This was always going to be a difficult season.
I think it’s proving to be so if you look at the recent run of results but everyone who looked at the facts plainly during the summer would have known that this would be a difficult season. In May of 2019, it was made known that Munster would have to find a new attack coach and a new forward coach after Felix Jones and Jerry Flannery decided not to renew their contracts with the club. That would mean that two of the major elements of any club’s performance on the pitch – forwards and attack – would require brand new voices with a short enough period of time to recruit before the start of the new season.
The two men hired – Larkham and Rowntree – would arrive in stages. Larkham, hired as a Senior Coach, would arrive on August 19th, roughly four weeks before our first PRO14 game of the season against the Dragons. Rowntree would arrive on the 29th of October which, as of the time of writing, was two months and seven days ago.
Any new coaching group, especially with big remits over core areas of performance like Larkham and Rowntree, will take time to bed in. Larkham and Rowntree being at the club for four months and two months respectively is a fraction of the time needed to see the improvements and changes they have been hired to implement.
So there was that.
Then there was the World Cup.
Munster were down 12 key starters at the start of the season because of the World Cup and, when you combine that with the coaching changes, it’s a recipe for disruption. Think about it; attack is half the game and the tweaks we had been putting in place since the second block of the preseason with one group of players would be completely alien to the 12 returning test players who got onto the training field for the first time the week before the first InterPro of the year and two weeks before a block of brutal games against Racing and Saracens before leading into the festive InterPro season with certain mandatory rest periods thrown in.
That’s a lot of disruption and exactly what you don’t need when it comes to generating fluency and cohesion on the field.
Having multiple internationals is a key part of being a top European club side don’t get me wrong but, in my opinion, that only truly applies when you’ve got those eight or nine test starters. When you have multiple players in and around the matchday squad without getting the improvement bounce that comes with regularly getting at least 20/30 minutes at test level. Being in international camp improves you as a player – especially as a younger player, coming off the bench improves you a little more but nothing beats the improvements that regularly starting at test level does for you.
If you’re floating around the squad as an extra matchday player you’re in that tough spot of being away from your province for key PRO14 games without getting the full exposure to test experience that improves you as a player when you return. I feel that Munster have a few too many players that aren’t rock-solid entries on a Six Nations matchday 23 if everyone’s fit but who might well travel as an extra player on matchday. Essentially, they are more important to Munster than they are to Ireland when it comes to matchday involvements.
It’s a balance, of course, between the benefit you get from that international exposure and the hurt you get from that player’s absence.
Player Development
There is a long term benefit to your overall playing pool if you have consistent absences from test window to test window in that you get to expose your second layer to guaranteed minutes twice per season and during periods of enforced rotation. That said, those minutes are only beneficial if the second layer player in question is able to take those opportunities and it also helps if you have some top quality NIQ players (or project players during their non-eligible years) to manage the load during those test windows. Players like Gibson-Park, Fardy and Lowe have been big, big players for Leinster in the last two seasons in that regard.
When you look at Ulster – who have only lost two players to the World Cup – and the start to the season that they’ve had, you can see the benefit to that fluency brings. Guys like Cooney, Burns, Addison (late October), Coetzee (early October), McGrath (with an injury blip in between), Moore, Herring, Murphy and McCloskey have been consistently available to Ulster and it’s been of huge benefit to their overall performances to have such a regular group to select from week to week since pre-season.
Leinster have had a lot of test disruption too but their second layer of players combined with their recent recruitment has been outstanding and part of the reason why they look so far ahead of the game right now.
It’s success piled on success with smart recruitment and retention of key players all through the depth chart.
Leinster’s recruitment and retention strategies are different from the other three provinces because of a few factors.
- They provide the majority of the talent to the national side so statistically suffer the most by player unavailability because of test windows and mandatory player rest periods.
- This is offset somewhat by the budgetary bonus that comes with having centrally contracted players off your provincial budget which allows space for excellent retention through the depth chart and quality NIQ recruitment.
- The best academy system in the world outside New Zealand pumps quality, PRO14 ready players into your squad every other year. These players stack onto the players who’ve come before, making a hugely effective second layer of homegrown talent bolstered by players like Fardy, Lowe, Gibson-Park and former test players who’ve dipped from their peak as regular Ireland starters but can still do a more than decent job at the level below. I’m talking about the likes of Michael Bent, Dave Kearney, Fergus McFadden, James Tracy and, this season, Devin Toner.
- The same academy system pops out guys like Ryan, Porter, Larmour and (it looks like) Kelleher every few years who are ready for test level rugby almost out of the box. This is INCREDIBLY rare at the top level of rugby. Even Tadhg Furlong took a few years to establish himself before bring gradually exposed to test rugby in 2015. James Ryan was playing for Ireland when, in theory, he could still have been in the second year of the Leinster academy. That is remarkable.
- They do an excellent job of using their budget space to retain effective second layer players who haven’t successfully reached or stayed at test level or who haven’t become regular European Champions Cup starters like Peter Dooley, the Byrne brothers, James Tracy, Ross Molony, Rory O’Loughlin, Dave Kearney, Fergus McFadden, Adam Byrne and guys like Ross Byrne who has been, and will remain, Johnny Sexton’s understudy until Sexton decides to leave Leinster. These experienced players play alongside the newer recruits and give them a framework to guide them through PRO14 games.
The next challenge here will be keeping the guys beneath established test quality guys like Rhys Ruddock, Dan Leavy, Josh Van Der Flier and Jack Conan – the likes of Max Deegan, Will Connors, Josh Murphy, Scott Penny, Caelan Doris and whoever else emerges this summer – in a place where they can realistically believe that waiting their turn for involvement in the biggest games is in their best interests as a player in the medium term. That will be an expensive round of renewals, at least initially. - They have been incredibly smart at adding to their quality with experienced internationals like Scott Fardy and test tier players like James Lowe.
Munster, Ulster and Connacht can’t copy the Leinster format because the Leinster format only works with the youth system they have coming from the schools.
Munster cannot copy that system so have to recruit differently and develop differently.
I’ve heard repeatedly that Munster should use the club system in a similar way that Leinster use their 18 private schools but this, to me, is unrealistic for the most part. The level of training – onfield, technical and S&C – that those young lads in the likes of Blackrock, Clongowes or St. Michaels get is on another level to what is available in most senior AIL clubs, let alone to younger players down through the grades. They are playing a different game. Guys come out of St. Michaels and Blackrock with at least three or four years of serious rugby training under their belt. Multiple sessions per day, multiple sessions per week. These schools have S&C trainers and nutrition advice. They have dedicated gyms. They have guys in a rugby program from 14 years on with dedicated, high-quality full-time coaches.
Not every player will stick with it but those who do will come out of school at least two or three years ahead of all but biggest physical outliers playing elsewhere. When these guys go to Leinster talent camps, they bomb most lads who’ve come through the clubs out of the water like you’d expect fulltime young athletes to do against lads who might train a few times a week. They’ve played more high-quality games, they are better athletes, they are better technically. It’s an inherent advantage that only freaks like Tadhg Furlong and Sean O’Brien can overcome.
I often get asked why Scott Penny, the young Leinster openside, gets game time at 19 years of age and, just from an optics perspective, look more ready for pro-rugby than guys in the other provinces. The answer is pretty simple. It’s because he’s been training like a professional athlete at St.Michaels since he was 14/15 years of age.
Scott Penny was more physically ready for professional rugby coming out of St.Michaels at 18 than a lot of lads in the Munster set up are at the end of year one of their academy deal.
Munster could use the clubs to develop younger players – and they increasingly do if you look at the last two years of academy intake – but the quality of onfield coaching, technical development, S&C and facilities varies wildly from club to club so it’s hard to just rely on the clubs in the way that Leinster do on, say, St. Michaels or Blackrock. For every great coach I’ve seen at underage level, I’ve met another two or three who are still coaching lads like it’s 1998.
The answer would be to focus real, serious development money into a few clubs with already decent youth setups in Limerick, Cork, Tipperary and elsewhere.
We’d immediately be spending money where Leinster aren’t because people PAY to go to St. Michaels and Blackrock. Leinster don’t have to spend anything on those schools if they don’t choose to.
So let’s say you wanted to do it with seven clubs across the province. You’d pick three clubs in Cork, three in Limerick and then one in the east of the province. These new clubs would hoover up younger players because they would have pro coaches working fulltime with multiple groups of players aged 13 to 18 twice a week onfield (paid for by Munster), top fitness facilities where the young player do two sessions a week (facilities and S&C coaches paid for by Munster) and have regular masterclasses by the Munster coaching setup, international coaches and players.
Younger players would do multiple sessions per week and get guided athletically and technically by qualified, technical coaches. Think Regis Sonnes in Bandon Grammar/Bandon RFC but in multiple clubs across the province. Young players would be in these pro setups from the age of 14 on.
The young athletes would get to cosplay as professional athletes until they were professional athletes.
Sounds great, right? It’s a like for like version of Leinster’s school system but concentrated into seven clubs across the province. You’d need the buy-in from the players but that would come with the facilities and status. You’d also need a tournament between the clubs to give it a competitive outlet on-field but this idea would create seven mini-academies across the province and use the clubs to develop players without the players having to pay to be a part of it. There is no fee-paying aspect to it. It would be an investment from Munster and the IRFU – a huge one – but it would be the one way to ensure that all the clubs get the same level of facilities and training standards across the board and, crucially, that the players get these facilities for free.
Now, pick what clubs get the investment and which ones don’t.
…
Now we’re playing senior hurling.
If you thought there were conniption fits over the HPC centre going to UL, wait until you tell three clubs out of UL Bohs, Garryowen, Old Crescent, Shannon, Thomond RFC or Young Munster why they aren’t getting the investment.
Then, when you do pick your clubs, good luck telling the hypothetical lads who’ve volunteered to coach at whatever clubs you’ve picked that they either aren’t up to the level required under the guidelines that would inevitably have to be drawn up based on professional best practice standards or that they’ll need to upskill and re-apply for the professional role of coaching and guiding these young athletes.
All of a sudden it’s more complex.
If you’re thinking that you just make the AIL “more competitive” – a nebulous phrase that I hear a lot – and that this, somehow, will make the younger players better you should know that if we aren’t getting these players and developing them like mini-professionals from 14 on, we’re already going to be behind players in the Leinster system and, essentially, we’d be exactly where we are now. Maybe you’d have better AIL players but the difference in level between semi-professional players playing AIL and full-time PRO14 players is already incredibly steep.
Schools like Bandon Grammar, Pres, CBC, St. Munchins, Glenstal etc make an easier route for talent spotting because of the Munster Senior Cup and the focused nature of how the younger players are trained and conditioned.
You can send training resources like pro players and pro coaches to these schools because there is a cluster of high potential players clustered in those schools already. We’ve seen lads like Tom Ahern, Eoin O’Connor, John Hodnett and Jack Daly come from outside the school system in the last few years and I think that will only continue as guys are spotted at talent camps and, hopefully, brought through the grades successfully.
Essentially, if you are playing at Pres or Munchin’s or Ard Scoil Rís you are already at a certain level and more likely to be someone the Munster academy could use and, even better, when you’re finished your leaving cert, you can go straight into the Munster Academy to start your pro conditioning and either pick a club that you can play ball with at Munster’s discretion or continue with the club you were with all along if they play at a high enough level. I think that most clubs resent that part of the deal because it can feel like you’re getting the players whenever Munster don’t need them for A games or development matches.
It’s a complex situation that I think, realistically, is being done in the only way that works with the geography of the province. More camps, more development officers and a wider net of players playing into their teens is the only way to keep the numbers coming in but, without a radical change, we have to accept that it will take players from our system longer to get to the physical level needed to play the game in 2020.
Until then, Munster will take longer to accumulate these players in our professional ranks and that longer wait holds more risk for injury and other x-factors that can affect development.
The Right Deals
Munster’s recruitment of just one player in the off-season, a depth option at scrumhalf, has stung over the last few weeks in particular, especially when one of our more important signings over the last 12 months – Alby Mathewson – came to the end of his time in November and our starting XV has looked like it could do with a bit of freshening up, especially in the pack and midfield.
We would have liked to sign some personnel for the second row and midfield over the summer but the availability of key targets, as well as IRFU dispensation for NIQ recruitment in certain positions across the provinces limited what could be done this season.
Next season will be a different story in that regard.
You’d also hope that the opportunities afforded to the likes of Casey, Coombes, Knox, O’Sullivan, Daly and the minutes to come for some other younger players, will benefit the squad down the line like Hodnett, Ahern, Sean and James French, Josh Wycherley, Jonathan Wren and Jake Flannery to name a few.
I feel it already has benefitted the squad, in a lot of ways but more is needed.
In the near term, I think that Munster will need a mixture of homegrown players from within the province, younger players from outside the province (exile or elsewhere in Ireland) brought up through our academy, Irish players from elsewhere who we can bring in to improve our Category 1/2 selections and then marquee signings from outside in areas where we need top quality right now.
Unless a once in a generation collection of players comes through around the same time – the likes of O’Connell, O’Callaghan, O’Gara, Stringer, Leamy, Quinlan, Horan, Hayes, Flannery etc – then our recruitment has to reflect what is in 2020, rather than what we’d like it to be.
