'The intercept was a huge turning point for us'

POOL THREE:ALTHOUGH THE feeling persisted that the Ospreys were let off the hook a little, Munster coach Tony McGahan was happy with the outcome. "It's a tough pool and that's been shown in the first two games and certainly shown there again today. To win at home is really important for the outlook on the rest of the games.

“When you’re behind 13-8 with 50-odd minutes on the clock you’re looking to get the result and that was our whole focus on the day. Munster, in particular, recognise the importance of bonus points, and losing bonus points, because it’s played a big part in our success over the years so while you’d like to deny the opposition that they were good enough to get it so you have to give respect to that.”

In particular, McGahan lauded the Munster defence, which had clearly been fine-tuned at length on the training ground during the week. “I thought it was a real platform for us today. I thought we showed great intent, great endeavour.

“The Ospreys are a huge attacking threat even though they played quite a slow game today, but I thought our defence when we needed to, especially in the second half, they had a lot of ball and some good field position going into the last 10 minutes especially when a man down, we were able to repel that time after time and end up with good field position.

“I thought the intercept was a huge turning point for us,” he added. “We showed great pace, we tried to play a lot quicker in the second half and to go from a two/three man overlap to points was a massive turnaround. I thought that was a key one. Again, all those moments come in to play.

“These are important swings and they certainly test the character of the group and I thought we were certainly well tested today, but we showed tremendous resilience and desire and a great belief with each individual, because it’s a very tough place to be when you’re behind and come back, and I thought the group again demonstrated those qualities.”

Both sides were agreed that the result left the group wide open.

“I don’t think there’s anything clear-cut,” said McGahan. “My own personal view is that you judge yourself after Pool Two and Pool Four, and then you assess and make the necessary adjustments going into Pool Five and Six. Again it will be interesting too see how the other game go today and then we’ll reassess and see what we need to do. But I think the pressure really is on the home sides. You can’t get four points, and that’s the basic line. Next week we need to make sure to exert pressure on the Ospreys.”

“I think it’s pretty even right now the group,” said the Ospreys’ forwards coach Jonathan Humphreys. “I thought it was an opportunity for one of us to get a distinct advantage. As it stands right now it’s probably even stevens. At one point they could have got the maximum and us nothing and that would have been difficult to come back from that.

“But we came here to win, that was our aspiration and we’re going back to what’s going to be the biggest crowd at the Liberty for a long, long time and our supporters, we hope, will make as much noise and be as passionate as the Munster supporters.”

Humphreys bemoaned the loss of 14 points after loosehead Paul James had been binned for pulling down a scrum, making the reasonable point that referees merely have to ensure tightheads scrummage square.

“Now, we go into this game knowing that Munster have two tightheads who do not scrummage square and he started the game refereeing that and then all of a sudden out of the blue, Paul James gets yellow-carded. I’d like to know what the thinking or the reasoning behind that was.”

That said, Humphreys accepted he knew of only three tightheads who did.

McGahan was also less than amused by the way Sky Sports’ The Rugby Club highlighted Munster for sealing off ruck ball in two games refereed by Wayne Barnes last Thursday night.

“From our end we’d probably be a little bit disappointed that something like that was shown on a Thursday night pre-game. When you’re showing clips of an attacking side in the green zone there’s a lot of people off their feet, but as long you’re attacking and you’re looking to clean out someone and you work to regain your feet, that’s fine.

“To show comparative clips form a side with a non-committal defence like London Irish, 50 metres from the try-line, running into two tacklers and the tacklers off their feet, I think they’re completely different ends of the spectrum. And it did have an effect on the referee because he mentioned it before the game, so those things are fine in your post-game analysis but two/three days before a game, you could probably do without.”