Clayton McMillan: 'You haven’t seen the last of us yet'

LONG WALK HOME: Munster's Craig Casey leaves the field after the European Rugby Challenge Cup Round of 16 clash with Exeter. Pic:  INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Challenge Cup: Exeter Chiefs 31 Munster 21 

Clayton McMillan spoke last week about the number of punches Munster have taken on the nose this season. 

Saturday’s Challenge Cup defeat in Sandy Park was the latest haymaker and it leaves their season – and more - on the ropes with four URC games to go.

It’s not that they wanted this coming weekend off, but it does at least provide some breathing space on the back of an eighth loss in their last ten games, and after a long and testing two-week tour to South Africa and this short, abortive excursion to England.

Make the top eight in the URC and Champions Cup rugby will be secured for next season, badly needed revenue streams will be protected (to some extent) and McMillan can go about the job of what is clearly a badly-needed rebuild of his staff and the squad at this point.

The pressure is on.

“Yep, yeah, yes. There's no way of beating around the bush with that. Our aspiration is not to try to sneak in [to the top eight]. It’s to get in there comfortably, and we know that the points table is congested and every team's going to be feeling the same way that we are.

“It’s just going to come down to who can respond best. We've got two games at home, one down the road against Connacht, and obviously in our next game over at Benetton. So none of them easy, but if we're good enough, we'll be there.” 

The Kiwi didn’t promise the stars when he arrived last summer. He spoke instead of a need to raise the floor, and the manner of this latest loss showed again just how much of a job there is to be done in that regard.

The Chiefs were always favourites to progress from this round of 16 tie on home soil but the manner in which Munster conceded 31 points in 25 disastrous first-half minutes laid bare a squad that is lacking in quality, momentum and belief.

“Look, there's a lot of work, a lot of work to go, but I didn't expect it to happen overnight. It’s sort of two steps forward, one step back. Look, nothing has changed my belief around where this squad can get to. We're obviously a work in progress.

“Days like [Saturday] show that we can go from a pretty low point to actually showing some decent rugby and a bit of bottle, and it's about getting more of that second part right. That will bring about the fortunes that we're looking for.” 

The final scoreline made a liar of the events that fed into it.

The Chiefs had basically declared their innings at the interval having kept their visitors scoreless to that point with the help of a strong wind at their backs. Two tries came off intercepts, another pair off a handful of phases of attack.

Soft scores, basically. Again.

There is a brittleness to Munster now that is alarming. An inability to stop a rot. They were 28-0 adrift of Bath after a quarter in The Rec. 

They lost the second-half to Ulster in Belfast 22-0. The 45-0 away to the Sharks was one long nightmare.

This was the same for 40 minutes.

McMillan, when asked about that, and how Munster go about staunching the loss of so much blood, insisted that the answers are “within the group” and that they involved mere tweaks rather than radical changes.

In fairness to him, he could have found succour in a second-half ‘recovery’ that produced three unanswered tries but McMillan didn’t go there. He will know as much as anyone that they never seriously threatened Exeter in the second 40.

“I said to the lads after, we can't be happy with the fact that we kept them scoreless in the second-half and made the score respectable in the end. We've got to look at the 31-0. That's the bit that's got to hurt. That's the bit that we need to get better.” 

Two excellent tries from Jack Crowley and another from Tadhg Beirne did speak again for the importance of that pair to the group, and Craig Casey never stopped plugging away at scrum-half. In that trio Munster have leaders, but more followers need to step up.

“One thing that I don't ever question around this group is their willingness to work hard and to front up physically,” said the head coach. “And in every game we played this year, I feel like we've seen that in patches, just not for long enough.

“When you just are off for a minute at this level of the game against quality opposition they're going to make you pay for it. Days like [this] and nights like Bath are examples where you get hurt. But there's a lot of resolve and a lot of lot of fight in this team.

“You haven't seen the last of us yet.” 

Exeter Chiefs: O Woodburn; P Brown-Bampoe, H Slade, W Rigg, I Feyi-Waboso; H Skinner, S Varney; S Sio, J Yeandle, J Roots; D Jenkins, A Zambonin; T Hooper, R Vintcent, G Fisilau.

Replacements: C Ridl for Feyi-Waboso and B Tchumbadze for Roots (both 46); J Dweba for Sio and E Burger for Yeandle (both 50); R Tuima for Hooper, F Worley Bray for Vintcent and W Haydon Wood for Rigg (all 74).

Munster: B O’Connor; D Kilgallen, T Farrell, T Abrahams; J Crowley, C Casey; J Loughman, L Barron, J Ryan; E Edogbo, T Beirne; J O’Donoghue, A Kendellen, G Coombes.

Replacements: M Alalatoa for Ryan, N Scannell for Barron and M Milne for Loughman (all 49); R Quinn for Coombes and J Hodnett for Kendellen (both 50); T Aherne for O’Donoghue, S O’Brien for O’Connor and B O’Donovan for Casey (all 70).

Referee: J Rozier (Fra).