[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]ransition is a bit of a dirty word in sports. For most fans, it’s a word that means “don’t expect to win anything for a while” and, for the most part, they’re right. Yet “transition”, when we talk about building consistently successful professional rugby squads, is a necessity. It doesn’t always mean that you’ll transition to a side as successful or more successful than the one that came before it, but that’s the aim. The timing of the handover of a certain position

When we last looked at Munster, we had ended the rollercoaster 2011 season with silverware – a Magner’s League title – and some real green shoots ahead of the transition to come, albeit with some concerns about the age and injury profile of key players. The build-up to the 2011 World Cup would dictate a lot of Munster’s succession plans – Ireland’s needs at senior level dictate provincial contracting and selection – as would the timing of certain long term injuries to crucial players.

A part of my last article looked at the decision to award a 31-year-old Donncha O’Callaghan a three-year contract while Paul O’Connell’s career was still up in the air and, while that was a completely understandable deal once we appreciate the context of the moment, it did create a bit of a bottleneck situation that would need skilful management once O’Connell signed a two-year contract in January 2012. I use the word “bottle-neck” in a considered manner here because a lot of people have a mistaken idea of how player succession works in a specific position.

The ideal way to do it is with a lot of quality players already in situ with a clear progression plan in place. You want to make sure that the senior players know what the long term plan is for a position – it really helps if these players are north of 30 – but you also have to be aware that you’re actively looking to scale a young player up into a senior role over the course of a few seasons. What you don’t want is a senior player retiring at the age of 34/35 with a series of question marks left in their wake. Ideally, the retiring player should already be heading into the background by the time their last season comes around. Succession should look seamless – at least when it comes to certain positions.

At the start of 2011/12, Munster’s second-row situation was enviable. You had the new Irish captain in Paul O’Connell at 31/32 years of age, a Lions-tier, super experienced, super-fit Donncha O’Callaghan at 32/33, a vastly experienced cover player in Mick O’Driscoll who was at the tail end of his career, a high potential and well-seasoned Foundation player in Donnacha Ryan who, at 27 years of age in 2011/12, was ready to step up into a more prominent starting role and two high potential players in their early 20s in Dave Foley and, in particular, Ian Nagle.

It’s hard to state exactly how excited everyone was by Nagle after that game against Australia. Think James Ryan during the summer of 2016 and you’re most of the way there. He had the size/frame, the athleticism and had shown an ability to stand out against test-tier opposition on a manky night in front of a packed out Thomond Park.

The chains of succession were perfectly aligned and, after Nagle signed a new Munster deal in 2010/11 with other European clubs sniffing around, the future of Munster’s second-row looked pretty secure.

Year 1: O’Connell (32), Ryan (27) and O’Callaghan (33) with O’Driscoll (32) covering and Nagle (22) pushing.
Year 2: O’Connell (33), Ryan (28) and Nagle (23) with O’Callaghan (34) covering and Foley (22) pushing.
Year 3: Ryan (29) & Nagle (24) and O’Connell (34) with Foley (23) pushing.

Consideration would have to be given to O’Connell being named Irish captain after the World Cup but O’Connell’s two-year deal transitioning with would give a clear demarcation point for Munster to have our succession plans in order.

But, as the old saying goes, if you want to make God laugh all you have to do is tell him your plans.

***

The expectation level in Munster was such that a Magner’s League trophy was generally considered to be a secondary win when compared to the Heineken Cup. The perception is different today but, at the time, it was very much looked at like “the league vs the All Ireland” in terms of fan priority so the major takeaway from 2010/11 wasn’t the trophy at the end of it, it was failing to qualify from the Heineken Cup pool and then getting beaten at home by Harlequins in the Challenge Cup.

There wasn’t much breathing room for McGahan as he came into the last year of his contract but he had a few aces up his sleeve. The emergence of Conor Murray from the academy as a top-level option at scrumhalf towards the end of the previous season – and at the 2011 World Cup – filled a gap in the squad that had been visible since O’Leary’s injury and form difficulties since 2009.

Munster had also been busy on the recruitment side of things. John Hayes would retire midway through 2011/12 but we had replaced him before the start of the season with BJ Botha, a top-class scrummager, World Cup-winning tighthead signed from Ulster. Tony Buckley had departed for Sale Sharks after the World Cup but Munster were able to mitigate that loss by pairing Botha – an outstanding scrummager – with Hayes for the first half of the season and by giving a 23-year-old Stephen Archer a fair bit of bench time behind Botha for big games post-December. The project signing of Peter Borlaise hadn’t really worked out at this point and was shipped off to Connacht on loan.

On the loosehead side, Munster had Du Preez and Horan fighting it out for starting spots with guys like Kilcoyne and Cronin looking promising in the academy. John Ryan was floating between tighthead and loosehead at this point at an academy and senior level.

In November 2012, a season later, then Irish forwards coach Gert Smal namechecked both Kilcoyne and Archer ahead of that year’s November series.

“I am very excited by Dave (Kilcoyne). He is still cutting his teeth in the squad I think, but the last two weeks he has been working really hard. He is an exciting little player.

“You know what his nickname is? It’s ‘Killer‘. That’s what you experience with him, in the runs, in the practice, the way he does things. He looks like a little killer.

“He is a great little player. We also have Stephen Archer with us now in the squad, they are both exciting little players that we can work with in the future.”

So, while Munster were losing an iconic player in Hayes, they had good short and medium-term options on the tighthead side and a long chain of succession building on the loosehead side with an experienced veteran towards the end of his career (Horan), a quality NIQ option (Du Preez) and two or three academy prospects ready for first-team exposure.

McGahan had also signed Ian Keatley from Connacht before the start of the season to ostensibly replace Paul Warwick but the fact that O’Gara was coming towards the end of his career will have been a key part of the thinking too. Keatley had been a revelation in his three seasons at Connacht, was already an international and was Irish qualified. There was a bit of a question mark over how he’d manage the step up in expectation at Munster but O’Gara wasn’t going anywhere for the time being and Keatley would have time to grow into the role.

The biggest area of concern was, in my opinion, the midfield. Keith Earls 2010/11 was spent bouncing between #13 and the wing at various points, with Lifeimi Mafi covering both #12/#13 pretty regularly over his 18 starts and 5 bench appearances.

Mafi was still a vital part of the Munster midfield and would play a staggering 2054 minutes at #12 for Munster in 2011/12, his final season at the club. With Tuitopou moving on and Ireland looking for options at #13 with O’Driscoll’s retirement looming (and his injury in 2012), the season seemed set up for a statement run at #13 for Keith Earls.

Injury limited Earls involvement during the season and Munster used Danny Barnes and Will Chambers (a short term signing from Australia) to try and cover #13 jersey during Earls’ absence with varying levels of success. Barnes was a talented player but looked a little light on top-end athleticism in the position – Earls was never the biggest #13 going but he was unbelievably quick and agile with explosive acceleration – and, while the big and athletic Will Chambers impressed on occasion, he was always a short term option and went back to play Rugby League for the Melbourne Storm once his time at Munster was up.

Keith Earls would only manage 20 appearances between 2011/12 and 2012/13 due to injuries, which he had since attributed to the bulk he had to carry to be effective in the centres.

In an interview with the 42 in August 2016, Earls said;

“[I was] constantly trying to be 95kg, but my natural weight now is 86 to 88kg. I think that’s why I kept breaking down, trying to put on weight. I was too heavy and my body wasn’t able to carry it.”

Munster would address the midfield directly by signing James Downey & Casey Laulala to play as starters at #12 and #13 ahead of the 2012/13 season.

Performance-wise, 2011/12 started pretty well, for the most part, albeit with a worrying period before the Heineken Cup. Munster lost away to Edinburgh, at home to the Ospreys, and then suffered a loss against Leinster in the Aviva. Munster would face regular pool stage rivals Northampton in the first game of the Heineken Cup that year and you might remember how that game ended.

The finish to this game – one of the all-time great last-minute wins – went some way to disguise a pretty poor home performance from Munster in this game. We looked physically flat and badly structured for large parts of the contest and Northampton could rightly feel like they threw away a win and, were it not for a Vasily Artemyev knock-on with the line gaping in the last 20 minutes, Saints could well have been completely out of sight.

Another last-minute drop goal away to Castres the next week put Munster in control of the pool and a back-to-back win over the Scarlets in December all but guaranteed a pool win. The best performance of the pool was saved for the last game, where Munster (inspired by a Zebo hat-trick) won 51-36 in Franklin’s Gardens. Munster weren’t playing all that well, in truth, but we’d won all six games and sailed into the knockouts as top seeds, with our reward being a home quarter-final against Ulster.

Looking back at those pool games over the last few days confirmed my suspicion that our position as top seeds in 2011/12 flattered us quite a bit. None of Scarlets, Saints or Castres were any great shakes that year and, even though we beat them all home and away, we only managed our solitary bonus point of the pool away to Saints, who were starting to show some wear and tear after a few years at Europe’s top table.

On a surface examination, Munster were doing quite well but a closer look would reveal serious succession issues caused by a litany of injuries to our core players over the previous seasons.

***

If we go back to our squad chart of 2008/09 and assess the status of our CORE 1 and PRIORITY 2/3 players, we can see where the problems were arising.

Name	Position	Status In 2008/09	Status in 2011/12
Jerry Flannery	Hooker	CORE 1	INJURED
Paul O'Connell	Lock	CORE 1	PRIORITY 3
Donncha O'Callaghan	Lock	PRIORITY 3	PRIORITY 1
Donnacha Ryan	Lock	FOUNDATION 1	CORE 1
David Wallace	Flanker	PRIORITY 2	INJURED
Denis Leamy	#8	CORE 1	INJURED
Nick Williams	#8	FOUNDATION 1	NOT AT CLUB
Ronan O'Gara	Flyhalf	PRIORITY 2	PRIORITY 1
Ian Dowling	Winger	CORE 1	RETIRED
Keith Earls	Winger/Centre	FOUNDATION 1	CORE 1
Doug Howlett	Winger	CORE 1	PRIORITY 1

Ian Dowling had retired the previous season through injury. Donnacha Ryan and Keith Earls had progressed through to be CORE 1 players in the two seasons since 2009 but the high potential Nick Williams had washed out for numerous reasons.

To compound issues, two of our ID’d core players for post-2009 – Jerry Flannery and Denis Leamy – had missed a tonne of rugby and top-level effectiveness in the two seasons since then through injury, and both men would retire during 2011/12.

Flannery played 438 minutes of rugby since the end of the 2008/09 season. Leamy suffered a serious knee injury during 2009/10 and, in my opinion, I don’t think that he ever really returned to the effectiveness he showed in his run since his senior debut up until that December day in Perpignan. Leamy’s last season at Munster would see him play just 334 minutes before he retired at the end of the season.

When you lose CORE 1 players prematurely, it means you’ll become more reliant on PRIORITY 1/2 players for longer than is optimal and/or you’ll have to promote guys who were previously SQUAD 1 players to more prominent roles.

 

I’ve already explained how O’Connell’s battle with osteitis pubis might have affected Munster’s contracting thoughts and that’s a good template to understanding succession in a professional rugby environment. Basically, contracting players is how you express your succession plans in real-world terms but it’s not done in a vacuum.

Every club has to operate within the constraints of a limited budget or a salary cap (in theory, anyway) but they also have to operate in an environment where they have to compete with rival clubs for players inside and outside of their squad.

So if you have a young player that you feel is capable of replacing senior player inside two years, you will have to contract that player for an amount that reflects that potential importance, and that’s before you have to compete with offers from elsewhere. Ideally, your contracting should have a clear striation between the highest-paid senior, “best” players, the experienced squad players in the middle with a few high potential Foundation players and then young potential players at the lowest tier but competition for a certain player from outside can drive up contract amounts to a price you’re uncomfortable paying but not as uncomfortable as you’d be in seeing that potential player turn into Dan Carter a season after you let them go.

In the Irish system, this is particularly relevant because the top layer of players are paid directly by the IRFU if they are also top players for the Irish national side. This is what you might define as a “central contract” and they are a key indicator of success. Ultimately every player in Ireland is paid by the IRFU in some form or another but the provinces do have player contracting budgets of their own and all the related constraints that come with that. The more “central contract” players you have in your squad, the more wiggle room you have in your own budget to build effective depth while also having access to the best players in the country “for free”. I say “for free” here in a considered way because, while the IRFU might be paying them directly, that comes with game-time limitations (both when you can’t play a certain player and when you must play a certain player) and increased injury risks as well as the investment a province will make to get a player to point where they are in a position to even be awarded a central contract.

So if you have a top layer of players that are contracted by the IRFU, you have more budget space to sign depth players that you otherwise wouldn’t have. For large parts of Munster’s time at the top, a host of our top players like O’Gara, O’Connell, Wallace and others would have been directly contracted by the IRFU and that allowed enhanced investment in other parts of the squad.

Leinster’s outstanding second XV in 2020 is an expression of this contracting depth. When you don’t have to directly budget for guys like Healy, Furlong, Ryan, Toner, Henshaw (and others), it allows you the space to keep players that otherwise might see more money for their game time elsewhere.

Another advantage of central contracts is that it sets a natural wage ceiling in the squad across certain positions. If you have a centrally contracted Irish captain in Paul O’Connell, it sets a clear payment pathway for everyone.

When you have fewer players contracted centrally, contracting decisions at the top end of your squad become more expensive, literally and figuratively, especially in an environment where your expectations as a team haven’t changed. It’s a circular point ultimately but it’s a crucial part in understanding the contract game;

1. The more top quality test players you have in your squad, the more likely you are to win trophies.
2. Top-quality test players are more likely to be centrally contracted and mostly or partially moved off your provincial budget.
3. The more centrally contracted players you have in your squad, the more you can budget for depth below that centrally contracted level.
4. The more quality depth you have, the more you win.

A good example would be the transition of a guy like Fergus McFadden who went from a semi-regular fixture at test level to cycling back to Leinster exclusive towards the latter end of his career. In an environment where Leinster don’t have a lot of players centrally contracted, a player of McFadden’s quality could have fallen into a position where what he feels is a fair wage is not something that Leinster could reasonably afford to offer.

Instead, with that enhanced wage space, Leinster were able to afford to keep a high quality, 34 times capped international around the squad for a number of years at a wage that made sense to him in the latter part of his career when he would have been offered some lucrative, attractive options abroad.

From 2002 to 2009, Munster had the majority of the test Irish pack and halfbacks contracted to their squad. In the aftermath of 2009, those players began to age out or get destroyed by injury and Munster were not able to replace them with like for like quality.

It’s an incredibly harsh thing to write but when we look at what the likes of Jerry Flannery, Denis Leamy, David Wallace (and other players who retired around 2011/12) produced at the top-end of the game and compare it to the players that replaced them, there’s no comparison. Yes, certain aspects of international rugby selection depend on luck and a certain amount of subjectivity when it comes to the coach’s likes and dislikes, but there’s no doubt that consistent exposure to test rugby makes you a better player.

Denis Leamy’s was replaced by James Coughlan. Coughlan had gone from a role player in 2009 to be an absolute minute-machine by the time 2011/12 rolled around but he could never quite crack test level selection. It doesn’t mean he was a poor player, far from it, he was a really good player who probably should have been capped at least once, but by the time he was Munster’s clear starting #8 he was over 32 years of age and a priority to be replaced himself.

Damian Varley replaced Jerry Flannery when it became clear that Denis Fogarty wasn’t going to work out as a top-level option for one reason or another. Damian Varley had a fine career at Munster and got three caps but Jerry Flannery was a different breed.

David Wallace spent much of the 2011 season recovering from a serious knee injury suffered before the World Cup and on the evidence of 2010/11, would have stayed productive for at least another two seasons but he played 70 minutes in 2011/12 and would retire in May of that year.

Munster had gone from looking at a possible/projected back row of #6 Leamy/#8 Williams/#7 Ronan to having to reset almost completely two seasons later.

***

Munster’s 2011/12 – and indeed McGahan’s time in charge – ended on a disappointing note. Munster went into the knockouts as top seeds but got rightly rumbled by an Ulster squad that would make the final that season. Knocked out of the Heineken Cup in Thomond Park by Ulster the season after we failed to get out of the pool? It felt like an end of things, and it was. The newly named RaboDirect PRO12 was another disappointment with the end of the regular season featuring an away loss to Aironi, a home draw with the Scarlets, and a sour loss at home to Leinster. It was only enough for third place and Munster were beaten out the gate in the semi-finals by an Ospreys side who would go on to win the tournament by beating Leinster in the RDS.

McGahan had decided to take up a job with the Australian national side as an assistant and turned down a reported two-year contract extension from Munster. A lot had been made of McGahan’s style of rugby at Munster and his legacy, much of it negative, but I think that’s slightly unfair.

He’s been accused of not bringing through any players but off base, in my opinion. Peter O’Mahony, Simon Zebo, Stephen Archer, Tommy O’Donnell, and Conor Murray saw significant high-level game time under McGahan. Ian Nagle, who’s often held up as a black mark against McGahan, is a more complicated case. The 2011/12 preseason saw Ian Nagle suffer a dislocated shoulder that would wreck his first season under contract and he would ultimately have to undergo surgery that would push his return out to November 2012 with just over six months of his original deal left. He signed a new deal with Munster only to suffer a foot injury in his second start of the following season that pushed him back down the pecking order.

You could point to Nick Williams as a missed opportunity and, in hindsight, he certainly was. Williams ended up being a mighty player for Ulster and then Cardiff after his year out at Aironi. At the time though, there was real concerns about Williams’ diet and commitment to the game. You can only imagine what the Nick Williams we know today would have added to Munster if he’d ascended to the first-team in 2010/11 and stayed there.

Either way, 2011/12 was a definitive transition point for much of the squad.

Lifeimi Mafi, Tomás O’Leary and Denis Fogarty moved on to new clubs. David Wallace, Mick O’Driscoll, John Hayes, Jerry Flannery and Denis Leamy all retired. McGahan and Laurie Fisher moved on to be replaced by Rob Penney, Simon Mannix and Anthony Foley.

The transition was on and at the beginning of 2012/13, thanks to the emergence of key young players and some smart signings, the chains of succession were still visible despite the unplanned losses of core players.

The season was certainly up and down when it came to Penney’s embryonic playstyle and some results but if we take the Munster side that took the field against Harlequins in that 2012/13 Heineken Cup quarter-final win in the Stoop, we can see where Munster were going.

Priority 1: Replace within one season
Priority 2: Replace within two seasons
Priority 3: Replace within three seasons
Core 1: Important player in peak age that likely has four seasons of peak performance remaining.
Squad 2: High squad player in peak age that likely has four seasons of peak performance remaining.
Foundation Player: Young talent (20-24) expected to play for five + seasons and transition to Core 1.
Potential Foundation: Talent ID’d young player (18-23) that has the potential to ascend to regular first-team exposure as a Core 1 or Squad 2 type player.
NIQ: Non-Irish qualified player who, bar exceptional cases, will not be staying long term.
NCR: No Clear Replacement in Senior Squad
NRN: No Replacement Needed (for a Foundation Player)

Player	Position	Age in 2009	Grade
Dave Kilcoyne	LHP	24	FOUNDATION 1
Mike Sherry	H	24	FOUNDATION 1
BJ Botha	THP	33	PRIORITY 2
Donnacha Ryan	L/F	29	CORE 1
Paul O'Connell	L	33	PRIORITY 1
Peter O'Mahony	F	23	FOUNDATION 1
Tommy O'Donnell	F	25	FOUNDATION 1
James Coughlan	8/F	32	PRIORITY 1
Conor Murray	SH	24	FOUNDATION 1
Ronan O'Gara	FH	35	PRIORITY 1
Simon Zebo	W/FB	24	FOUNDATION 1
James Downey	M	32	PRIORITY 1
Casey Laulala	M	31	NIQ/PRIORITY 2
Denis Hurley	W/FB/M	28	SQUAD 2
Felix Jones	FB	25	CORE 1
Damian Varley	H	31	SQUAD 2
Wian Du Preez	LHP	30	NIQ/PRIORITY 1
Stephen Archer	THP	25	SQUAD 2
Donncha O'Callaghan	L	34	PRIORITY 1
Paddy Butler	8/F	22	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
Cathal Sheridan	SH	24	SQUAD 2
Ian Keatley	FH/FB	26	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
Ivan Dineen	M	25	SQUAD 2
Keith Earls	W/M	25	CORE 1
CJ Stander	8/F	23	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
Ian Nagle	L	24	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
JJ Hanrahan	FH	20	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
Dave Foley	L	24	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
Doug Howlett	W	34	PRIORITY 1
Johne Murphy	W/FB	28	SQUAD 2
John Ryan	THP/LHP	24	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION
Billy Holland	F/L	27	SQUAD 2
Dave O'Callaghan	F/L	23	POTENTIAL FOUNDATION

The biggest question on this list is Ian Keatley being listed as a POTENTIAL FOUNDATION at 26 years of age. O’Gara was a few months away from retiring at this point and after watching back key games from the season to augment my memories of this time, I think the general consensus was that Ian Keatley was ready to step up to be Munster’s new #1 guy.

There were a few issues with goal kicking but his work with the ball in hand gave us a new dimension from first receiver in comparison to O’Gara’s game at that point. O’Gara was still productive in his last season but parts of his game had started to fall back from what we knew of his peak. I think you could be somewhat confident that Keatley could make the step up but the emergence of JJ Hanrahan as a bonafide underage star the season prior during Munster’s B&I Cup win was an interesting parachute plan. Hanrahan looked like he had it all and, at just 20 years of age, he had everything you’d look for in a potential foundational player.

If one were to think cynically, you could be forgiven for having the opinion that if Keatley (who signed on a new two-year contract in January 2013) didn’t work out as planned that Hanrahan would be a ready-made replacement if you could develop both over the next two seasons.

Midfield still looked like an issue at this point but Downey and Laulala would give us some breathing room there. Simon Zebo’s emergence as a top-quality option had, almost overnight, fixed up Munster’s worries over Doug Howlett’s impending retirement. Keith Earls was injured for much of 2012/13 but would focus more on the wing in coming seasons. Felix Jones had one of his best seasons at Munster during 2012/13 and, at 25 years of age, had all the qualities you’d want from a CORE 1 player.

The pack was shaping up really well too.

Botha was pushing on, sure, but Kilcoyne and Sherry looked like real options at loosehead and hooker. You know all about Kilcoyne but Sherry deserves a mention. For a while between 2012 and 2015, Mike Sherry looked like he could be the next big thing at hooker. He was mobile and skilled in phase play, a decent scrummager and an unbelievably skilled lineout thrower. Sherry’s throw was near faultless in his breakthrough season at senior level; he had all the throws in his locker – flat lazer, high lob, float to the middle and a hard, fast dart to the tail. He looked like a proper heir to Jerry Flannery.

The back row looked a little thin at the end of 2009/10 but the emergence of Peter O’Mahony and Tommy O’Donnell as top-class options on the flank changed the landscape. James Coughlan was still productive at #8 but there were two potential foundation players waiting in the wings – Paddy Butler and the newly signed CJ Stander. Butler was a young player who advanced rapidly through the levels at Munster to the point where he was in Heineken Cup squads at just 22 years of age. Stander had been signed that summer as a potential project player and he had shown immediate top-class potential during his debut season, even though he had yet to breakthrough as a regular Category 1 game starter.

Conor Murray’s emergence as a generational player at scrumhalf was so clear that O’Leary, the previous incumbent, left Munster for more game time at the end of 2011/12 and while Peter Stringer was still technically a Munster player at this point, he had spent a lot of time on loan to Saracens and Newcastle over this period. Not only did Munster have Murray as a nailed on FOUNDATION 1 player, but we also had younger squad options like Sheridan and established squad players like Duncan Williams in the group.

2012/13 finally saw Donnacha Ryan emerge as a starting lock alongside O’Connell for much of the season. Donncha O’Callaghan had dropped back into a supporting role alongside Billy Holland. Ian Nagle had missed a lot of time during injury at this point and was very close to making the Heineken Cup squad after his shoulder trouble of the previous season set him back almost a year. Munster still had high hopes on his potential and, at 24 years of age, he still had foundational potential. Dave Foley, too, had shown real potential as a physical, bruising second-row option and he was bubbling away in the background. This was not a problem position – not yet.

All in all, it looks like Munster are pretty well set to develop from here. In our next episode, we’ll look to see how Munster handled the transition with these new foundational elements and a new, progressive thinking coach heading into his second season.