The emergence of Gavin Coombes as The Realest of Real Deals during 2020/21 was, arguably, the highlight of the season for me. Coombes went from a player with three starts in two seasons (and a Potential Foundation rating in the summer of 2020) to be a CORE 1 player and the heir to the throne left by CJ Stander as Munster’s back row totem ahead of 2020/21.

I can’t think of the last time a Munster back row had such a rapid ascent up a depth chart in one season. I want to say Denis Leamy between 2003/4 and 2004/5? Coombes’ rise from high potential squad guy to a player making moves across multiple stages of the season, ending with big-time performances in big games against Harlequins, Clermont, Leinster and Toulouse ending in a cap for Ireland in the summer was the kind of progression that you dream about.

This wasn’t a guy performing well in B-grade PRO14 games, generating a bit of a hype train and then disappearing when the serious games came around – this was a young player scaling up to the highest levels across the entire season to the point where any Munster back row that didn’t feature Gavin Coombes could not be considered “full strength”.

From a player development perspective, it was as close to perfect timing as you could hope for because, despite his meteoric rise up the depth chart this season, Gavin Coombes was far from an overnight success.

Coombes spent three full years in the Munster Academy and only made his first senior appearances during his final year before moving to a two-year senior deal. His first season was largely a developmental one before last season’s big step forward. Would Coombes have been the player we saw in 2020/21 if he’d be thrown in at the deep end during 2018/19? Conventional thinking would say “yes” but is that true? I’m not sure.

I am pretty sure that the last five or six years have conditioned the rugby public – and pundit class too, I would suggest – to drastically shorten the timeline when it comes to judging the success or failure of a player, or even an academy program as a whole. If a hot prospect isn’t being thrown in for 15 games a season, then he’s being wasted and his development stunted. Watch it this year with Alex Kendellen. It doesn’t matter that the young player might not be physically or mentally ready for the grind of the modern game or even the modern training schedule; if that name isn’t on a teamsheet for an off-peak URC game, he’s sunk, he’ll never make it and Munster are throwing away a potential superstar. During 2019/20, I had people legitimately wondering if Ben Healy had a future at Munster because he wasn’t getting selected for PRO14 games while in Year 2 of the academy, relative to what Leinster’s Harry Byrne was getting at the same period.  

Yet, as of the 28th of August 2021, Harry Byrne has 24 senior Leinster caps and Ben Healy has 20 senior Munster caps.

If we remove the idea that a player has to be a URC regular by the time they’re 21/22 or they’re a lost cause, we might open ourselves up to the idea that young talent, if given time to grow – mentally, emotionally and physically – might be capable of the kind of heights previously only assumed capable by wunderkinder.

I think Gavin Coombes is a modern example of that principle.

And he’ll have to be.

CJ Stander’s retirement at just 31 years of age left a big hole in Munster’s ball carrying rotation.

CJ was off contract at the end of last season – the third year of a three year central deal – but I fully expected him to re-sign for one or two seasons, even in the straightened budgetary environment forced on by the pandemic. At 31, I expected Munster/Ireland to start looking beyond CJ from a depth chart perspective but not for another season, essentially during this season coming. But, as he said himself, the draw of home and spending time with his family – plus a growing list of ongoing injuries – made the decision to retire that bit easier in tandem with the Irish tax relief for retired athletes. CJ could have chosen to play in France for another few years and still avail of his tax relief lump sum for his eight years in Ireland but was the juice worth the squeeze?

He would have been well paid in France for sure but the rugby is bloody hard there for a primary ball-carrying forward, especially for a player already carrying ankle, shoulder and back injuries. If they are paying you the big bucks, they want value for money, especially if you are a player who will be available through all the test windows. Titi Lamositele at Montpellier, for example, played 28 times for the club last season. The physical attrition can stack up pretty quickly and while you might not necessarily get an injury bad enough to keep you out – you’d be surprised how many guys play well below 100%, physically – they take their toll on your performance, recovery and general well-being. At Munster, CJ only played 16 times for the province over the last two seasons in line with his Irish duties but he was the quintessential 80-minute player. If that translated over to a TOP14 club signing him, for example, then he would be signed on that basis as an 80 minute player in a league defined, almost, by the forward grind.

The two or three years he’d spend there from 31 on up could be the kind of years he’d pay a large physical toll for when he’s 40. Either way, CJ was out at the end of his deal and the ascension of Gavin Coombes made it far more palatable than it would have been even a season earlier.

Stander’s retirement was followed by Tommy O’Donnell hanging up the boots after a 14-year career at Munster. O’Donnell was someone I’d have been surprised to see stay beyond the end of the season regardless given his age profile but, that said, Munster were going to offer him another deal – likely another year.

As he said himself;

“I made the decision in November that okay, this is going to be my final year, then Munster approached me with another contract and the intent to negotiate, so I mulled that over for a week or two but went back and said ‘no, we won’t even enter into the negotiation, I think I’m just going to knock it on the head here’.” 

Why would they have made him that offer? Well, he’d fully slipped into that vital veteran role for Munster in the last three years and that’s a valuable guy to have around the group. O’Donnell went from 550 minutes in 2018/19 to 596 minutes in 2019/20 to just 271 minutes last season with the bulk of his appearances coming off the bench for the first time since 2010/11.

Losing two senior players from the back row in one off-season is a blow to the experience levels around the squad, there’s no getting away from that. I know people roll their eyes at “experience” these days but having veteran club players around the camp can help glue together an inexperienced matchday unit at the fraying edges of a test window as well as being ready to go short term injury cover for bigger games. That’s a given but the less obvious benefit is the passive buff they exude around the camp as high-quality trainers, standard setters, cultural touchstones and respected voices in team meetings. That isn’t to say they’re like coaches – that’s a very different skill – but they are great guys to have around in that halfway house between a player, a mentor and a guy who can see the tail end of the playing career walking behind him like the monster from It Follows. That isn’t always enough if the on-field product or training performance but Munster thought that O’Donnell was still in that Venn diagram of being productive enough on-field while exuding off-field benefits. O’Donnell thought different on the former, so chose to retire as a guy with an enviable career, even with the multiple injury setbacks he suffered along the way.

That double retirement left Munster with a very roomy senior back row depth chart.

Player	Position	Age in Jan 1 2022	Grade	Contract Year in 2022?
Peter O'Mahony	BR	32	CORE 1/PRIORITY 2	NO
John Hodnett	BR	22	FOUNDATION 1	NO
Chris Cloete	BR	30	SQUAD 2/PRIORITY 1	YES
Jack O'Donoghue	BR	27	SQUAD 2	NO
Jack Daly	BR	23	ASSESS 1	YES
Gavin Coombes	BR	24	CORE 1	NO
Jack O'Sullivan	BR	23	ASSESS 1	YES

You’ll note on this depth chart that I’m counting half-locks and other “lock” profile players capable of playing in the back row in the previous Depth Chart article.

At 32, Peter O’Mahony is the oldest senior squad member who would be definitively defined as a back row player. I used to classify O’Mahony as a half-lock a few years ago before altering my classification of players like him as Combo Flankers. The Combo Flanker is your prototypical “glue” player in the back row that can scale up or down in prominence and effectiveness based on the role you array around them. A Combo Flanker combines multiple skill sets that do not include on-ball power carrying. Siya Kolisi is a Combo Flanker because he combines massive offensive breakdown work rate with constant impact defence and tertiary lineout jumping ability.

Peter O’Mahony is a Combo Flanker because he combines offensive and defensive breakdown work rate with wider ball handling/carrying and a primary offensive and defensive lineout output. When he is used in this version of the role set, there are few players who can match Peter O’Mahony in the modern game. Why did he get a two-year central contract extension last season? Because there’s no other combo flanker in the country that even comes close to offering what O’Mahony does at test level. There are better carriers, there are more impactful defenders but there’s no one who gives you O’Mahony’s lineout versatility on both sides of the ball, his wider skillset with the ball in hand and offensive/defensive breakdown output in the same package. That is a valuable commodity because of what it allows you to select alongside him or with him on the bench.

When O’Mahony is deployed in a pack with limited heavy ball-carrying impact, he can often be forced into taking in-game roles that do not suit his skillset fully. In the same way that Kolisi begins to dip in effectiveness when he is forced into a ball-carrying role, O’Mahony needs to be the guy who fills in the gaps for a side with a lot of on-ball carrying threats. 

I don’t think you don’t have to start him every game at this point in his career, especially if you plan to run with a half-lock style player in the back row. What O’Mahony offers as a bench component of a matchday squad – especially as part of a 6/2 split – can really round out Munster’s 80-minute output in big games.

For me, this should be O’Mahony’s final season as a certain starter.

He’s still a CORE 1 level player for me right now and, if I was picking from a full deck at the moment, I’d likely start a back row of Beirne, O’Mahony and Coombes. That said, I would have O’Mahony firmly on the block as a PRIORITY 2 replacement with a view to downgrading him to a SQUAD 2 level player by next season.

That will bring up wider questions about his captaincy that may come to a head next off-season but for now, O’Mahony is a solid, experienced veteran with a very useful role set.

Jack O’Donoghue has developed into a player with a similar Combo Flanker roleset midway through his 20s and is an incredibly valuable asset to have around the group as an effective on-field talent that you can put with any combination in the back five and he’s got a veteran like presence off the field. Like O’Mahony, I feel that O’Donoghue dips in effectiveness when used as a primary central ball carrier but, when used as primary lineout jumper on both sides of the ball, a defensive hitter and as a wide strike runner, he offers huge upside especially when deployed in a support forward role against lighter opposition.

Chris Cloete is a solid SQUAD 2 player who I feel is a PRIORITY replacement as a relatively high-cost player with a narrow role set as he comes into the last year of a three year contract signed in 2018. There’s no doubting Cloete’s ability to win turnovers – he had the most in the PRO14 last season – but in a year when Munster will be looking for budget savings, Cloete is a player that might find himself in a position where Munster will have to move on from him for purely economic reasons before one even considers the depth chart needs. Essentially, if you’re not starting Cloete, his value dips immediately as he is not an on-ball threat or a lineout option. If Munster are going to look at running Jason Jenkins in the back row as stated last year and, if we extend the logic of that selection to include Tadhg Beirne as another option there, your two remaining starting slots in the back row have to provide a lot of output.

Gavin Coombes will fill a lot of those slots as a Power Forward build in the #8 shirt because he is a primary ball carrier, an impact defender and an experienced, highly effective lineout forward. What then do you look for from your other back row? O’Mahony/O’Donoghue give you the Combo Flanker role set that I’ve been over but what about Cloete? Does his Heavy Jackal Wing Forward roleset fully fill out what we need? Not for me, at least in Category 1 games.

That leaves a natural space for the young core of smaller forwards to ascend up the depth chart in a hurry.

For me, Jack Daly and Jack O’Sullivan are on ASSESS 1 years. Jack Daly has done incredibly well to get onto a one-year senior deal this year and, without knowing how he trains or whatever else, I can’t help but think that his on-field work rate and versatility for the As played a large part of it. I’d classify Daly into the Heavy Wing Forward role set but he added real heft and lineout ability from what I saw from him at A level over the course of last season. Daly’s handling seemed to really step on too but you’d expect that from a player who spent three years in the Munster academy developing his skill set. With his ceiling to be determined over the next year, I would expect him to get 300 URC minutes there or thereabouts with plenty of A rugby. If he can show he’s got the ability to be a solid SQUAD 2 level player, there could be a longer-term deal for Daly next season as a value option, especially if Munster move on from Chris Cloete at the higher end of the Depth Chart.

Jack O’Sullivan needs a big season. What’s his best role? I’m not quite sure and that’s an issue after his second year as a senior player. There’s no doubting his work rate and application, there’s no doubting that he’s got the wider game and handling to be a Strike Wing Forward with decent lineout output but we need to see it come together on-field consistently.

In O’Sullivan’s 474 minutes last season, we rarely got to see what I imagine he’s actually good at. And I say “imagine” there because we haven’t really seen what his best role is during his senior appearances to date. During preseason 2019, O’Sullivan stood out as a forward who could be incredibly dangerous in the wider channels or when he was given space to beat a player off #9 or #10 but, for whatever reason, we haven’t seen that at full senior level. He’s had some good moments, sure, but the majority of his appearances last season seemed to happen (a) off the bench when the weather was rubbish and Munster were defending for long periods or (b) when he was starting and looked a little underpowered and off-role when he started at #8.

He went from a player with Foundation ability to being someone with a few question marks over him, in my opinion. There’s no doubting that he has the ability to be a key player for Munster going forward but we need to see what that is this year. Is he a Combo Flanker who doesn’t have a primary lineout in his role set? Is he a Strike Wing Forward? Is he a Heavy Wing Forward? We need to see indications of what he might be, and soon, or the rise of Alex Kendellen in the academy might coincide poorly with O’Sullivan’s renewal.

The big target for Munster this season is for John Hodnett to have a Gavin Coombes-like season. How he recovers from his Achilles injury will be vitally important because they can be brutes of injuries to recover from fully. Hodnett has already been out for the guts of 10 months with the injury he sustained against the Dragons and his full recovery is of vital importance, in my opinion. Prior to his injury, Hodnett was showing foundational ability and his performances were of a high enough level to warrant a two-year deal out of his second year in the Academy.

Hodnett has the capability to be a complete Strike Wing Forward with a full suite of offensive and defensive breakdown work, impact defence, short and midrange passing and high-quality ball-carrying that gets more effective as it gets into the wider spaces in his arsenal. Hodnett is tough, he’s not afraid to make a play and he can win collisions.

Gavin Coombes was not a role for role replacement for CJ Stander. Coombes and Stander are quite different players, really, but when I think back to the player that CJ Stander was when he first joined Munster around 2012, he reminds me a lot of John Hodnett. Think about it – the pace, the low centre of gravity power in contact, the work rate – there are echoes there. That isn’t to say that Hodnett will end up being the exact same player but when you consider how well Hodnett took to senior rugby in Y1/2 prior to his injury, I think he has the capability to really advance this season, injury allowing, especially alongside Coombes, Snyman, Kleyn and Jenkins.

***

In the academy, Munster have two young players at the moment who fit into the categorization of this article. Both are incredibly high potential players in differing role sets.

Player	Position	Age in Jan 1 2021	Height	Current Weight	Projected Role Set
Daniel Okeke	BR	20	6'2"	110KG	Power Forward
Alex Kendellen	BR	20	6'2"	105KG	Heavy Wing Forward

Alex Kendellen is one of the most complete prospects I’ve seen in my time doing TRK and that isn’t just for Munster – I’m talking about anywhere, for any team. Guys who fit into that Small Forward grouping – under 6’3″ and relatively light – have to be athletic and skill-set standouts. If you’re going to be a smaller back row forward, essentially, you’ve got to be bloody good at what you do. Think Sam Simmonds, think Josh Van Der Flier, think CJ Stander, think Hamish Watson, think Josh Navidi, think Sam Underhill, think Tom Curry – these players are all Small Forwards that fit into various categories like Heavy Wing Forward, Strike Wing Forward, Work Rate Flanker etc.

What I’ve seen of Alex Kendellen at u20 level puts him in pretty rarified air internationally. Lots of young players come through u20 Six Nations with various areas of their game that need to be worked on at differing degrees. Kendellen has very few areas that he needs to patch up outside of continuing to develop his physicality to scale up properly to a professional level.

How much time will he get this season? How much time should he get? That remains to be seen but the worst thing Munster could do is rush him because an Alex Kendellen properly developed could make the 2023 World Cup squad. That’s how good he is right now.

Daniel Okeke is a different type of player who just needs time to properly develop his game in a pro-environment. Physically, he’s already someone to watch but he needs game time and reps on the training field because he’s incredibly young. In the U20 Six Nations, you could see him fall into the trap that sometimes happens with very young players where they almost get caught behind time in games and, as a result, don’t impact their role. I’d have loved to have seen Okeke getting on-ball and dominating against Italy in that Six Nations, for example, but he got caught on a few rucks that he maybe didn’t need to hit, slid to a few secondary positions rather than the apex as he reset and the game kinda got away from him. He just needs experience because the application, work rate and fundamentals are there for Okeke to make a big splash towards the end of this season and next if he gets a bit of luck with injury.

Give this guy time, as Munster did with Gavin Coombes, and you’ll have a player capable of impacting at the highest level I truly believe that.