It's now abundantly clear that Munster are better coached, better picked and plain better than Ireland have been this season, writes Gerry Thornley
HISTORY HAS a way of putting eras into perspective that, well, makes history the definitive judge. Apologies for the football analogy, but take for example Chris Coleman at Fulham. A year ago this week Mohammed Al Fayed sacked the Welshman and the feeling then that the Harrods owner had acted too hastily has only been reinforced by the intervening 12 months.
Despite Lawrie Sanchez spending €25.4 million on new players, and Roy Hodgson subsequently taking over, Fulham have won five of their subsequent 38 league matches and are doomed to relegation. Reflecting on their four years under Coleman in the relatively safety of mid-table, Fulham fans may come to regard his time there as a golden era.
History has yet to judge the Eddie O'Sullivan era but already it is starting to pass an unfavourable verdict. At the very least the jury is still in its hotel.
Coming in the same season as both a dismal World Cup and a largely wasted Six Nations, Munster are one game away from a Heineken European Cup final, with Leinster set fair to win the Magners League and Munster as their main challengers.
Munster's wonderful win in Kingsholm sets up next Saturday's latest Leinster-Munster instalment at a capacity RDS nicely. Leinster's lead of 11 points looks a little bigger than it actually is given Munster know that victory on Saturday along with their game in hand would trim that lead down to one result, in effect, and with four other rounds to go.
Alas, that being said, the league was probably decided by the tournament organisers yesterday.
Leinster may well have won the title anyway, and deservedly sit atop the table after being the most consistent side by far over the season, but the decision to rearrange the Ulster-Munster game for Tuesday, April 29th, 24 hours after Munster secured a European Cup semi-final in Coventry just two days beforehand, defies belief.
At a stroke, Munster's first 15 to 22 players have been ruled out of that match. Ulster, true, are also playing four days beforehand, but that game is also at Ravenhill.
Connacht, who travel to Ravenhill this Friday, probably wouldn't have overhauled Matt Williams's side anyway, but they could be forgiven for thinking that there are ulterior forces at work here yet again.
It's also, by the by, the same week as the AIB All-Ireland League semi-finals. Truly astonishing. You wouldn't let these people market Pedigree Chum.
For the time being, though, fears about Munster being pitted into another full-on match of European Cup intensity next Saturday are misplaced. Two Irish derbies preceded their win in Kingsholm and as Jerry Flannery argued yesterday, this kind of game is exactly what they need.
One ventures that not too many of last Saturday's heroes will be volunteering for a rest this weekend. Aside from it being their last shot at the league, Munster have the painful memory of their defeat to Leinster in Musgrave Park last November to motivate them, and there have been the murmurs of discontent from Leinster about Declan Kidney's candidature for the vacant Ireland position.
It's laughable that Munster's latest European heroics should somehow enhance Kidney's chances, given his coaching CV over and beyond the last two decades. Once again the quarter-finals yielded a 75 per cent winning ratio for the home sides, yet Munster upped their ratio of away wins to 60 per cent with their third win in five away quarter-finals.
Once again, then, the normal rules don't apply with Munster.
What it perhaps did underline is Kidney's willingness to take on board the views of an excellent coaching ticket and, as he gladly conceded, credit for Saturday's gritty and intelligent win deserves to be shared with forwards coach Jim Williams, scrum coach Paul McCarthy, video analyst Jason Holland and perhaps most of all little-known 35-year-old defensive/backs coach Tony McGahon, formerly of the Brisbane Broncos, who has worked previously with Queensland A, the Australian under-19s and in Japan.
Holland, McGahon, Kidney and the players had clearly done their homework. Not alone was their line speed in defence quicker than normal, it cannot have been by chance that Ian Dowling, Flannery, Lifeimi Mafi and others broke the line to shoot up and ensnare Gloucester ball-carriers in midfield.
It was also striking how the first tackle so often went low to bring ball carriers to ground, for this was the best way of stopping them from offloading, or second tacklers helped to prevent the offload.
Furthermore, Munster detected that Gloucester don't commit heavily to rucks, and counter-rucked and spoiled around the fringes superbly.
One ventures also that the defensive plan contributed to the selections of Tomás O'Leary, Dowling and Denis Hurley, whose mobility, work-rate and physicality collectively upped the tackle count.
As both Kidney and Donncha O'Callaghan noted afterwards, a special word should be reserved for the Munster clubs. Saturday's win, like all the big ones before, was part founded in the ethos of the Munster Senior Cup and the winning culture of the All-Ireland League, and but for Clontarf the first division play-offs would again be another Munster carve-up this season.
The readiness of O'Leary and Hurley for Saturday's combat can in part be attributed to Dolphin and Cork Constitution.
We are all of us, in a sense, lucky to be around at this point in history, when the advent of professionalism and the European Cup, along with the virtual accident of history that was the provinces, proved tailor made for the best annual competition in world rugby.
Coming hard on the heels of Munster's dominance of the AIL in the 1990s, together with the GAA-type devotion of the Munster supporters, who have swelled from two men and a dog to an army, it has even smoothed over the Cork-Limerick divide.
Rugby is in essence about 15 players being able to look each other in the eye before and most of all after a game knowing none of them let the others down. That huddle must be a special place.
Even Kidney and the Munster players are lucky to be around at this point, but one man more than anybody has tapped into the mix, and that is Kidney.
He also clearly has an intuitive knack for this thing as well as an understanding of the Irish sporting psyche.
If some IRFU decision-makers and players don't want to tap into that, more fool they.
The thought occurred during the pool stages that the Toulouse and Clermont teams, which Leinster and Munster played away, were more exacting than the French national side in Paris.
The thought occurred on Saturday that Munster are now better coached, better picked and plain better than Ireland have been this season.
They certainly know how to play with their heads up and what to do in order to win. The only rider is that not alone does Alan Gaffney lie in wait as a potential smiling saboteur, but that Toulouse remain better than France.
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