[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]L[/su_dropcap]einster are the benchmark in Irish, and maybe even European, rugby. You might not like to read that, but until you accept it, moving forward will be difficult – if not impossible. There is a cyclical nature to all sports, of course. Sporting dynasties rise and fall, we’ve all seen it happen in every sport from soccer to basketball. The Bulls were the best in mid-90s basketball and then they weren’t. Manchester United were the kings of English football until they weren’t. Munster were the dominant force in Irish rugby until they weren’t. Time passes, empires rise, more time passes, empires fall. This is how it is and always has been.

One thing is common to all of these dynasties – sporting and otherwise – is that when you’re in the middle of a “reign” it’s hard, if not impossible, to visualise the reign ever ending. Very few people in 2013 thought that Manchester United would still be waiting for another title seven years later. Even fewer thought that Liverpool’s title in 1990 would be their last for almost 30 years, assuming they win won this year.

And hey, if you’d told me in June 2008 that Munster would only win two more trophies – the 2009 and 2011 Magner’s League) in the following 11 years I probably wouldn’t have believed you but here we are, looking over at Leinster’s nine senior trophies in the same timespan and wondering if they’ll ever be toppled.

Look at it.

Does it hurt? Good. Let’s begin.

Almost every sporting cycle begins with the top dog making mistakes and/or declining so that the chasing pack can overtake them. This is true in every instance where a reigning, dominant champion team has lost their place – Chicago Bulls, Manchester United, Liverpool, Munster. Sometimes that decline is only visible in hindsight but it’s always there.

In Munster’s case, we can look at a few key factors that may have lead to the decline in 2009 and since 2009.

Coaching Changes, Rule Changes and Style Changes

In the aftermath of the 2008 Heineken Cup win, Declan Kidney left to take charge of the Irish national team but this wasn’t the only change – Jim Williams, the then forward coach, left for a job with Australia at the same time after a seven-year association with the club (five as a player, two as a coach).

Tony McGahan, Munster’s backs/defence coach since 2005 was promoted to the position of Director of Coaching at the age of 37 – his first time in such role – and brought in Laurie Fisher to replace Jim Williams as Munster forwards coach in July 2008.

Any coaching change is a risk, no matter how well managed, no matter the success of the team and regardless of how respectful to transition in nature it might be. Hiring McGahan in the wake of Kidney’s departure was an easy decision to make in some regards and decidedly sensible, in hindsight. He was well respected in the squad and was a key backroom component in two Heineken Cup wins. Seriously, if you go back and watch Munster’s defence around this time you’ll be surprised at how modern it looks relative to our rivals at the time. Hiring McGahan was a risk – his relative youth and inexperience as a head coach – but it was a calculated promotion from within that would, in theory, encourage an element of continuity with the massive success that had come before.

Even then, this was not the only major change that would head Munster’s way in 2008/2009. This was also the season that the Experimental Law Variations were applied to rugby globally during the preseason. Laurie Fisher was hired, in part, because of his familiarity with the ELVs during his time as Brumbies head coach in 2008. These law variations presented a fundamental change in how Munster played the game.

Here is a breakdown of the ELVs from Wikipedia. For brevity’s sake, I’ve included the laws I believe impacted Munster’s style of play the most.

• In the original version of the laws, players were allowed to use their hands at all times at the breakdown. A slightly different rule, prohibiting hands in the ruck but making it only a free-kick, has been trialled as well. The final rule regarding hands in the ruck has not been established. In any event, players must come into the breakdown in an onside position, and only players who are on their feet are allowed to play the ball. The side that takes the ball into the breakdown loses it if they do not recycle possession.
• If the ball is passed or run back into the 22 and then kicked out on the full before a tackle, ruck or maul is effected, the resulting lineout is taken from where the kick was made. However, if the kick bounces into touch, the lineout is taken from where the ball went into touch, as in the previous laws.
• The maul can be collapsed by defending sides without incurring a penalty if the forward momentum of the attacking side has been neutralized or reversed.

These changes were applied fully during the off-season of 2008. They don’t sound all that major but these were fundamental changes to how Munster played the game. Removing the ability to kick directly to touch after passing the ball back into the 22 removed a key tactical weapon from Munster’s armoury. You only really appreciate this when you watch back big games from 04 to 06.

If Munster were trying to generate an opportunity inside our 10m line after, say, an opposition restart or in the aftermath of a scrum/lineout/turnover, we always had O’Gara dropping back into the 22 and bombing a deep spiral beyond the halfway line to “move the line” into the opponent’s half.

In this example, Munster dropped O’Gara away from a position where he could be charged down, passed the ball back into the 22 and would then get a territorial advance from his deep, long right-footed spiral kicking technique. Munster would get instant territory gain

From there, we would attack the opposition lineout with the best defensive lineout in the club game, disrupt possession well above average, and go forward from there.

Now we would have to fundamentally that aspect of our game because the 22 was now a brick wall the minute you advanced play beyond it. It also put O’Gara in range of an advanced charge-down because now there was no penalty for it overcommitting on the kicking route.

Now O’Gara would be faced with a much more difficult kick to touch with a charge-down much more likely and, in truth, you’d be kicking infield in most of these scenarios. It’s a small change but a fundamental one and in-line with the aim of the ELVs – to create more ball in play. It made for fewer lineouts, more box kicking/chasing and more kicks infield.

The other change was to completely de-fang the maul. The new law said that mauls could be collapsed at the first lull in momentum and not only was this incredibly dangerous, it also completely negated the maul as an attacking platform. There was no point to it. The real damage done during a maul is often right after a short lull as the players win small little shoving battles that ultimately lead to a cascade of momentum when one of the opposition breaks. You could sink deep into a maul, really let the opposition feel it and make great ground straight off the lineout and then off the maul break. This was a fundamental pillar of Munster’s attacking game and our core group of players were perfectly suited to it. Hayes, O’Connell, Horan, O’Callaghan, Wallace, Quinlan and Leamy were powerful, experienced maulers. Flannery was a dangerous launch off the back and Stringer’s pass width to O’Gara created a tonne of one on one isolations for Munster to attack off the maul.

In 2008/2009, mauling in any meaningful way was pointless.

Look at how upright the front of this maul is. We have to be this upright to make it harder for Leinster to sack it because they can pull down anyone they like the minute it stops. That’s why Leinster are able to defend this maul with only three players – Munster have eight forwards in this maul. It’s completely pointless.

That isn’t to say that Munster couldn’t attack off the lineout anymore, we did…

… but our options in 2009 were predictably unpredictable if that makes sense. Without a traditional hitter off O’Gara – something we would try to remedy with the signing of De Villiers the next season – or a viable maul to compress the opposition’s flankers, a lot of our attacking schemes off the lineout would be focused on a tight hit up from someone like Wallace with a pass to width thereafter, with Mafi’s offloading and tight passing bringing Earls, Howlett, Warwick and Dowling into the game. I think we missed the variety that Tipoki brought in these moments. He missed most of the 2008/2009 season as he struggled with a hamstring injury that would ultimately curtail his time at Munster prematurely.

When it worked, it created spectacular tries and linebreaks but when it didn’t, it created poor quality opportunities that lead to tight resets and predictable pick and go structures far out from the try line.

This wasn’t really a problem before. In previous seasons, we would have higher one on ones off the lineout because of the threat and application of the maul. We had the width and skill to win those one on ones and, if the move broke down close to the try line, we had the size and concussive force in the forwards to convert from close range on the pick and go or create wide opportunities. Now, with the tweak to the ruck laws that tilted the game back towards opposition defences, retaining the ball in those close pick and goes became more difficult over multiple phases. We looked like we were running a little light in the forwards this year too – perhaps a nod to the changing importance of the maul and increased ball in play time – but it had an effect in ways that weren’t immediately obvious. The maul law was rejected in May 2009 but, at that point, it was too late for this Munster side.

Ultimately, that loss to Leinster in 2009 was on smaller margins than the final scoreline suggested. If this opportunity gets converted inside the first 10 minutes – there’s Elsom, again – then the game takes on a very different complexion.

The Munster team that nilled an almost identical Leinster side in the RDS earlier that season was better set up to deal with their specific threats. Munster completely dominated a Leinster side with Elsom, Jennings, Heaslip, Cullen, O’Kelly, Sexton, Contempomi and O’Driscoll in it and did so with Tomas O’Leary (probably playing at the peak of his career and effectiveness) at #9, Rua Tipoki at #13 outside Mafi, Earls at #15 and Donnacha Ryan starting at #6.

Was this selection closer to what would have worked in the semi-final?

At this stage, 11 years out from the game, it’s easy to make judgements on who should or shouldn’t have played in that game but O’Leary and Tipoki were certainly big injury losses for Munster prior to the Croke Park game and Ryan, we know, was and is still a quality operator. It would have been a brave call to throw in Ryan at this point in his career and not many coaches would have made that call on a senior player like Alan Quinlan at his point.

The narrative in the aftermath of this game seems to have swamped the story before the semi-final. Munster were rightful favourites after bossing Leinster home and away that season with almost identical starting packs in all two games prior. There was a real question as to whether Leinster could live with Munster’s pack which, at that point, was full of experienced, multiple time H-Cup winning forwards fresh off winning a Grand Slam with Ireland and a few certs to tour with the Lions. Leinster had Rocky Elsom on absolute fire as the season progressed but Munster had beaten Leinster with Elsom starting at #6 twice already that season.

The Munster side that beat Leinster in Thomond three weeks before the Croke Park game – with an almost identical pack – was the biggest indicator of Munster’s supposed supremacy going into this game.

Honestly, the gap amongst most neutral observers was nearly at the level it is perceived to be at now between Leinster and Munster in 2020. Leinster had undoubted quality in O’Driscoll, D’Arcy, Horgan and Contepomi. Upfront they had some good players. Malcolm O’Kelly was a decorated international at this point but he’d been thoroughly usurped by O’Callaghan and O’Connell at test level. The re-addition Cullen and Jennings from the Tigers had certainly added a bit of steel to their pack. Elsom was quality but, again, after two big games in the Magners League, he was far from an unknown quantity. Heaslip and Healy were talented newbies but far from fully established. Nacewa was good but from my perception at the time, he seemed like a bit of utility back – decent, but not top class.

Hilariously wrong, I know, but this was the general perception of Leinster outside Leinster at the time. There was quality there, they were dangerous for certain, but Munster were reigning European champions, had beaten the bricks out of the Ospreys (highly fancied that year given their squad but perhaps a tad overrated in hindsight) and cruised through the pool stages as second seeds with only a bonus point loss away to Clermont the only blemish. Leinster, on the other hand, limped in as sixth seeds after losing two of their last three in the pool and only barely crawled past Harlequins in the quarter-finals 6-5. Yes, that game.

This Munster squad would go onto have eight players selected in the Lions of 2009 – the most of any side – with Hayes called up during the tour. Flannery and O’Leary would have to withdraw because of injury and a suspension picked up by Quinlan in that Leinster semi-final would end his tour before it ever started.

My point is, Munster were decorated, experienced, had quality everywhere – I haven’t even really mention Doug fuckin’ Howlett yet – and they were rightly favourites to beat a Leinster side that they had beaten home and away already this season without much in the way of trouble.

But that isn’t how it went.

I truly believe that if Munster had won this semi-final, this group would’ve retained the Heineken Cup but that went to Leinster and started the decade of dominance we have come to know, even though we didn’t know it then.

I think this Munster side peaked with the absolute demolition of the Ospreys in the quarter-final of the 2008/2009 Heineken Cup. They were never that good or as effective ever again when we look at it in hindsight. Sometimes that peak can come and you don’t realise it. Maybe that happened here. Munster went into a semi-final against a Leinster side we’d beaten handily all year and got caught by a hungry, effective team inspired by a nigh unplayable Rocky Elsom, a few handy bounces of the ball and effective conversion of their chances. We looked tired and out of ideas. We didn’t know it but the slide of this great team had already begun.

The signs were there, with the benefit of hindsight.

Munster’s age profile was starting to push on all through the team in that 2009 semi-final. In the starting pack, only Leamy (27) and O’Connell (29) were under the age of 30. Wallace was 32, Quinlan was 34, Hayes was 35. O’Callaghan, Flannery and Horan were all in the 30/31 bracket. If we were to look at a squad like that today, we’d rightly be concerned at that age profile in the pack, especially with the physicality of the game increasing year on year on year.

Munster would try to hold back the hands of time for three or four seasons in the aftermath of 2009 with “The Maldini Project” but the physical reality of the game as we now know it was beginning to catch up with this group of players that had won so much with Munster and Ireland. The reasoning behind trying to extend the careers of these players was obvious. The likes of O’Connell, O’Callaghan, Wallace, Leamy, O’Gara, Stringer, Flannery, Hayes, Horan, Quinlan were all top quality players and, at the time, seemed to be a good bit of ahead of the young challengers behind them in the Munster depth chart. These were all “correct” decisions in the moment – pick the best player – but it would lead to a very harsh transition between generations when the inevitable happened.

Hayes would play on for another two seasons before retiring in December 2011, Wallace would be forced into retirement at 35 years of age in 2012 after returning from a serious knee injury suffered before the 2011 World Cup but he wasn’t really the same player. Alan Quinlan retired in 2011 at 37 years of age. O’Connell was still first choice at 36 years of age before his proposed departure to Toulon in 2016 and O’Callaghan only fell out of regular staring contention in 2013/14 at 34/35 years of age. Denis Leamy would have been a cornerstone of the Munster back five but he suffered a series of injuries after 2008 and would retire prematurely at just 31 years of age. Jerry Flannery would retire through injury in 2012 at 32/33.

In the three seasons following that 2009 defeat, Munster would lose;

• Rua Tipoki (injury/retirement)
• Lifiemi Mafi (move)
• Mike Prendergast (move)
• Denis Fogarty (move)
• Paul Warwick (move)
• Tony Buckley (move)
• Tomas O’Leary (move)
• Frankie Sheahan (retirement)
• Ian Dowling (retirement)
• Barry Murphy (retirement)
• Anthony Horgan (retirement)
• John Hayes (retirement)
• Mick O’Driscoll (retirement)
• Alan Quinlan (retirement)
• David Wallace (retirement)
• Denis Leamy (retirement)
• Jerry Flannery (retirement)

Fourteen of the matchday squad of 22 that contested the 2009 Heineken Cup final would leave the province in the next three seasons. In fact, the end of the 2011/12 season saw 1,234 caps worth of experience – Mafi, Fogarty, O’Leary, Flannery, Leamy, O’Driscoll, Hayes, and Wallace – all leave the province in one form or the other.

But at this stage, Munster had already slipped to not qualifying for the Heineken Cup quarter-finals. The Magners League win of 2010/2011 was bittersweet in that it saw Munster defeat Leinster at Thomond Park but only after they had won their second Heineken Cup while we exited the Challenge Cup at the semi-final stage after failing to qualify for the knockouts for the first time in 12 years. To not qualify for the knockouts of Europe was unheard of for Munster. To lose at home to Harlequins in the Challenge Cup semi-final? Unacceptable.

McGahan and Fisher would leave the province the same season with, at least, the buzz of a Magner’s League trophy but, in my opinion, a palpable feeling of decline beginning to set in. For every Conor Murray, Donnacha Ryan and Keith Earls that was ascending to first-team status, there were still 12 players in the matchday squad that beat Leinster for that Magner’s League trophy north of 30 years of age and most of the front five were closer to 35 than 30.

McGahan would leave with a 69% win record as head coach and two Magners Leagues in 09 and 11 – the last two trophies that Munster won but a feeling that Munster had not changed all that much of their own volition from a personnel perspective since his appointment and with Leinster already caught up with our Heineken Cup tally.

Hope sprang eternal ahead of 2012 with the signing of Rob Penney from Canterbury but hope soon gave way to other, less charitable feelings.

To be continued…