that over the past fortnight, a few days of decompression following last Friday night’s 30-21 victory over Benetton are not just welcome but vital to the province’s hopes of repeating their title run on the road two years ago.

A fall from fifth place in the regular season standings to ninth with two rounds still to play on the back of last month’s Champions Cup quarter-final exit at Bordeaux-Begles had sent Munster into dangerous territory, as the prospect of no knockout rugby and relegation to Europe’s second-tier Challenge Cup competition next season was brought into sharp focus.

Set against the last hurrahs and impending departures of Peter O’Mahony, Stephen Archer and Dave Kilcoyne to retirement, and Conor Murray to pastures new, the potential picture for incoming head coach Clayton McMillan this summer was a bleak one with so much rugby and emotional intelligence and leadership leaving the building and finances set to plummet.

Back-to-back bonus-point victories at home to Ulster at Thomond Park and over Benetton at Virgin Media Park have erased such fears, giving O’Mahony, Murray and Archer the perfect send-offs from home soil last Friday night as Munster secured a sixth-place finish and guaranteed McMillan will join from the Chiefs in pre-season with a Champions Cup pool draw to look forward to.

But first the much-needed rest.

“You look back over our last couple of months, there's been rollercoasters of emotion,” Costello said.

“You've got mental and physical energy, but I think the one that takes the biggest toll is the emotional energy when you have to go to the well. It's easier to go to the well when you've got depth in your squad, and there's really genuine competition for places, and training is competitive.

“So we'll take a couple of days to decompress, probably reset, and then all the focus, which is nice, 10 to 12 days to look forward to a quarter-final, whereas we've been rolling week on week for the last while.”

A visit to the Sharks on the evening of Saturday, May 31, completes an interesting if unwanted circle given Munster’s last visit there on October 26 set in motion an emotional rollercoaster of its own. It was Graham Rowntree’s last as head coach, departing on the squad’s return to Ireland, leaving head of rugby operations Costello to take up his current interim role.

Munster had lost 41-24 at Kings Park that Saturday afternoon in Durban, undone by the Shark’s clinical accuracy and finishing power built off the back of a Springbok front five. Two tries for the home inside the opening five minutes brought to mind the possibility of a 50-35 shellacking in the same stadium two seasons earlier when a chastening Champions Cup Round of 16 exit had threatened to derail Rowntree’s debut season in command. That it proved to be Munster’s last defeat of what turn into a league title-winning campaign will bring back happier memories as O’Mahony led his side back to South Africa to finish the URC regular season with a win over the Stormers and draw at the Sharks, before knockout wins in Glasgow, Dublin and Cape Town delivered a first trophy in 12 years.

Costello referenced how the power of those memories was having a positive impact this time around.

“Yeah, there’s some landmarks there. There's some milestones there that we can go back to. We've played two weeks of knockout rugby now. We go into the third week, we'd love if it was five weeks, but that's what the last two weeks have felt like. We lose one and we're out.

“So hopefully that sets us up. It's always going to be very, very difficult to go to South Africa, but we've done that before as well. We've drawn on that belief and we draw on a lot of things over the last couple of weeks as well.” 

Munster’s performance in beating Benetton was far from perfect but there were plenty of positives to feed into that belief, even the grit shown by opening try scorer Jack Crowley to play through an early rib injury until the 74th minute.

The fly-half had converted his own 13th-minute try and a penalty shortly after but two tries from Benetton full-back Rhyno Smith had given the Italians a 14-10 half-time lead.

Munster had lost Niall Scannell to a head injury before half-time but on-loan replacement hooker Lee Barron’s performance off the bench was excellent and gave assurances that his permanent move from Leinster this summer is a further cause for optimism next season. Barron’s try from a driving maul came shortly after the restart, and though Crowley’s missed conversion saw him delegate goal-kicking duties to number nine Craig Casey, even that proved a revelation, the scrum-half sealing Munster’s post-interval resurgence by nailing his touchline conversion of Thaakir Abrahams’ 49th minute try.

Casey added another three points off the tee in the 56th and the maul’s return as a potent weapon was rubber-stamped with seven minutes to go when Josh Wycherley made a dive for the line to bring up the try bonus point. It also gave the 8,800 sell-out Cork crowd the opportunity to celebrate their departing heroes and close the past fortnight on an entirely positive note.

“It had to be, didn’t it?” Costello said. “We know what it means to be in the Champions Cup. We know what it means to be in the play-offs.

“We don't openly talk about what the ramifications are, but we know what they are. We know what they are for the club going forward. But what we tried to do again was really bring it back to the elements that were important for the performance.

“That's what I loved about the last two weeks, how close, tight, and connected the group were. But also, if I can stretch back a bit further than that, it's been like that for months. We've had a tough season, we've had so much change, but for everyone to stay so tight and connected, so aligned, pulled together, it's just great to see the lads get the reward on the back end of that. Very pleasing.”