Being able to think any further ahead than a week is a luxury in this life, and rugby is no different.

If you’re a club rugby coach, you live your professional life paycheck to paycheck, week to week, where last week’s result is the most important thing in your life until the next weekend, with all the injury turbulence that comes with it. The rent is due every single weekend, whether you have the cash or not.

It’s an exhausting process, and a wandering mind can be costly. I once heard a story from Saracens about how a player or coach would be fined by management if they were heard talking about or referencing any opponent who wasn’t that week’s fixture, be that during training, in the dressing room, in the canteen or in the car park.

When you lose focus on what’s in front of you, don’t be surprised if you walk into an uppercut you didn’t see coming.

This is why most clubs and organisations in this sport like to segment different layers of planning between multiple people. A head coach, for example, can only and should only look so far ahead. But when it comes to the world of contracting — keeping what you have or pursuing someone from outside — a head coach does not have the time or the headspace for that.

It’s an entirely separate job.

At Munster, that work is primarily carried out by Ian Costello as General Manager.

This is where the medium to long-term view on players starts to become really important. It’s not just about now, it’s about what you might need or have in one, two or three years. Any longer than that and you’re into soothsaying territory, which, as of yet, nobody has consistently been able to do accurately. If, or rather, when I win the lotto, you’ll know when I’ve cracked it.

This past week, the renewal of Mark Donnelly on a two-year deal, along with Diarmuid Kilgallen, had a few people scratching their heads.

Donnelly has 16 appearances in five seasons for Munster, while Kilgallen has 13 appearances in the last two since joining from Connacht ahead of 2024/25. I think it’s fair to say that, bar the odd flash here and there, both players are waiting for a standout series of performances in a Munster jersey.

So why contract both players for two further seasons?

This is where a longer-term view comes into play.

Donnelly, for example, turned 25 this season, and that’s normally something of a cut-off for young players when it comes to determining your future usage. For props, that timing is a little longer, given the very specific physical load they have to get seasoned to, bar generational freaks who are ready for it almost immediately.

Mark Donnelly isn’t a generational freak, and he’s been solidly fourth in the depth chart at loosehead over the last two years, but does that mean he should be cut? Earlier this season, I felt he’d have a tough time getting a contract, for sure, but I’m not shocked that he got an extension, even a two-year one.

For a start, you need four senior looseheads (and tightheads) just to train properly week to week. Munster will have two looseheads in the academy next off-season, but they work on limited enough reps as they get up to speed on the demands of pro-rugby, depending on their seniority.

Our senior loosehead chart for next season is Loughman, Milne, Wycherley and Donnelly, in that approximate order in the pecking chart. Next season, Josh Wycherley is off contract after signing his previous deal when he was 1A/1B in the chart, so there might be an adjustment there, but without looking at anything else, keeping on a depth option at relatively low cost is pragmatic recruitment in Ireland.

In the IRFU system, the prop you have is infinitely better than the prop you might sign from the IQ pathway — always a risk — unless you can sign someone from higher up the relative chart elsewhere in Ireland, as Munster did by signing Jack Aungier and Michael Milne the previous season.

Even with that, Mark Donnelly has just turned 25 and will only now start showing what he’s capable of physically, going on the trend-line for non-generational physical freaks.

But in a general sense, I’ll ask a question before I get to the next bit: why do Munster not have the seemingly endless conveyor belt of decent, nuts and bolts props that you often see coming in and doing well for any English Prem club you care to mention?

I mean, we should, right?

To go back to Saracens for a minute, I want you to think about Alec Clarey. Maybe you know him, maybe you don’t, but he’s the classic example I’m talking about. He spent a bit of time in Bristol’s academy before being released in the mid-2010s, where he played three seasons for the Jersey Reds before joining Saracens in 2020 at 26 years of age. Since then, he’s played Champions Cup rugby and Premiership finals, before then settling into a back-up role in his 30s, where he’s slotted in and out of the team based on his fundamentals — he’s big, he’s a handy scrummager, a good lifter at the lineout, and a decent carrier. He’s never been in the frame for England caps or anything like that, but he’s been exactly what Saracens have wanted; a guy you can slot in at #3 or #18 for any game you need, and not think twice about it.

If he were Irish qualified, at least three of the Irish provinces would have been offering him €150k a year before his last contract at Saracens.

Now I’ll throw another name at you — Elliot Millar Mills. You might remember him playing against Munster for Northampton, but before that, he bounced around the English championship for seven seasons in between stints at Edinburgh and Wasps, before the latter went under for financial reasons.

At Northampton, where he joined aged 30, he finally hit his straps and played a big part in Saints’ resurgence post 2023, going on to earn 14 Scotland caps before he moved to Newcastle earlier this year.

Where is our version of Alec Clarey or Elliot Millar Mills?

Is it a case that, when it comes to props, they aren’t getting enough reps at the appropriate level? I would rate AIL 1A and (to an extent) 1B as being a functional and stylistic equivalent of the English Championship, with one exception — the set piece.

So while the AIL is a valuable pace setter for every player up to a point, in my opinion, I’d wonder if, for props in particular, they are getting the full value of the games they do play.

For a downchart prop in the Irish system, be they contracted as a senior player or academy, they spend most of their training week with the senior team, with one two-hour training session with their club, max, before travelling to whatever AIL game they’re down for at the weekend.

In that scenario, they have very few training reps in the scrum they’re packing down in, almost always against a scrum that has, so while they are getting an individual workout prop on prop, it’s almost always on the back foot unless they’re an aforementioned generational physical freak.

So, with Donnelly, outside of contractual timing and depth chart usage, is there someone there who could be valuable a year from now? It depends on a few factors. Can he get another loan to a Championship club? Donnelly spent some time at Ealing this season and, by all accounts, did pretty well. He came back a better prop. He needs minutes from somewhere to help him bridge the gap between AIL and URC-level rugby.

Can he kick on this summer? With a new forwards coach set to be announced in the next two to three weeks, that can be a spur too, as well as another preseason building his frame. Can he become, at 26/27, the kind of select and forget loosehead option that almost every other club in Europe seems to have an endless supply of?

I think it’s worth a shot.

With Kilgallen, I think it’s far simpler — he was signed as a pacey, power-winger adjacent role type, but, as it turned out, our current playstyle demands far more looped handling routes, passing and complex line-running than Kilgallen was able to handle.

He’s a guy you want on the end of chances, not playing a complex, flat handling role in the build-up to someone else getting that chance. Keeping on a guy who — and I don’t think this is a debate — is our biggest, strongest and fastest winger in a system that is going to be deeper and “simpler” next season is something of a no-brainer. He doesn’t quite suit what we’re doing now, I think that’s clear after Exeter, but in a system that will provide more straightforward, straight-line running opportunities for all of our wingers next season, I think it’s a clear decision to make.

Planning for now is one thing, planning for what comes six months to a year from now is another thing entirely.