Munster’s expiry chart at hooker is pretty straightforward, but, as we’ve seen so far in this series, there’s very little that’s simple when it comes to contracting decisions — every decision you make runs into another decision sooner rather than later. That’s before you get into the complexity of using an expiring big earner in one positional group to make a play in another.
Let’s have a look at whose contracts are expiring next July.
- Diarmuid Barron – 2026
- Niall Scannell – 2026
(Lee Barron is safe until 2027, while Danny Sheahan [ACAD2] and Max Clein [ACAD3] are still in the development window.)
On the face of it, there is no real decision to be made here. You need at least three senior hookers, in a squad that is looking to compete on both fronts and, arguably, you could say that you should be looking at three higher-tier deals, one lower-tier senior deal and then cover the rest with academy prospects.
The attrition at hooker is something that has to be accounted for, and we’ve gone some way to addressing that for this season. For the first time since 2020/21*, we have three senior hookers who, if all are fit, are capable of starting or finishing a big game without too much worry in the coaching box.
* In 2020/21, we had Kevin O’Byrne, Niall Scannell and Rhys Marshall all on contract. Diarmuid Barron was also on a senior contract at that stage, but was very much in a developmental arc post-academy.
Now, as then, that was mostly down to Munster’s budget. 2020/21 was the first season that the COVID-era budget cuts started to bite, but Marshall still had a year on his contract. As a result, we had three senior hookers, one on his first senior deal, and Scott Buckley and Eoghan Clarke in the academy.
In July 2021, we trimmed that area of the squad considerably. Eoghan Clarke left the academy after his third year (he would return a few years later before departing again last season), Rhys Marshall was released (he ended up playing nine games with the Highlanders) and Munster went with a three man rotation of Scannell and Barron, with O’Byrne picking up the alternate minutes, before he, too, was released in July 2022. There was something of a failed experiment with Declan Moore that season — an Australian hooker who was breaking try-scoring records in the Shute Shield — but the core of Munster’s hooker chart for the next few seasons would be Diarmuid Barron and Niall Scannell, with a few academy and first senior deal young lads filling in during the regular injury crisises that were, in my opinion, a direct result of only having two hookers you could fully rely on.
During this period, I had a lot of hope in Scott Buckley kicking on like what Barron managed in 2021/22, but outside his stunning first couple of games at senior level — his debut against Wasps was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from a debuting Munster player — it never really worked out for him.
Buckley’s career is far from done — plenty of lads have gone to the English Championship and pushed on, just ask Tom Farrell — but I still feel that there was a very good player there whose confidence got trashed during an awful run of team injuries where he was the only fit hooker for a team could barely run lineout sessions day to day due to so many hurt tight five players.
But I digress.
Lee Barron was the first hooker Munster signed into the club since the aforementioned Rhys Marshall all the way back in 2017. I’ll speak about Lee Barron in more detail later in the pre-season — I think he’s going to have a massive season, if he can stay fit — but for now, we’ll focus on Munster’s two main senior hookers for the last three seasons.
Scouting Dossier: Munster’s Hookers vs Elite Hookers
I’ll talk about the set-piece aspect of both players’ games later in the article, but I thought it might be instructive to look at how their work in phase play stacks up to the very best in the game.
Long story short, they both embody graft and reliability, but when set against the leading hookers in Europe and the southern hemisphere, their profiles reveal clear strengths and equally clear gaps.
Diarmuid Barron – The Workhorse Aggressor
- Carrying: Around 12 per 80, with ~28% dominance and 50% gainline success — useful volume, but not destructive.
- Defence: Solid double-digit tackle returns, rarely falls off, though not a dominant stopper.
- Ruck Work: Involved in ~17–18 attacking rucks per 80 at close to 90% effectiveness. Works hard at the defensive breakdown too, regularly making first contact and disrupting tempo, though not a consistent turnover source.
- Overall: A gritty, reliable hooker who blends ruck volume with defensive bite. A key leader in the squad. He doesn’t bend defences like Sheehan or Taukei’aho, but he’s a player we can trust to set physical tone across 50/60 minutes.
Niall Scannell – The Veteran Technician
- Carrying: Low volume (~8 per 80), with the weakest gainline and dominance numbers of Munster’s trio.
- Defence: Heavy tackle involvement (16–17 per 80) but more of a wrap defender than an enforcer.
- Ruck Work: Consistently among Munster’s busiest cleaners (~21 per 80), but efficiency (~88%) doesn’t match elite standards. At the defensive breakdown, he’s diligent, but rarely shifts threats on his own.
- Overall: Brings set-piece leadership and technical accuracy, but little dynamism around the field. His profile overlaps heavily with Diarmuid Barron, leaving the group short on variety.
Against the Elite
Dan Sheehan / Samisoni Taukei’aho: Combine carrying dominance with ruthless ruck efficiency. Sheehan conserves his ruck involvements for maximum impact (~94%), while Taukei’aho manages elite volume and effectiveness. We have nobody in that tier, or in that roleset. Lee Barron is the most likely to enter that conversation, but needs a similar jump in size that Sheehan managed.
Bongi Mbonambi / Akker van der Merwe: Power Workhorse Hybrids, who excel in collisions and are highly disruptive at the defensive breakdown. We don’t have this archetype in its entirety. Diarmuid Barron is the most likely to make the jump here, but he needs size.
Codie Taylor / Peato Mauvaka: Mobility hookers who add tempo, handling, and defensive accuracy. Lee Barron trends this way, but doesn’t yet match their ruck sharpness.
Luke Cowan-Dickie / Johan Grobbelaar: Hybrids who mix efficient ruck work with carrying punch. Again, we have players who can match the work rate, but not the efficiency, as of yet.
Strategic Outlook
What we don’t have is a power hooker: someone who can dominate collisions, provide ballast in the scrum, and consistently shift bodies at the defensive breakdown, be it as a 50-minute starter, or a 30-minute killer off the bench. Without that profile, we risk being a pack that works hard but struggles to swing momentum in the tight exchanges that define URC and European knockouts.
Our hookers are grinders who deliver honest minutes, but in a straight comparison, they are narrower in profile than the elite. To reach that level, we need a hooker who combines collision dominance with high ruck effectiveness — the one profile our current trio does not provide — so that will require one of our current hookers making a jump into that conversation, or signing someone for July 2026 who can balance out the undoubted positives they bring.
The Terms
Retaining Diarmuid Barron on a two-year deal is, for me, a no-brainer. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ian Costello had already spoken to his agents about it, but I will temper that by saying that Diarmuid Barron is overdue for a breakout season. I thought last season would be the year.
To take that next step up, I think he needs to showcase a little more power in the tight exchanges on both sides of the ball, and that will be what I’m looking for in the first few weeks of the season. I genuinely believe Barron has the temperament and the rock-solid basics of the position to take that next step up if he can showcase that he’s got the heft of at least a Rob Herring-level guy. I think he does.
Now, there is a lot of what turned out to be nonsense in that article but, to give myself something of an out, this was all (a) pre-Rowntree’s departure which tossed players minutes up into the air, (b) before the apocalyptically bad start to the season that cut off any potential experimentation in the middle URC block off at the knees, and (c) every one of the players in that article, bar O’Connell and O’Connor, had a medium or long-term injury during the season at key points.
That said, I felt last year would be the year for Barron, but… it wasn’t.
He ended up playing 19 games but missed a few key blocks around Christmas and the New Year, before missing part of the seasonal run-in due to a series of knocks. I got the impression he was playing hurt for a lot of the periods around the periods where he actually missed games.
Even towards the end of the season, Barron fought back from a shoulder injury to play off the bench against the Sharks. The injury was bad enough that it would require surgery, but that’s the kind of toughness you’d expect from him.
He got an Ireland A cap last season, which was a big positive, but I think Munster’s lineout implosion kept him from making the full Ireland squad in November 2024 during the period when both Dan Sheehan and Ronan Kelleher were either injured or carrying injuries.
Gus McCarthy getting capped ahead of Diarmuid Barron probably says more about the rock-bottom standards of Munster’s lineout work from 2023/24 into last season than it does about Barron. Barron is a good lineout thrower — with potential to be great — and it’s his big point of difference, or should be. At U20 level back in 2018, it was Barron’s superior lineout game that had him as the 1A hooker in the same squad as Ronan Kelleher, but that lineout strength hasn’t been as visible in the last three years.
There are larger reasons outside of that, but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Diarmuid Barron getting an opportunity at test level in 2025/26 hinges on him becoming a lockdown thrower as part of an elite Munster lineout.
As for Niall Scannell, he’ll be 34 during the 2025/26 season, so I think it’s quite likely that he’s on his last deal here, with this season being looked at mostly as one where he fills a veteran covering role. I’d expect between 10/11 appearances if both Barrons are mostly fit.
Scannell has had an excellent career at Munster and, during his physical peak between 2016 and the 2019 World Cup, he was exactly the kind of hooker that test coaches love in the squad. He wasn’t the captain that Best was, or as good a change-up as Sean Cronin off the bench, but he was tough, made his tackles, rattled into rucks all day for you, and, crucially, was a hardy scrummager and a top-class thrower. That is true in the past tense, but it’s still true now.
Don’t let the last 24 months fool you — Scannell is still a top-class thrower, and if the lineout scheme is right, he’ll show that again this season. Physically, he’s not a guy who wins a whole ton of collisions on either side of the ball at the elite level, but that’s never been his game. I think his lack of punch around the collision is highlighted by our usage of Scannell as the primary tap & go launcher, as well as the fact that he was often in the same central carrying rotation as guys like John Ryan and Stephen Archer last season.
In the right tight five, we can see a lot more of what Scannell’s good at. That said, I’d be surprised to see Scannell extended beyond the end of this season, given his age and that if both Barrons hit the ground running, there’s an argument that our front row can be fully rounded out with an NIQ power hooker as the third senior hooker for next season. More on that later.
In the academy, I think we need to see Max Clein getting 3/4 senior appearances this year if he’s to jump onto a senior “development” deal next season, but he’s got the kind of physical impact that could see him on a lower-tier pro deal just to get a look at him for a year, even if he doesn’t get them.
At 6’0″ and over 110kg, he’s got the frame and the explosiveness to make a run if he can put himself in the frame. The lineout was a work on, the last I saw of him, but working with a guy like Alex Codling week to week this season will only help him. He’s been unlucky with injury in all of his academy years so far, but if he can pull that together this season, he might well get those three or four bench appearances, and from there, who knows?
Danny Sheahan has the kind of U20 pedigree to, out of nowhere, arrive fully formed once he gets his frame together. Sheahan was the primary hooker in a very good Irish 20s side, and his game at that level was predicated on real size and power, mixed with an excellent throw.
He’s still a bit raw physically, but when he sorts that out — in the next two seasons — I think he’ll have a great chance of going on a run. If he impresses this season, I could see him going on a 1+2 deal to lock him down because at 6’1″ and with a frame that can easily go north of 110kg, he’s got all the raw materials to be a serious talent.
***
So I think it’ll go like this;
Diarmuid Barron: 2-year deal
Niall Scannell: Retire/release
Max Clein: One-year development deal
Danny Sheahan: One year in academy + two-year senior deal
Alongside Lee Barron, I think there’s scope to bring in an NIQ hooker, although that’s complicated by the market being pretty tough at the moment when it comes to guys it’s worth signing. Every Chief and underutilised New Zealander under the sun will be linked with Munster in the next 12 months, but the truth is, two years out from the World Cup, most of the guys worth signing are under contract until November 2027.
I’ll go into this in more detail on the upcoming Companion Podcast, now that all of the front row is completed.
