Adrian Veidt: ‘I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end’.
Dr Manhattan as he fades from this universe: ‘In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends’.
Watchmen – Alan Moore (1987)
I have read Watchmen, the graphic novel by Alan Moore, more times than I can remember. When I was bouncing from Airbnb to hostel to the streets in Dublin in 2015, it was the only thing I had on me that wasn’t clothes or my busted up old laptop and I’d regularly look to read it again for a sense of losing myself in a familiar world, even if that world was somewhat dystopian and unpleasant, it reminded me of better times – as in, my better times back when I read the comic first in the early 2000s.
The character who spoke to me most in Watchmen was Dr Manhattan. Manhattan is the only character with actual superpowers in the comic but he doesn’t seem any better off for them, at least when it comes to the people around him and his relationships with them. Among other powers, Dr Manhattan can see the past, present and future simultaneously. It’s something he’s almost cursed with.
Back in 2015, I loved the idea of it though. To know that everything was part of a longer thread was better than not knowing at all, even if that meant being dissociated from everything. I’d have taken the existential misery of knowing everything just so I knew the misery I was living through at the time had an end to it or, better yet, that it had a point. We like to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason but I gave up on that a long time ago.
Sometimes misery is just misery and it has no grander purpose.
It’s not preparing you for anything. It’s not laying groundwork for future success as if life were an inspirational post on LinkedIn. Someone asked me at the weekend when I got talking about bouncing around hostels with zero money and bullshit if I would change it, given where I am today. I said no, but the real answer is yes. Certainly professionally speaking.
If I could go back in time, I would ensure I didn’t have to go through what ended up being three years of hell even if it meant this website never happened. I love what I do but the hangover from those three years are still with me. On the minor end, for example, I still have “gear fear” when I go to an ATM, enter in my code and wait for the whirr of the gears that dispense the money to tell me whether I have the balance for it or not. And I know I do have the balance for it these days but deep down, that fear of the gears not whirring is still there and will always be there. That’s the cycle of life, isn’t it? We are shaped by the past, one way or the other.
Dr Manhattan, however, experiences all of those cycles at once. Then, now and when are all happening to him at the same time.
I think a good Director of Rugby has to approach their job in the same manner.
Whatever happens this off-season, Munster will have a change in approach on-field and off. That is not in question. Johann Van Graan, JP Ferriera and Stephen Larkham are leaving this off-season and they will be replaced by new coaches who have new ways of thinking and doing things. There will be a new head coach/director of rugby and they will have to implement a plan that will see Munster compete domestically and in Europe in the short, medium and long-term future.
I don’t know who that is going to be but I know what they have to do – win Munster silverware and send more Munster players into the Irish national team. Right now, both of those elements are dominated by Leinster. Munster might well win a trophy this season but that isn’t the point – Leinster are an organisation at a more advanced stage of development from a purely on-field perspective.
Name an Irish team to start against France this weekend in your head and think about who Andy Farrell would probably pick. How many Munster players start? How many Munster guys are on the bench? By my count with everyone fit, there are maybe six or seven Munster players involved. Maybe less. By the actual Six Nations that might change but right now I think it’s an accurate read of where we are at nationally.
That has to change. But the one thing we know for sure is that change is coming and the key is to win that change. Realistically speaking, Leinster will own the starting front row for the next four years at least unless injury strikes, which it almost certainly will. We will need to have a young core of guys ready to make that step up and our contracting patterns would suggest that we hope Josh Wycherley, Keynan Knox and Roman Salanoa have the technical and, almost more importantly, the physical traits needed to step in and become depth chart competitors at test level.
A lot of Munster’s future hinges on these guys becoming relatively high tier options, along with developing Scott Buckley as a priority as a power hooker, which his new two-year deal would suggest is in the plans one way or another.
Taking advantage of the injuries of others sounds fairly rubbish, doesn’t it? It does, there’s no way around it, but in the closed-loop system of Irish rugby medium-term injuries are the main source of change at the top end of the depth chart. In a central contract system, the benefits to having central contracts are many but the one drawback is that it puts a cap on a depth chart with an Irish test player. When you don’t have central contracts it means more cost but it also gives you an element of flexibility to move quickly if options aren’t working out. Munster will have to play it hard and ruthless because when the opportunity comes, Munster have to be ready to step in and dominate those national depth charts.
The main area where change will be coming one way or the other is at #10. I expect Johnny Sexton to sign what amounts to a two-season contract to stay at Leinster and Ireland up to the 2023 World Cup in the near future if he hasn’t already. At that point, control of the Irish #10 jersey will be back up for grabs and whoever controls that jersey over the medium term has a lot of sway.
Whoever has the Irish #10 usually has a central contract and if a high depth chart scrumhalf is playing on the same provincial team as the #10 building a rapport week to week that will benefit nationally? What about the #8 that links in with this duo – is he likely to find national minutes easier to come by if they are performing week to week alongside the starting #9 and #10 for Ireland?
If you have the starting #8, #9 and #10 for Ireland, what else might be possible?
This has to be the aim and in Carbery, Casey and Crowley I think Munster have the keys to winning the next cycle already in situ. Joey Carbery has a decent argument at already being the #2 guy behind the generational Johnny Sexton and, as such, has more of a claim to be The Guy the minute Sexton retires than anyone currently playing on this island.
There’s a lot of rugby to be played between now and then – both from the perspective of Sexton making it to the World Cup and Carbery getting fit and staying fit long enough to be built around – but I think it’s a fair assumption to make that Carbery is ahead of guys like Ross Byrne, Harry Byrne, Jack Carty and Billy Burns as of now. Yes, that’s even in the context of rehabbing back to full match sharpness after the guts of two years out of the game.
And if Carbery’s going to be the guy, does that put Casey in pole position to audition to be the next primary scrumhalf while we’re in this weird Gibson-Park/Murray flux period? I think so, yes.
There is an idea that national teams are selected on “form” coming into a tournament like the Six Nations or World Cup but it doesn’t really work like that. A coach will have an idea of approaching a season or a bloc of games or a cycle based on their own read of where the game is going and their own biases to a certain degree. Pat Lam, for example, has one way of running his teams while a guy like Rassie Erasmus approaches the game from a much different angle. Most approaches will fall somewhere between both ends of this scale but the point is that you have to choose an approach or at least be prepared to stay balanced between the two with all that entails.
You are what you train, after all. You identify your top players, you devise a style that compliments them
So if you’re the Springboks, for example, you can’t just keep a Pat Lam gameplan in your back pocket just in case all your front line front five forwards get stuck in a lift and can’t play at the weekend.
“Well guys, looks like all our top collision winners are out, best move away from Kick Pressure and embrace almost the exact opposite game plan for this weekend.”
Realistically, that isn’t going to happen. You prepare to play your game and your game will be one thing, or the other, or a blend of the two but that’s a decision you make in pre-season. For the likes of Carbery and Casey, they have to be in the minds of the coaches when it comes to building a game plan and that means positioning Munster in a style that reflects the cutting edge of the game as it heads into the post-2023 cycle.
That, for me, means moving to a style that prioritises the lineout and lineout maul – we already focus heavily on this part of the game under Van Graan – but I genuinely believe that the teams that dominate possession and play a more active offensive style of play will be rewarded by the changing laws of the game.
World Rugby has spoken repeatedly about wanting to make the game more attractive. That means attacking rugby and laws – and interpretations of those laws – that encourage playing with the ball and discourage playing without the ball. I feel this will only increase in the build-up to the first World Cup in the (hopefully) post-pandemic era where engagement, entertainment and audience building will be off-field aims that bleed into on-field directions.
If Munster can double down on the improvements already made and use it will lead to success provicinally and nationally, which will cascade more success provincially. With the generation of young talent coming through academy output on academy output year on year – and I think the last two years and the next four years are the best talent we’ve had since the early 2000s – the potential is there to become the team of the next decade.
Winning the now is important but winning the future is crucial.
