In the time I’ve been doing Rebuilding The Big Red Machine (and its monster-sized precursor, Derailing The Big East), Munster have finally managed to win a significant trophy for the first time in twelve years with a stunning URC Grand Final win this May after an end of season run-in that will likely never be topped when it comes to miles travelled and away wins all the way to the trophy lift.
In the first Rebuilding The Big Red Machine article last summer, I wrote the following;
And for Munster, the past weighs heavily. Specifically, the now-distant history of the 2000s and the recent Decade of Disappointment, where the former needles heavily at the latter.
Munster’s 2012 to 2022 hasn’t been that bad if you zoom out a little. 90% of the clubs in the European game would snatch your hand off for five Heineken Cup semi-finals, five URC semi-finals, three losing URC final appearances, and some notable big game occasions, but for Munster, this should be considered a failure. An exponential failure, actually, because with each season that passes, the weight grinds on us a little heavier making success more difficult to attain.
So – what now? With that historic weight off of the club’s back, what comes next for Rowntree, his staff and his squad? I’m going to write something that, even as I’m typing it, seems like wonky bullshit but I genuinely think it’s true. Sometimes success can be more complex to manage than failure. Now, before I get fully into that, allow me to walk it back a few steps.
Now, before we get too far into the weeds here, I don’t think there’s any question that Munster won’t be able to handle the expectation that comes with winning a trophy. You might think that the expectation might be too much to handle but, if anything, a decade of underachieving, when everyone expects you to be winning trophies anyway, is the perfect mental preparation for actually winning a trophy.
The core of young players that powered Munster to this URC win came up in a system that was already warped by the longest trophy-less in the club’s professional history. Nothing prepares for the mental journey of defending a trophy like years of losing when the expectation is that you win. Relentless losing on the big day season after season is the best preparation out there when it comes to defending a trophy because you already know what the hurt feels like – you’ve lived with the hurt every summer.
Things start to get a bit more complex, however, when it comes to squad building and management going forward. To date, Graham Rowntree has done an excellent job here by and large.
The job of reshaping this Munster playing group began in earnest last Autumn, just after pre-season and the initial run of URC games with a number of considerations to take into account. There would have to be savings on the wage bill as well as trimming the numbers from the senior squad. Almost more importantly, they had “system and culture fit” considerations to apply as a filter and some of the expiring contracts weren’t among that group, which added another layer of complexity again.
On top of this, however, was the need to keep an experienced layer of talent in the group, especially with the World Cup likely to eat up the first half of the season before the Six Nations chews up the second.
To complicate matters further, Munster had a number of squad veteran contracts that were coming due by the end of the season.
Two of the biggest contracts that were coming up this season were Dave Kilcoyne and Andrew Conway, both of whom were about to be coming off fairly hefty three-year contracts signed at the peak of their powers. It would be easy to cut both. Andrew Conway didn’t play a game all season long with a knee injury, and that was coming off a season where he played 10 times but rarely looked like the Andrew Conway of the seasons before. Now, I don’t think there’s any justification for keeping Conway on the same contract value that he was on for his last deal but at the same time, I think Munster’s attacking system as it’s currently constructed needs an outside winger of Conway’s calibre as a rotation option.
It doesn’t need him on elite money but, if you were to sign a guy with Conway’s class and experience – a 30-cap international – you’d be spending big money regardless. You can pair him with any combination of our young back three players like Patrick Campbell, Shay McCarthy or Ben O’Connor and he can add value to every single one of them.
That only applies if he comes back fit and firing, of course, but if you look at him as a Dave Kearney-type CORE1/SQUAD2 player – with a much higher ceiling – re-signing him on a lower-value deal for two years makes a tonne of sense.
Dave Kilcoyne is still very much involved in the Irish scene but seemed to disappear from the Munster squad post-Six Nations, earning only 99 minutes between the Glasgow game in Thomond Park and the European Cup exit to the Sharks. Some of that was injury, and some of it was him just not being selected.
Kilcoyne signed a one-year deal during the season on reduced terms from his peak and would seem to be at the tail end of his career, certainly at Munster. I would expect him to be a veteran cover player next season post-World Cup.
Some eyebrows were raised when players like the Scannells and Jack O’Donoghue were retained but when you think about it, they’re exactly the type of role players you’d want as part of starting rotations in high-level URC fixtures and Europe in Niall Scannell’s case to being more than useful match day components, either starting or finishing, for every other game we’re likely to play.
The “issue” with these players prior to this season was that they were often default starters in games that often appeared above their level. As this season developed, however, we saw Jack O’Donoghue gradually transition to a wider squad player behind guys like Hodnett and Kendellen and mainly filling in if there was an injury or a 6/2 split.
He’ll be another super valuable component over the next few years as a player who can easily step in and captain an inexperienced side or give you role coverage in higher-level games. These are understandable retentions that, by all accounts, were on reduced terms to the point they satisfied the need to reduce the wage bill significantly while also retaining the kind of depth you need to win titles back-to-back while also making a push in Europe.
All in all, nine players were released between the start of Rowntree’s tenure and the end of the season which is the highest number of senior departures (not including retirements) in well over a decade or more.
At the start of 2022/23, we had 45 senior players with 14 academy players. At the time of writing in June 2023, we have 42 senior players for 2023/24, with 16 academy players.
The IRFU pay a significant portion of academy contracts so there is real value in having first-team eligible players in the academy. Guys like Brian Gleeson, Ruadhan Quinn, Daragh McSweeney, Fionn Gibbons and Edwin Edogbo, in particular, will be especially valuable this year as he signs off on his last academy deal before jumping onto a full senior contract next season ahead of a second-row contracting conundrum this season.
As I’ve already alluded to in Keeping It Kleyn, it will be almost impossible for Munster to swing a renewal for both RG Snyman and Jean Kleyn this season. Jean Kleyn – Irish qualified up until last week – would have been an easy re-sign if he hadn’t redeclared for the Springboks but he has and, in the aftermath, that leaves Munster with a fairly simple decision really. We have to use up whatever dispensation we have to retain Jean Kleyn for another two years, even if it means losing a genuine World Class talent RG Snyman.
I think the potential of Thomas Ahern, Edwin Edogbo and Evan O’Connell to develop – along different timelines – over the next season means that Snyman becomes a luxury retention. It sucks because Snyman is as good as he is popular (and he’s very popular) but I think the rarity of Kleyn’s role set is a better fit alongside Edogbo/Ahern/O’Connell/Wycherley/Beirne. Kleyn’s set-piece work, heavy carrying and brutally effective breakdown game would allow Ahern, in particular, to show off his Snyman-esque abilities and allow guys like Edogbo and O’Connell to grow into the games alongside a proper tighthead lock workhorse.
A lot needs to go right this year – we need to see Ahern show better durability and availability to capitalise on his undoubted elite-level potential – but if it does, I can’t see Munster going to the well to keep both of our Springbok locks.
