‘Shattered’ McGahan backed
Munster’s run of reaching the quarter-final stage in every campaign since 1998-99 ended with a whimper rather than a bang in Toulon on Sunday as the two-time champions were roundly beaten 32-16 in the heady atmosphere of Stade Mayol.
Munster head coach Tony McGahan admitted he was left “shattered” by the manner of the team’s exit in Toulon and pointed to his players’ indiscipline, anxiety and frantic play during the defeat. Yet McGahan’s boss, while admitting the province had been deservedly eliminated, backed the Australian and his backroom staff as the right men to lead Munster into a new era.
“We don’t have any issue with the Munster Rugby coaching staff on anything whatsoever,” Fitzgerald told the Irish Examiner yesterday.
“I know it’s natural after what people seem to be describing as being like a ‘death in the family’ but they are people that we’ve full confidence in. They’re very good rugby people, they’ve got a good work ethic and it’s a natural thing in sports when a team loses that the coaches are at fault and when a team wins it’s the players.
“There’s responsibility right across the coaches and the players and everybody else, but I have no issue with what we’re doing and the people we’ve brought in to do it.”
Toulon secured progress to the last eight in their Heineken Cup debut season, leaving McGahan with the job of lifting his Munster players for the final round of group play this Saturday against London Irish at Thomond Park. And there will be much more than pride at stake after Fitzgerald underlined the necessity of qualifying for the second-tier European competition as one of the third, fourth or fifth-best group runners-up.
“We are disappointed but we’re realistic. We’ve had 13 games in the Magners League, we have nine left and we’re at home for our Heineken Cup game next weekend,” the Munster CEO said. “We have to make sure we finish second in the group and give ourselves the opportunity to qualify for the Amlin Cup. That would be great. We set out at the start of the year to make sure we win all our home games. That’s important and if we do it will help us finish second.”
“It’s definitely important. Professional rugby is about winning trophies. This gives us another opportunity to compete for another trophy and that’s important, full stop.
“If we don’t we’ll motor on and try and keep up our form in the Magners League, which has been good. We probably haven’t been happy with the way we’ve been playing for different reasons. We’ve had an extended run of injuries, some younger players coming in and out, some people missing through disciplinary issues but we’ve managed to be top of the Magners League and only lost five matches in the whole season to-date, which isn’t too bad for a team that are deemed to be playing poorly.
“At the end of the day we would love to be in the Heineken Cup quarter-final, but we’re not and we’re disappointed but no-one’s died.”
Fitzgerald added that European Cup qualification had never been Munster’s “divine right” and his province had got what it deserved. “The first thing is, we’re only just over halfway through the season. It’s disappointing to go out of something that people perceived as being a divine right for us for 13 years but in that competition you normally get what you deserve.
“We’ve achieved, deservedly at times, but sometimes we’ve been lucky to qualify. You need to win away from home in these fixtures and we didn’t. It’s interesting that Toulon are the only team in our group that won away from home, so consequently they are the team that qualified. That’s the key issue.
“It was a very difficult group and we knew we needed to win away from home. We didn’t play particularly well in round one away at London Irish, when we had national players only fresh back from their pre-season and we weren’t playing well at the time.
“Toulon won away from home, they go through and that’s the reality.”
As to why Munster were unable to seal an away win for the first time since 1997-98, Fitzgerald said: “First of all the quality of the teams in the competition is rising all the time and I suppose we have a squad that’s partly in transition and we’ve managed to stay competitive as (players) have come and gone. We’ve been exceptionally lucky to have performed really well in that amount of Heineken Cups, and we’re delighted to have done but we don’t have a divine right. We have to earn it and we didn’t earn it this year.
“We didn’t play well enough and the quality of opposition is going up all the time. Look at the team we played in Toulon. They said they had their best performance of the season (against Munster) and they had some magnificent individuals and performances from top-class international players, that’s why they won. Sometimes you make mistakes and you’re put under pressure but you’re put under pressure by the quality of the opposition as well and I think that’s the reality of it.”
In terms of rising competition, Fitzgerald said that boiled down to financial firepower at the highest level and the French had the lions’ share.
“This is professional sport and when you’re playing in Europe, it’s like football, it’s determined by your budget. You see what Man City are doing in football at the moment. Other teams try to compete with them and they get them now and again and it’s exactly like that.
“At the end of the day we want to get as many Irish players in at this level as possible and make them available to play for Ireland. I think only two French players started on (Toulon’s) team on Sunday and that’s self-explanatory.
“It’s not an excuse and there’s lots of very good players coming through in Ireland. We’ve had a very settled side for a number of years and it will take another small amount of younger people to come through.
“Leinster have a great crop of young players coming through at the moment and playing exceptionally well, while Ulster have been energised with a few imports and a lot of their own local players. So this goes in cycles but ultimately, on the European stage, the budget does dominate.”
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