No depth chart in Munster has had as much churn as the one that feeds into the #12 and #13 jerseys, not just in the last few seasons but historically too.

Go back to 2019/20 and the only squad overlap when it comes to those positions is Rory Scannell. Every other player in the squad three years ago who primarily played in the centres while on a senior contract has left the province in the intervening years.

But that’s not all. Go back to 2022/23 – just two seasons ago – and the same thing is true. Of the fully contracted midfielders in the for that URC title-winning season, only Rory Scannell remains. Malakai Fekitoa and Antoine Frisch both exited out of their contracts early in just 12 short months. To be honest, I half expect to look back at the 1978 squad that beat the All Blacks to see Rory Scannell with mutton chops in the back row of the squad picture.

Damian De Allende. Malakai Fekitoa. Antoine Frisch. Chris Farrell. Dan Goggin. Alex McHenry.

Two all-time greats of the game and World Cup winners. Two quality internationals. Two young squad guys with big, if unrealised, upsides.

All gone inside two seasons.

But this is nothing new. Munster have seemingly had a new centre partnership every two seasons for as long as I can remember. Rob Henderson and Mike Mullins. Trevor Halstead and John Kelly. Throw Barry Murphy into the mix there too. Then Lifeimi Mafi and Trevor Halstead. When Halstead left, he was replaced by Rua Tipoki. The next combination was Lifeimi Mafi and Rua Tipoki until Rua started getting hurt. Then it was Mafi and Earls, before Jean De Villiers came in for a season and we mixed and matched between Mafi and Earls, never really finding the right combination. Then we had Sam Tuiputou for a season, and then the year after that we kinda went back to Earls and Mafi, before signing Casey Laulala in 2012 to replace the departing Mafi.

Still with me? Good.

The season after that we brought in James Downey from Northampton and, for around two seasons, he and Laulala were about as settled a combination as we’d had since, well, ever in the professional era. Downey and Laulala left Munster ahead of the 2014/15 season and Munster ostensibly replaced Downey with Bleyendaal – who arrived injured and who we always intended to play at #10 – and Andrew Smith. With Bleyendaal injured, Munster moved Denis Hurley – usually a fullback or winger – into the #12 jersey to… quite a bit of success, relatively speaking.

Munster would replace Smith with a big-money move for Francis Saili in the off-season to create another midfield combination for 2015/16.

Hurley would face an injury-ridden 2015/16 which, along with Bleyendaal’s neck injury and Earls niggles, meant that academy player Rory Scannell would feature 28 times that season alongside Saili.

Hurley would retire that off-season so Munster signed Collie O’Shea, Steve Crosbie and Sam Arnold – something of a coup at the time – to bolster the midfield alongside Scannell and Saili, especially with Bleyendaal playing #10.

After Saili picked up a mid-range injury early in the season, Rassie Erasmus brought in Jaco Taute and he made our fifteenth new starting centre combination of the pro-era by teaming up with Scannell for most of the season, with Saili coming in later in the season after his injury as a rotating starter.

Saili left that off-season, Taute signed a two-year deal and Munster signed Chris Farrell from Grenoble with the idea that Scannell – who had pretty much topped out as a sub-five test capper at that point – would become a rotation option with Arnold.

When Taute began to suffer the injuries that would dog the remainder of his career, Scannell and Farrell became our first-choice partnership in 2017/18 and would be our starting combination until 2019/20, when Van Graan signed Damian De Allende to a massive contract with the idea of pairing him with Farrell and keeping Scannell as a squad level option. Sam Arnold turned down a three-year deal (????) that same season to take up a two-year deal at Connacht as he appeared to want assurances that he’d be given the same game-time consideration as then-regular Irish international Chris Farrell and one of the greatest midfielders in the modern era, Damian De Allende.

Farrell and De Allende worked OK for two seasons with Scannell dropping in for one or the other now and then, before some legal issues in France and De Allende’s expiring contract forced another major reshuffle. Munster signed Malakai Fekitoa and Antoine Frisch in 2021/22 to form our eighteenth starting combination of the pro era. Fekitoa left after one season and was replaced by Alex Nankivell (combination #19) and then Frisch left at the end of last season to be replaced by Tom Farrell (combination #20).

The one constant since 2015/16 has been Rory Scannell. Before he moved to the wing full-time, Keith Earls was the most notable Munster-developed midfielder. Before that, we’re looking at Barry Murphy before going to lads like Anthony Kelly and John Kelly*.

*I didn’t include Rob Henderson, Jason Holland and Mikey Mullins in this list because, even though they were Irish or Ireland A capped and, in Holland and Mullins’ case, capped first while at Munster, they weren’t developed in the province. 

Why is it so difficult for Munster to produce an indigenous, long-term centre partnership?

A lot of it has been bad luck, bad timing, injury trouble, the needs of the now trumping longer-term development in two positions that have evolved as many times as Munster have had a new midfield combination and the quirks of developing players in a relatively low population area.

In the 2000s, the presence of Brian O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy meant that there was no pressing national need for Munster to develop home-grown centres. The system of the time was far less hands-on than it is now and with the Irish midfield essentially sewn up for the guts of 10 years by two Leinster players, and Munster producing the majority of the pack and half-backs, successive Munster coaches found it easy to look for a NIQ midfielder to add something different. When that was Trevor Halstead, the success of his time almost created the need to replace him like for like, especially with the great midfield hope at the time, Barry Murphy, getting injured during his breakout season.

One NIQ signing began to pile into another, and even Keith Earls’ emergence as a scintillating outside centre in 2009 was, in itself badly timed. There was no natural place for him to go at Irish level with O’Driscoll still in his prime so Earls found himself bouncing from the wing at Ireland to the midfield at Munster and picked up all the injuries you’d associate with doing that in that era of the game.

By the time the early 2010s rolled around, any new Munster coach – and there were many – came in the door wondering about what to do about the midfield. It’s a vital area of the game with abundant options all over the world except, it would seem, in the Munster academy.

Danny Barnes was a big hope for a while – and got plenty of minutes – but couldn’t quite crack even regular Celtic League-level quality consistently. Guys like Cian Bohane topped out as a decent SQUAD 2-level guy because of a plague of injuries, despite his quality. Corey Hircock, who was in the academy at the same time, never played anything more than A-level rugby for Munster.

In the mid-to-late 2010s, you started to see Rory Scannell, Dan Goggin, Dave Johnston and Alex McHenry come through and Rory Scannell was the best of them. All the others showed flashes at different points, but consistency of performance and opportunity eluded them.

The big academy turn-around of 2016/17 was already beginning to produce better quality players by 2019/20 but not, strangely, midfielders. My conspiracy theory is that in club or school sides with moderate participation numbers, there might only be one player who’s really good AND, crucially, in that 6’1″/6’3″ 95kg/105kg bracket. So instead of being a good power midfielder, that guy more often than not would end up as a #8 because they are more likely to impact the game for their club or school in that position.

Any player who might be quick, elusive and creative with enough of a running threat to be dangerous while also being able to find a decent pass off both sides won’t end up as a playmaking midfielder, they’ll end up as the #10 for the same low population club or school and be conditioned accordingly.

Both players could have been excellent midfielders but by the time Munster got their hands on them, it was too late for them to be anything other than what they were walking in the door. That led to an environment where every incumbent NIQ begot the next one, because no coach wanted to be the guy to take the developmental lumps in such a pivotal position.

Munster were expected to compete at the top end of the then-PRO12 and Europe every single season so having an experimental midfield combination just wouldn’t work. In the Irish system, the only way to have a fully settled midfield duo that doesn’t have to be refreshed every few seasons is to find a top-quality Irish midfielder that you can build around. You don’t have to develop them yourself but must have them in situ long-term so you can try out different combos with them, like flicking through numbers on a tumbler lock.

You won’t be shocked to know that, historically, Munster tried to do this in the early to mid-2010s but repeatedly missed out.

We tried to sign Luke Fitzgerald as our long-term outside centre multiple times, both when he was an academy player, and as a senior. At one stage it got as close as having papers signed, by all accounts, but a late change of heart kept him at Leinster.

We also tried to sign Bundee Aki before he moved to Connacht – they offered him more money at the time – and were a hair’s breadth away from signing Robbie Henshaw in 2015 before personal circumstances pulled him to Leinster.

Any one of those players would have been the ideal long-term piece that we needed to help develop our own options but, the reality is, that developing world-class midfielders in either position is incredibly difficult.

I know that because the most successful and best-optimized player development system in the European game – Leinster Rugby – has “only” managed to develop one truly proven international-class midfield player since 2010; Garry Ringrose.

Leinster knew what they had with Ringrose pretty early and were able to pair him with Luke Fitzgerald and Ben T’eo initially before signing Robbie Henshaw ahead of Ringrose’s second full season. From there, the obvious pairing for both club and country was set and they’ve been an established partnership for eight seasons. Ringrose was 21 when Henshaw, aged 23, was signed and it essentially locked up Leinster’s midfield for the next ten years. Leinster haven’t produced another midfielder of that quality since then, especially when it comes to duplicating the power, defensive durability and broad skill set required to be an elite modern-day #12  since then.

The facts are that developing a player in both positions is about as difficult as it gets in the modern game. Sure, centres are plentiful across the game and there aren’t the physical limitations like there are for tighthead prop or locks, but no other position in the game essentially requires you to be a flyhalf when it comes to your handling, a power winger when required on phase play, a deep-lying classic #8 during phase play and directly off the set piece as a crash ball option, an old school #7 in the tackle and on both sides of the ball at the breakdown while also being capable of defending huge amounts of space off scrum and lineout and reading edge attacking patterns like a classic outside centre.

You also need to be an 80-minute player as most teams don’t like using a replacement for a midfielder unless there’s an injury and be durable enough that you can be used long enough to be worth considering in the first place.

So… it’s difficult. To say the least.

Munster thought they had a long-term component in Chris Farrell and tried to build around him but the ticking time bomb of the legal issues he was tangentially involved in from his time in France were always in the background. It was untenable for Munster to keep him on the books given the nature of the trial and he was released early from a contract that should have seen him at the club until the end of last season – July 2024.

When you also consider that Fekitoa and Frisch were all released from their contracts in the period since Farrell signed his last Munster deal in 2022, you get an idea of the churn I’m referring to. That might have been different if Antoine Frisch had been capped by Ireland, but that ship has long sailed.

As a result, our midfield depth chart has been completely reset.

Let’s have a look at it;

• CORE 1: A vitally important player who will start most games or play an important role in them.
• CORE 2: An important senior player who will likely make squads as a starter or replacement in elite games.
• SQUAD 1: A player who can slot in for one of the CORE 1/2 players if they are injured and can be a match day 23 player for lower tier games as a starter or replacement.
• SQUAD 2: A player who is an intermittent option in the match day 23 regardless of opposition.
• FOUNDATION 1: A young player – under 25 – who can become a CORE 1 player.
• FOUNDATION 2: A player expected to top out around CORE 2 or SQUAD 1 level.
• PRIORITY 1/2/3: A player who needs to be cycled out inside one year (most pressing), two years (wiggle room) and three years (ageing but not a pressing matter)

Player	Role	Age on Jan 31 2025	Contract Expiry	Rating
Alex Nankivell	Power Hitter	28	2025	CORE 1 / PRIORITY 1
Tom Farrell	Edge Playmaker	32	2026	CORE 1/ PRIORITY 2
Sean O'Brien	Utility	26	2026	SQUAD 1
Rory Scannell	Second Five	31	2025	SQUAD 1 / ASSESS 1
Brian Fitzgerald	Power Hitter	25	LATE 2024	ASSESS 1
Gene O'Leary Kareem	Slashing Edge Playmaker	19	ACAD	FOUNDATION 1
Fionn Gibbons	Power Hitter	22	ACAD	ASSESS 1

It’ll tell you a lot about where this chart is when you notice that our youngest senior midfielder is a 26-year-old signed to the club 12 months ago. I haven’t included some of our back three players who can, in theory, cover outside centre – like Liam Coombes and Shane Daly – to make sure we get a good solid look at this chart.

Our most important midfielder is Alex Nankivell who is a comfortable CORE 1 level talent. Unfortunately, he’s NIQ and that means that we’re over a barrel immediately because we have nobody close to his level to replace him internally. That means we have two options; sign him to another two-year deal and take whatever lumps needed to get that dispensation or let him go and essentially start the chart all over again.

Nankivell’s contract runs out in July 2025 and he’s arguably our most important, least replaceable outside back at this point. I think we have to sign him to a top-tier provincial deal for the next two seasons. There is no other option that makes sense at this point. Internally, we have foundational talents but they are still ridiculously young. I don’t think we want to go into a season with Sean O’Brien, as useful as he’s been for us, in our starting midfield pairing with a 33-year-old Tom Farrell.

Whatever horses we need to trade to get that done within reason, should be done.

If we can get Nankivell on another two-year deal, we can start to build a midfield roster around him. He would potentially be Irish Qualified via residency three years from now but I feel that’s something of a long shot at this point. It is a possible option though, and something worth keeping in mind.

The real case to make is that he’s the perfect guy to have alongside Gene O’Leary Kareem in the next two seasons to help him develop. I hope it’s a case we can make.

Alongside him is Tom Farrell, who is another CORE 1 level starter for us after his move from Connacht. I think he showed how good he can be last weekend but his quality wasn’t really in question to anyone who knew his game.

He’s a superb edge playmaker with the kind of imagination and quality to consistently outperform “bigger” names. I won’t say he’s a Moneyball signing but he’s already shown that he’s a far better player than his “status” might suggest. That isn’t the issue.

The real issue is his age. Tom Farrell will be 32 this season and 33 by the end of his current two-year deal. That doesn’t mean that he’s to be thrown into a metaphorical blender and used for mulch, but it does mean that we have to consider his medium-term replacement right now, just a few months after signing him.

I think in an ideal world, Farrell would be a “third man” in our midfield rotation and I think that was the original intention – that he would cover 12/13 to a high level alongside Nankivell and Frisch this season. That “third man” rotation option in midfield is hugely important in the modern game when it comes to the elite level. When you look at all the top European clubs, they all have them. Leinster had Ngatai to cover for Henshaw and Ringrose last season, and this season they’ll have Jordi Barrett. Toulouse have Pita Ahki, Paul Costes and Santiago Chocobares. Northampton have Hutchinson, Dingwall and Odendall, which doesn’t sound as imposing but all three could realistically start for them in a big game.

We don’t have that at Munster right now. We have Nankivell and Farrell, and then we have emergency options that we know are a good bit below the level we need at the top level. That needs to change in the medium term to get this chart back to a comfortable position.

Sean O’Brien has been a really useful player since he signed from Exeter Chiefs but I think his best role is as bench cover option for the midfield and back three. His best work at Munster has been as a plug-in at #11 and #14 who can also do a job in midfield. I’m not sure he’s got the top-level handle or pop in the carry to be a guy we rely on in the long term as a CORE 1 or CORE 2 player. He’s on contract until 2026 and he’ll play a tonne of games for us between 11, 12, 13 and 14 but I think his top level isn’t what we want to hang our hat on in the medium term.

Bryan Fitzgerald, in on a three-month deal, could well see an extension given how much churn we’ve had in the midfield in the last season, just as a cover guy.

That brings us to Rory Scannell, who is currently recovering from a serious ankle injury. Rory Scannell’s big issue for a time at Munster was that he was the ideal “third man” in midfield but injuries elsewhere forced him into a bigger role than was ideal for him. Scannell is a great backup guy to have in a squad. He can cover 10 off the bench, he’s a good #12 with a left-footed kicking game that is really useful, he’s got a good pass on him off both sides, he can kick goals, and he can also cover outside centre in a pinch if you need him.

He’s just not a proper elite-level talent.

He’s the best Munster-produced midfielder of the 2010s but I think he’s maxed his natural potential, which is a proper achievement in itself. That said, I think his ceiling is below that Category A standard. I think Munster have known that for a while now but have still seen the immense value in having a pro like Rory Scannell in the setup. He’s out of contract this coming season but I think there’s value in getting him on another one-year deal to help cover what is an attritional position. At this stage of his career, there’s a lot of worth in having a club veteran like him who knows exactly what he is and I think it’s an easy deal to get after while he’s injured.

Academy man Fionn Gibbons is currently dealing with a serious knee injury so I think it would be unfair to talk about what his future might hold too speculatively. I think his long-term future might lie as a power winger rather than a midfielder given what I’ve seen of him, to be honest, but a lot will hinge on how he comes back from his injury.

I’ve been pretty clear on Gene O’Leary Kareem this year. I think he’s a Foundational Talent. But he’s also 19 and making his way in the game playing against adults and putting a hard and fast timeline on when he might be able to jump into the senior team is difficult. He could get minutes this season, or they might just have him play with UCC, focus on the u20s and then go hard next season if he reacts well all the way through – he’s young enough that you don’t have to rush.

His cousin, James O’Leary, will play for Pres in the Munster Senior Cup this season and is an absolute beast of a Power Hitter but more on him later in the season.

***

I think there is scope for Munster to make a statement Irish-qualified signing in the midfield that we can anchor our long-term depth chart on in the next few years.

Gene O’Leary Kareem is the future, along with his cousin, but that could be two or three seasons away – or longer – because the players we’re talking about are so young and so much can happen in the interim.

If we can get Nankivell on a two-year deal, I think it’s sensible for Munster to look at the Irish Qualified market to see who’s out there to help build the long-term future of the position.

Leicester Tigers Dan Kelly is an obvious target. Kelly is 23, newly Irish qualified again after his three-year timer expired following a lone England cap in 2021 and he’s in a spot at Tigers where he’s the third man behind Solomone Kata and a big-money signing in Izaia Perese.

There were rumours that Munster were talking to Leicester during the wrangle over Frisch about Kelly but buying out the last year of his contract was seen as too expensive. It expires next July and I think making a move for him as our primary outside centre makes a tonne of sense.

That would shift Farrell into the third-man position on the chart and give us real quality to choose from across the season with lads like O’Leary Kareem popping in for reps during the season.

Kelly is proven, durable and has the capacity for test level – I think it makes too much sense not to chase after.

The other possible option is more difficult and immediately contentious. Jamie Osbourne.

It would be a very difficult deal to do but might be possible. Leinster faces a difficult year of contracting this season. Henshaw and Ringrose are both coming off high-value central contracts this season and, if re-signed, Leinster will have to find up to 30% of their contract value. I don’t think it’ll be 30% – I think 10% is closer to reality – but it’s more than what they had been paying. Any choice made with contracting this season will have to be very deliberate.

If Henshaw and Ringrose re-sign for another two years – Ringrose is 29, Henshaw is 31 so a two-year deal for each is plausible – does that push Osbourne into the role of back-up fullback to Keenan? You could argue that his excellent 2023/24 in midfield was disregarded by Leinster when they signed Jordi Barrett for the business end of this coming season.

Osbourne played the entire Champions Cup run-in at #12 last season due to Ringrose’s injury; where does he fit this season with Barrett in situ for more or less the same position? Is it as Keenan’s 1B at fullback? He played really well there on the summer tour to South Africa but is he really going to displace Hugo Keenan on a central contract? Are Leinster going to use him as Lowe’s long-term replacement at #11?

This is an opportunity to weaponize Leinster’s current depth to sign a foundational midfield talent.

Is there a pitch to be made to Osbourne that he’d be the starting Munster #12 next season (with Nankivell at #13) outside the starting Irish #10 in Jack Crowley? Would you also pitch that being bounced around behind two Irish internationals and a world-class All Black in midfield to become a back-three player as a waste of his talents?

It’s a long shot, but it’s possible.

Getting in a high-quality Irish-qualified midfielder under the age of 24 would allow us to rebuild our midfield rotation and, crucially, give us the space to utilise the foundational talents coming up through our academy and beyond.