Skipper Beirne says Munster have 'uphill battle' after second-half collapse against Stormers

UPHILL BATTLE: Munster skipper Tadhg Beirne said they need to get their act together quickly as they head into the Champions Cup next weekend after suffering their first defeat of the season when they were overpowered by the Stormers in the second half at Thomond Park on Saturday night. Picture: @INPHO/Dan Sheridan

URC: Munster 21 Stormers 27

Munster skipper Tadhg Beirne said they need to get their act together quickly as they head into the Champions Cup next weekend after suffering their first defeat of the season when they were overpowered by the Stormers in the second half at Thomond Park on Saturday night.

Munster went down to their first defeat of the Clayton McMillan era when the Cape Town side came from 21-6 adrift at the break to claim victory in this top of the table URC clash, holding their hosts scoreless after the break and dishing out another dominant South African scrum lesson.

Now Munster need to recover for their trip to Johann van Graan’s Bath next weekend and Beirne knows they need an immediate response against the English champions.

“Yeah, we've got no choice but to learn the lessons quickly,” said Beirne. “We know how tough Europe is. We have to take a massive step forward to compete next week because we know that wasn't good enough today, particularly that second half. It was nowhere near good enough.

“We'll have a bit of an uphill battle to sort ourselves out for next week. But, it's happened now so now we have to learn from it quickly and right those wrongs.” 

Central to the first loss of the season was the way the Stormers got on top in the scrum, especially when they sprung a bomb squad of six forward replacements five minutes after the restart.

“South African teams pride themselves on the scrum, don't they? Unfortunately, they were beating us to the hit here,” added Beirne, who had endured enough from the Springboks pack a week earlier.

“They dominated us in that area, unfortunately. They got a lot of reward there. We did our best to problem-solve on the field. But they had the upperhand today.” 

Such an outcome seemed unlikely as Munster bossed most of the opening half and they were good value for their big interval lead as Beirne, John Hodnett and Jack Crowley crossed for tries in the opening 29 minutes. But just when it seemed they were also going to wrap up the bonus point, the game swung in favour of a Stormers side who were without half a dozen players who were in action for the Springboks in Cardiff.

“Yeah, I thought we played really well in the first 20 minutes, 30 minutes even, defended well,” added Beirne. “But we just started to slowly let them back into the game. It felt like, towards the end of that first half, they were starting to put a bit of pressure on us.

“We came in at half-time and said we needed to impose ourselves back onto them. We came out and had a good one or two phases. Then, all of a sudden, it was penalty, penalty. The game just continued like that because we continued to give away very probably sloppy penalties at times. Offside, simple penalties.

“And that's just giving teams easy access into our side of the field. Unfortunately for us, we weren't able to hold them out enough. The icing on the cake for them was getting an intercept to win the game.” 

The Stormers turned the screw in the scrum and got back in contention with tries from replacement lock Adré Smith and winger Dylan Maart.

Disaster struck for Munster when they won their own scrum but a wraparound pass from Crowley was intercepted by centre Ruhan Nel who raced from inside his own half to score under the posts, with Matthee’s conversion making it 27-21 eight minutes from time.

Munster thought they had rescued the tie when a sublime chipped crosskick from Craig Casey put Tom Farrell away down the right to score — with Crowley landing the difficult conversion for the lead — only for it to be whistled back and disallowed after a knock-on in the build-up by Crowley was spotted on review.

A penalty advantage was being played in the build-up but while Munster won the lineout after going to the corner they were unable to find a way through with replacement centre Dan Kelly knocking-on.

That led to a scrum and the Stormers, who hadn’t lost one all season, duly cleared their lines to maintain their winning start to the URC and score only their second ever win in Ireland.

MUNSTER: S Daly; D Kilgallen, T Farrell, A Nankivell (D Kelly 61), T Abrahams; J Crowley, C Casey; J Loughman (M Milne 54), D Barron (N Scannell 54), J Ryan (R Foxe 61); T Ahern, F Wycherley (E Edogbo 59); T Beirne (c), J O’Donoghue (J Hodnett 10), G Coombes.

STORMERS: W Gelant; D Maart, W Simelane, R Nel, L Zas; J Matthee, S Ungerer (D Duvenage 60); V Matongo (O Kebble 45), AH Venter (JJ Kotzé 45), N Fouché (S Sandi 45); S Moerat (c) (A Smith 45), C Evans (JD Schickerling 45); P de Villiers, M Theunissen (R Ackermann 45), E Roos.

Referee: Andrea Piardi (Italy)