Whenever a new head coach comes into a squad, it is an opportunity to perform something of a reset.

Tactically, individually, mentally, culturally. Did Munster need one? I think on the evidence of this season as it’s progressed, we probably did, but I can’t take any credit for that insight as I didn’t think we needed one in the summer. I suppose the proof is always in the pudding and not many were too happy with how it was smelling in the oven by late October.

As ever, you get to hear most of the stuff people didn’t want to talk about before once the guys in question are out the door. It’s the same in any business and, if anything, pro-sport is worse for it.

On the whole, though, standards, preparation and the top-down culture weren’t what they needed to be because, if they were, Graham Rowntree would still be the Munster head coach, and he isn’t.

But we’ve been over this.

For the coming reset, Clayton McMillan has all the scope that he needs to be as thorough as he sees fit. He hasn’t come here to fit in – he’s coming here to change what fitting in means. By now, you’ll have seen that YouTube interview with McMillan, and it goes some way to giving an insight into the man, but it’s only a glimpse in what he brings to a high performance operation.

When McMillan decided to make the long trip up to Ireland during a down week in the Chiefs Super Rugby season, it told you one thing immediately; he is an extremely serious coach who wants to start strongly when he gets here in July. Some of his time here this week will be spent getting practical stuff like the McMillan’s house and school/college set up for the three years here, but most of it was about getting his feet under the table ahead of a huge preseason with the club.

That means laying out roles with the current staff, smoothing over the division of responsibilities with Mike Prendergast in particular, before meeting David Humphreys and have some in-person chats with key players. By the time the week is over, McMillan will go back to New Zealand with his future home life mostly sorted and a lot of the heavy lifting that would typically be done in July out of the way nice and early.

What changes he will look to make ahead of that pre-season – on the staff, coaching or playing side – remain to be seen. In the last few days, I’ve had a few chats with the people who met McMillan, and the universal message I got back was “this guy is going to be great here.”

Word from New Zealand was that McMillan is a big “culture” guy, but you know that already. What does that mean, practically? McMillan will set the culture—who we are, what we do, how we do it, and why—from the top down, ensuring self-policing. He isn’t just here to patrol the halls of the HPC. There is no scope for consistent underperformance in the environment he fosters.

McMillan projects an intimidating presence in meetings and has a steel to him that is apparent immediately. When he talks, you listen. If he asks you a question that he already knows the answer to, both of your answers had better be the same. That isn’t all he’s about, of course, and it is never about him just roaring at lads until they’re better rugby players but the hope is at the club that the steeliness and abrasiveness that he projects rubs off on the squad.

When he spoke to the players, the bits and pieces I heard were that he had a “Rassie” vibe to him in that he’s not the guy you’d want to be answering to after dropping a dud performance. The biggest takeaway was how authentic he was and how exciting his vision for what Munster is and could be was so, so exciting.

I’ve been watching the Chiefs a lot over the last few weeks and I was quite taken by how he spoke after last week’s 35-50 win over Moana Pasifka.

He was not a happy man. At half time, he spoke about being “ruthless” and asking the squad before they went back out about what sort of side they wanted to be. Evidently, he didn’t really like what he saw.

A win is a win wasn’t going to cut it. He will bring that same approach here.

On-field, I like how the Chiefs have been playing. There is an abrasiveness to the flat 3-3-X shape they’ve been playing and, interestingly, their use of props broadly scans with how Munster would in an ideal world with all the guys who we hope will be in the building next year mostly fit and firing. They are scrum first, tight support players with most of the fireworks with the ball in hand coming from the back row, half-backs and outside back line, especially on transition.

The scrum, in particular, has been an enormous weapon for the Chiefs this year and it scans with how they’re playing the game – a lot of transition work, a lot of mid-range carries off the ruck and an expectation to offload means a big scrum is incrementally more valuable.

That will require a dedicated scrum coach in the province—a role Sean Cronin has temporarily filled since Rowntree left in November. Will Munster stick with Cronin or go to the market? Graham Dewes is currently the scrum coach under McMillan at the Chiefs and it wouldn’t be too much of a shock to see him bring one or two familiar faces with him.

Familiarity will be important for the “fit” of the coaching group. One of the biggest advantages of McMillan’s signing is that he’s an outsider with new ways of looking at what we do, but that fact also likely necessitates the signing of some familiar faces to balance out the coaching group.

When Munster have signed overseas coaches previously, they have almost always brought specialist coaches of their own and I think McMillan will do the same.

Every head coach in the game has a specific unit speciality that they bring to the coaching set up. Joe Schmidt, for example, is the head coach but also the primary attack coach for the teams he coaches. He might well delegate most of the legwork to an assistant, but the core concepts are his. Farrell does the same for Ireland as the primary attack coach.

Jacques Neinaber is essentially the head coach at Leinster and coaches the defence.

What unit will McMillan take? Jono Gibbes currently takes the lineout at the Chiefs and while McMillan has coached the lineout himself – something he also did during the recent All Black XV tour of Europe – Munster were keen on retaining the excellent Alex Codling after his short-term stint at the club this season. McMillan has also been a unit defence coach and has a big say in the Chiefs defensive set up this season. He does tend to like a big coaching set up, however, so will definitely spread the load across the group but will be very segmented in his assignment of roles. McMillan is a big fan of clarity, so will look to put an end to the mix and match, cross-unit approach that Munster were using as recently as this season with different coaches pitching in across the disciplines.

Clarity, authority, abrasiveness, toughness – these are the hallmarks of McMillan’s Chiefs and what Munster believe he will bring here.

Time will tell, but after what I’ve heard this week; I’m already a believer.