MUNSTER face Castres this weekend in Round five of the Heineken Cup at Thomond Park. The Tony Mc Gahan coached side are four from four so far and a win in this weekend’s fifth game could see Munster secure a quarter final berth, somewhere that the Red Army failed to reach last season. Speaking ahead of the game, McGahan was quick to talk down speculation about quarter finals places being secured
Quarter Finals
“I don’t know if we have the ability to look that far ahead for us and the way the campaign has been so far, as boring as it is, it is only the people involved from day to day, recognise that I don’t have the ability to look too far ahead, that’s just where we are. Maybe other sides have that ability but we certainly don’t. All we need to do is focus on ourselves and be ready for 15.40 on Saturday, We also recognise that if we get out with the job done there is a quarter-final place there and if we can assess and hopefully not be coming through with more injuries from the weekend and hopefully have a squad to go through to Northampton. How we prepare for that? We’ll deal with that when we come to it.”
Mentioning the words ‘Bonus Point’ draws a stern response from the Aussie.
“I can tell you that those words are not used down here. It is not in the slightest mentioned. I don’t think we are even in a position to think about bonus points. We haven’t not looked like getting them; we certainly have been there but we’ll just grind away and find a way to get the job done”
Castres Olympique
Munster and Ireland captain Paul O’Connell feels that Castres will pose a real threat to Munster this weekend, even though the Castres players and management will have one eye on their Top 14 seeing as their Heineken Cup Dreams have been dashed this season.
“They’re a very good side. They’ve a very good lineout, very hard to analyse with lots of variations. I’d know Scott Murray very well and he’s excellent. They’ve a very good scrum as well, we’d a tough, tough battle against them over there. Masoe is a big part of their game plan in every way, both in defence and in attack. They’ve scored some great tries as well. They scored early on against us and were 11-0 up early on so they can hurt you if you’re not on your form. It’s hard to know what Castres will turn up. They’re fourth in the league. Looking at their game against Stade, they scored some good tries but were losing heavily early on. They’d a really tough game when they beat Perpignan. They’ll be tough.”
The stereotype for travelling French teams is that they will pack in all in if the going gets tough. This it seems, according to O’Connell, is not the case.
“It’s not like we’re in a position where we’ve been completely dominating teams, that we feel we can give that a thought. We can’t afford to think that way at all. It hasn’t been mentioned and guys are very wary of it. There have been plenty of incidents down the years when you think you might have an easier game on paper. But that’s not the case within this camp. Obviously Northampton away the following week is going to be tough as well. So we’re just going to keep fighting as hard as we can for everything we can get in this group.
If we can get the win by any margin I’ll be happy”
Clinical finishing
Munster’s Achilles heel so far this season has been their inability to finish chances that they have created. The Pro12 game against Treviso last weekend showed that in abundance. To win at the highest level, Munster must improve on their back line attack. Some Tony Mc Gahan have been working on.
“We’d really wanted to push towards ERC 4 at home with regards to Scarlets making sure it was our most clinical performance. We need to deal better with where we are in the moment and what we are trying to do. We need to make every opportunity count. At 16-6 against the Scarlets at home, we had Lifemi Mafi’s pass to Niail Ronan go to ground when Niall would have been untouched under the posts to go 23-6. You can look for those moments and see where we need to get to. We need to start nailing some of those moments and once we start to do that we’ll get that ascendancy to kick on and make things a bit easier” Mc Gahan commented
“At the moment we are not, so we get caught in that grinding tough affair and we are allowing sides to stay in the contest where maybe we should kill them off. As a group that is what we are aiming to get to but it can be difficult. it is difficult. We would like a little bit of polish on the end of it because we are working desperately hard to create opportunities, there is no shortage of fight and determination. If we can add a little bit of polish to what we are doing it will go along way to achieving a complete performance, and we will certainly need to.”
With the news this week that Denis Leamy is out for four months, Munster’s injury woes continue. The long term absences of Felix Jones, Doug Howlett and David Wallace are being felt in terms of squad depth.
Jerry Flannery remains an injury concern too, with no real clear message coming from Munster on when or even if, Jerry Flannery will return to rugby. The one message that was given however, was that should Flannery become fit enough to return, it will be with his club Shannon and not with Munster. A note Shannon RFC will be delighted to read.
With Munster playing Castres this weekend, the chance is there for the province to possibly win six pool games from six for the first time ever. The only clubs to have won their six pool games have been, London Wasps 1997/98; Bath 2001/02; Leinster 2002/03 and 2004/05; Scarlets 2006/07; Biarritz Olympique 2006/07; Cardiff Blues 2008/09; Northampton Saints 20010/11. The horrifying fact to those stats though are that no team has won all nine games.
Munster Squad for Heineken Cup match v Castres Olympique, Thomond park Stadium, Saturday, 3.40pm.
Marcus Horan, John Ryan Wian Du Preez, Stephen Archer, BJ Botha, Damien Varley, Denis Fogarty, Donncha O’Callaghan, Donncha Ryan, Paul O’Connell, Ian Nagle, Mick O’Driscoll, Peter O.Mahony, Billy Holland, Niall Ronan, James Coughlan, Tomas O’Leary, Conor Murray, Duncan Williams, Ronan O’Gara, Ian Keatley, Danny Barnes, Simon Zebo, Will Chambers, Lifeimi Mafi, Keith Earls, Johne Murphy, Denis Hurley,
