One game from elimination, Munster face their biggest test yet under Clayton McMillan
A general view of the Munster squad during training. Pic: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
Munster may have been playing for their lives these past few weeks as they strove to reach the end-of-season play-offs but Clayton McMillan recognises the different pressures at play as his team prepares to face the Bulls in Saturday’s URC quarter-final in Pretoria.
The first-season head coach will not have wanted his new squad to have needed a late charge into the knockout rounds when he arrived at Munster from perennial Super Rugby contenders the Chiefs last summer.
Instead, they have reverted to type with inconsistent performances and outcomes across the tail end of the campaign and still managing fifth place in the final regular season standings despite a growing injury list.
Their last-round league win over the Lions at Thomond Park a fortnight ago has taken them to South Africa for the second year in a row.
And, 12 months on from being edged out in a penalty-kick shootout after 100 minutes of stalemate at the Sharks in Durban, McMillan’s team will have to overcome altitude at Loftus Versfeld and a formidable opponent in the fourth-seeded Bulls if they are to extend their season beyond this weekend.
Speaking from Pretoria on Friday, the head coach said: "We sort of have been playing knockout rugby for the last month but to get into the finals brings a different kind of pressure brings a different pressure to being in the finals,” McMillan said.
"That's in the rear-view mirror now, we're not playing for points or a bonus point. We're playing to win the game and it's going about doing that by any means necessary.
"We've got a good plan and if we execute that plan we give ourselves a good starter’s chance."
As head coach of the Chiefs, McMillan steered his fellow New Zealanders to the semi-finals in each of his five seasons at the helm from 2021-25, reaching the final in each of the latter three years from 2023.
“I just think that in finals, it's a balancing act between recognising that it is different, it's knockout rugby, but not making it so different that you actually move away from the things that have helped get you there in the first place.”
McMillan added: “But often it just comes down to moments like one or two in big games that can have a big effect on the outcome. Certainly in my experience down south, when it gets wet, set-piece becomes massive, the ability to use your scrum, your maul, a tactical kicking game to your advantages is pretty key.
“We know up here at the Bulls, that's what we're going to get. We're going to get challenged at scrum time, we're going to get challenged with our maul, we're going to get challenged in narrow channels where their big boys are going to come at us with a lot of pace. But no matter where you play, the challenge is ultimately in finals rugby, kind of the same.”
Having his former Chiefs midfielder Alex Nankivell back in the starting line-up after a late withdrawal due to a knock on the eve of the Lions game is an undoubted boost, a much-needed addition of experience in a team missing so many frontline players.
The Munster boss sees so much more in the former All Blacks XV star’s weaponry than that, however.
"He's been very good at getting gainline, he carries strongly and has good speed. He can get around bodies as well.
"Probably, just for his defensive influence. He's one of our defensive leaders; you could see him becoming a very good defensive coach in the years ahead if that's a path he wants to explore.
"He just understands intimately what needs to happen out on the field, he gives confidence to those inside and outside him and just really the consistency of his performance.
"There's not too many days where he's not performing at a fairly high level, week in and week out."
Against a quality side with so much attacking flair to back up bristling physicality, Nankivell’s attributes will be in demand at Loftus on Saturday afternoon and with the players still available to McMillan, the head coach has picked as robust a matchday 23 as he can possibly manage with six forwards on the bench and two powerful backline replacements in academy scrum-half Ben O’Donovan and Dan Kelly.
It may not be enough, although Munster ran the Bulls incredibly close on their most recent visit at the end of March, losing 34-31 following a late Handre Pollard penalty.
The two bonus points in defeat went a long way to securing their play-off place this weekend but as McMillan has pointed out, this quarter-final mission comes with different requirements.
W Le Roux; K-L Arendse, C Moodie, H Vorster, S Jacobs; H Pollard, E Papier; G Steenkamp, J Grobbelaar, W Louw; R Vermaak, R Nortje; M Coetzee – captain, E Louw, C Hanekom.
M van Standen, J-H Wessels, F Klopper, C Wiese, J Rudolph, P de Wet, S Gans, S Petersen.
Mike Haley; Andrew Smith, Alex Nankivell, Seán O’Brien, Shane Daly; JJ Hanrahan, Craig Casey - captain; Jeremy Loughman, Niall Scannell, Michael Ala’alatoa; Tom Ahern, Evan O’Connell; Jack O’Donoghue, John Hodnett, Brian Gleeson.
Diarmuid Barron, Josh Wycherley, Conor Bartley, Fineen Wycherley, Gavin Coombes, Ben O’Donovan, Dan Kelly, Alex Kendellen.
Andrea Piardi (Italy).
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