Munster’s Craig Casey relishing prospect of Champions Cup battle with Baptiste Serin

Munster face Toulon in the Champions Cup on Sunday with Casey's fellow scrum-half Serin being the “the heartbeat of their game”

Munster scrum-half Craig Casey said his confidence in teammates and the province's coaching staff is "sky high". Pic: ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy

As a fledgling scrum-half Craig Casey grew up with a love of France’s archetypal number nine, the playmaking petit général. On Sunday at Stade Felix Mayol he could go head-to-head with another in that mould, Toulon’s Baptiste Serin.

Antoine Dupont may rule the roost in Casey’s position, and the Toulouse star unsurprisingly plays a prominent role in the Munster scrum-half’s pre-game ritual of watching the best players in his class on a highlight reel but Serin is another French international nine whom the Irishman admires. He is relishing the prospect of facing the 31-year-old when the Champions Cup pool rivals clash this weekend. 

The France international is yet to be passed fit having missed training on Wednesday after injuring a thigh against Perpignan on December 28 but Munster senior coach Mike Prendergast this week described the Toulon nine as “the heartbeat of their game”, an assessment with which his player concurred.

“He's a flair player to be honest, comes up with really high moments,” Casey said. “He can make something out of nothing but is also probably their spark.

“Everyone kind of looks towards him to make something happen when things are going right or when things are going wrong as well. It'll be a good battle if I do get the chance to play against him.”

Whether Serin will feature in the showreel the Ireland international will watch on Saturday night ahead of the early Sunday afternoon kick-off beside the Mediterranean remains to be seen. The ritual is an established part of Casey’s pre-game preparations to “build my belief in how good I can be”.

“Well, like I watch some amount of rugby and you're watching nines from all over the world. It's important to realise that I'm not the player that someone like (Alex) Mitchell or Dupont is, they're very highly focused on their running game, whereas I'm more getting to rucks, getting out of rucks quick, passing game, world-class kind of basics is what I base myself around. But's also it's important to kind of take notes from those players and see where I can develop my running game and how I can develop certain aspects of that, but also not losing sight of where I am as a player.

“I have full belief I do things better than other players around the world and they certainly do things better than I do. It's probably learning from that, taking confidence from watching world-class players deliver certain aspects in some weeks, but I've also watched similar clips of me doing the exact same thing the night before I go up to a game and I can't but not have confidence within myself on the weekend.

“Probably standing on your prep as well and all the work you've done during the week that can set you up for the weekend.” 

Despite Munster hitting a patch of inconsistent form of late, emphasised by last Friday’s desperately poor performance in Belfast and the 28-3 URC derby defeat to Ulster, the 26-year-old’s confidence in his own abilities is equally strong in his squad members as they prepare to travel to France.

“Yeah, it's in a good place to be honest. Like, over the last few weeks, we definitely know we haven't been up to the pitch. Definitely last week, I don't think we were up to the pitch of the game, but we've done some really good things over the last few weeks, even when results haven't went our way.

“But it's probably about finding the consistency within our performance, whether that be a really good half and then the second half isn't as good or the first half hasn't went well but the second half has been good. Even there's been really good games and then the week after we've kind of dipped and in the first few games we were managing to still get the results even if we hadn't been consistent.

“And then even the Stormers game, I thought we probably played our best half of rugby in the first half and you can see how well we're doing and we were ahead by about 20 points I think and then the second half again finding that consistency.

“So confidence wise, I definitely haven't been shook by it one bit. My confidence within the team, within the coaching staff, the players we have is sky high and I know the places we can take it. It's just about finding that level and exploiting it week on week.”