Mossy Lawler: 'Something had to change with our injury profiles last year'

New Zealander Clayton McMillan arrived this season after guiding the Chiefs to three consecutive Super Rugby finals.

Munster skills coach Mossy Lawler. Pic: Ben Brady/Inpho

Mossy Lawler believes Munster’s back-to-basics pre-season training regime under new boss Clayton McMillan can turn his province into a powerful force after admitting “something had to change” to make the players stronger and fitter.

New Zealander McMillan arrived this season after guiding the Chiefs to three consecutive Super Rugby finals, becoming the permanent replacement as head coach for Graham Rowntree, who departed six games into last season.

Munster’s turbulent 2024-25 campaign, overseen by interim head coach Ian Costello saw them have to win their final two games of the URC regular season in order to reach the knockout rounds and qualify for the Champions Cup this time around.

McMillan’s first act as head coach was to take pre-season training back to old school methods with his new charges running up hills, swimming and boxing under new Head of Athletic Performance Brad Mayo, and combining increased conditioning and gym work with rugby training.

The new broom brought in by the Kiwi is already bearing fruit with a bonus-point victory at Scarlets kicking off his debut season last Saturday and McMillan will now send Munster out for his first competitive game at Thomond Park this Saturday when Cardiff come to Limerick for the round-two clash with skills and assistant attack coach Lawler singling out his new boss’s emphasis on that pre-season conditioning.

“Look, something had to change with our injury profiles last year,” Lawler said. “You can’t run a ship when you consistently have 15 to 20 players out.

“I’m not going to go into that too far but the focus in pre-season was to make sure that we have a healthy ship, a healthy deck, that we could put our best foot forward and I do believe that if we have our full team to select from then we will be a powerful force this year.

“I know Clayton has spoken about how we went about pre-season and the emphasis the players had put on their gym work and their fitness conditioning in the afternoons on top of their rugby.

“I heard Shane Daly saying it was the hardest pre-season he’s ever done so from that point of view it will stand to us. We’ve got a healthy ship at the moment so very much hopeful looking forward.” 

Lawler added: “From a rugby point of view there hasn’t been much change. I mean, if it’s not broke you don’t fix it. I think the biggest thing with Clayton, he just exudes experience.

“With the Chiefs for the last number of years he’s been to the bitter end of the season. He knows exactly what he wants as a head coach and he knows how to go about it. The biggest example of that has been how we’ve ran our pre-season and the shape our players are in.

“It had been an aspect that we wanted to get fitter and stronger and I think we achieved that during pre-season. You could even see it in our players’ stature on the weekend and how we started the game, we were physical on both sides of the ball and it just highlights how important our pre-season was, but also the changes he made to the pre-season and how he got that out of the players.”