Connacht 20 Munster 11
“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”
It’s easy to overreact to an InterPro defeat like this. There’s a tonne of social media gloating, the temptation to doom-scroll is almost unbearable and the healthiest thing you can do is put the ‘ould black rectangle of misery in your pocket, head out for a walk and forget this silly game of rugby.
I hear basketball is fun. Maybe I’ll look at that. Yes… I’ll look at the <googles> Milwaukee Bucks now. There’s a stag there. It’ll be fun!
But no. You can’t. Well, I can’t.
Munster might not, technically, from a points standpoint be “the worst province in Ireland” but according to the Vibes – I’m a Vibe doctor, trust me – Munster are comfortably the worst province in Ireland at the moment and we play the Bulls, Leinster and Ulster in the next three games.
Those vibes might become a mathematical reality by the time you’re handing out fun-size Lidl Mars Bar knockoffs to local children dressed as Bluey the Dog.
In the aftermath of Friday evening, I’ve had so many people emailing me asking “what the hell is going on??” in one form or the other. Some messages have a little more swearing and some have a little less tact, but the general tone is the same. My answer to them is that we are witnessing the death of an old team and the birth of something new.
We don’t know what that new team will look like by the end of this season or, in reality, next season but we know very well what the old team looks like. They are crystallised in a phantom zone of endlessly clapping off the sides who always beat them when it counts year after year. We all know the names at this stage; Saracens, Racing 92, Toulouse, Leinster and, last season, Ulster.
Munster Rugby is about winning trophies – let’s never forget that – and since this team inherited the mantle, more or less, from the Munster of O’Gara, Hayes, O’Callaghan, Leamy, Flannery, O’Connell etc in 2013/14 they have tried their guts out to do just that. Ultimately, they weren’t able to do it. Three URC final appearances, four semi-final appearances, and four European Cup semi-finals.
Every year the jerseys seem to change but the end result is the same. Clapping the winners off, our hands red raw from it.
I think the team of Murray, Zebo, O’Mahony, O’Donoghue, Ryan, Archer, the Scannells, Farrell, Kilcoyne, Earls, Conway and Carbery “died” last May against Toulouse. When you look at it like that, the results in the two games that followed make complete sense. We had no energy, no direction, and no focus. We were flatlined, with two senior coaches who were already picking out curtains in Bath and Canberra. That team had run their course.
Now it doesn’t mean that there aren’t useful elements of that old squad that we can and should use for however long they remain productive going forward – O’Mahony, Beirne, Kleyn, Haley, Zebo – but what we saw last season and, to an extent, what we’re seeing in these first four games and this game, in particular, is what we already knew. And that is that We Need To Move On.
***
I’m a “show me” type of guy. My theory last season was that we’re at the end of a three-year cycle so now we’ve got to see what we have in the oven. Injuries and covid took the sting out of us, yes, but I think it’s also fair to say that what we produced was middle-of-the-road calibre. This isn’t new, of course, I’ve been speaking about this since last January or earlier but I like to be as fair as possible. The coaches had time, they got to sign the guys they wanted (more or less) so now let’s see where we’re at.
And we weren’t anywhere special in the end.
We had some good performances – the peak of what we’re capable of seemed to be that Toulouse game – but we both seemed to be and were, selection-wise, in “win now” mode from January on so we can judge that team for what it was. This was not a team that was playing the kids at the start of a new cycle – this was a team looking to win to validate the entire three-year cycle.
It didn’t work. The cycle was a failure. In black and white terms, the question was “did you win Munster a trophy?” and the answer was no.
In the three years of Larkham and Van Graan, we lost seven out of eight games against Leinster. The one win came in the Rainbow Cup which Leinster did not take seriously. We did take that tournament seriously and we still lost it (because of Connacht). Sure, we were snake bitten by injury but we were what we were.
They showed us what we were at that point and it was clear we would have to move on, as they chose to.
What does this have to do with a 20-11 loss in the Sportsground in 2022/23?
We’re still feeling the after-effects of the previous regime. Since the new coaching staff committed to a specific style and tempo of rugby in the summer that would be a Munster “way” you can discern game to game, week to week, regardless of the opposition it was always clear that some players would not be able for that transition.
We got a good illustration of who they were against Connacht and why.
I spoke earlier about every lie you tell incurring a debt to the truth but for Munster – and any squad – it’s not about lies, it’s about the compromises you make in one contracting cycle incurring a debt to the future. Compromising by keeping “an experienced head” around whose only real experience is losing big games for Munster season after season? It’ll cost you eventually. It doesn’t matter why that decision was made – it almost always makes sense in context – but it costs you regardless. Bad luck begets compromise which begets pain down the road. It’s always the way.
Now, we can’t forget about the Emerging Ireland tour lifting out 10 elite talents that would have featured in this game – and the three previous ones – but that’s an old story at this point. In one way, this Emerging Ireland tour has fully exposed the “debt” we need to pay because it’s laid bare how many guys we need to move on from.
It’s not about making errors – every player makes errors – it’s about how you react and how you centre yourself, the team and the performance to get a win.
Look at Leinster on Saturday against the Sharks. They got it put right up to them and who turned it around for them? Sheehan, Henshaw, Ringrose, Sexton, Ngatai, Porter, and even guys like Ross Molony. Their test guys put the team on their back, worked it out and got the win. Now, look at Munster’s loss to Connacht. Where were our top guys to put the team on their back? Beirne tried. O’Mahony tried. Coombes worked hard. So did Kleyn. Fekitoa did his best with what he got (very little).
But that was it.
The rest of our most experienced senior players – test regulars or otherwise – let the game slip through their fingers and, as expected, they were back in that phantom zone of clapping off the winning team once again.
Despite not playing all that well, we were in pole position to win this game and pull away in the second half. We’d worked ourselves into a position to be 11-5 up on the scoreboard coming up on the 50-minute mark and we’d begun to establish our maul to good effect.
Peter O’Mahony won a great penalty for Munster off the back of good scrambling by Conor Murray on a Connacht scrum launch and, from the resultant kick up-field, we had a great point to attack from the Connacht 10m line.
If we could nail our lineout, and drive up the field with fresh forwards, we could maybe win a penalty or score a try that would put us two scores clear and knock a bit of belief out of Connacht.
But, as usual, we endeavoured to give them some belief right back.
Now, you could point at Conor Phillips on the resulting scrum for his positioning but it was an excellent kick on a bouncy, forgiving surface and to be clear if Beirne and O’Mahony knew their lineout detail inside out we’d be having a different conversation.
Look at the work after the reset though – slow, weak ball carrying, soft breakdown work from what should be the hardest players in our pack and glacial service from #9. Worse again, when we actually do get some good gainline we’re back to kicking contestably inside three phases with a dud pass to the #10 to top it off.
Campbell knocked it on as he challenged for the ball but that’s exactly what can happen in these situations. We know that because that’s the play we chose on-field.
Even from that concession, we were still winning and had another moment to strike right back and let Connacht know that we had them. That when they got close but made mistakes, we’d punish them. Coombes won back possession and then we went into a multi-phase sequence that had us within a few shoves of the Connacht 5m line. From there, with 20 minutes left, the game fell apart in a blaze of individual errors.
Graham Rowntree put it best after the game when he said “what’s killing us is us”. He’s right.
We’re our own worst enemies at the moment but, with the Emerging Ireland tour finally over and done with, there’s an opportunity for selection to become more varied. With nine rock-solid URC match-day players coming back this week – maybe a little too soon for the Bulls for most of them – there’s a chance to make the depth chart adjustment that the last three games in particular are screaming for. Wycherley, Barron, Salanoa, Ahern, Hodnett, Frisch, Nash, Daly and Jack Crowley come back to the squad with enhanced reputations, a barrel of confidence and, for me, the keys to where we want to go as a club this season.
They will immediately improve us, and they’ll have to as soon as they’re available.
The old Munster is gone.
Long live the new.
As soon as possible.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★ |
| Keynan Knox | ★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★ |
| Ben Healy | ★★ |
| Pat Campbell | ★★★ |
| Dan Goggin | ★★ |
| Malakai Fekitoa | ★★ |
| Conor Phillips | ★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★ |
| Scott Buckley | N/A |
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★ |
| Edwin Edogbo | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Sullivan | N/A |
| Craig Casey | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | N/A |
| Fionn Gibbons | N/A |
