Munster won't be away from top table for long

DIARY:A clever combination of recruitment and promotion of the next generation is crucial to regenerating a team quickly as possible

FOR THOSE without the red button our game in Thomond Park on Saturday was nothing like the “dead rubber” fixture it was supposed to be. I was forced to take up a frustrating pitch-side perspective.

There will always be something at stake when playing Munster. For us, it was the need to continue our climb out of the poor run of late and for 70 minutes we showed that we remain a team that can compete at the top table in Europe. .

Seilala Mapusua was impressive in the leadership role and Sailosi Tagicakibau is clearly approaching his best form again.

But Munster had the Amlin Challenge Cup quarter-final and seeding for next season to aim at. In the end that, and talk of them being a spent force, must have provided huge motivation.

Only great teams can sustain the consistency of success that Munster have achieved over the last decade. Great clubs find a way to come back when playing personnel changes.

That is the challenge facing Munster now.

Every team goes through down cycles. Just look at the Six Nations. England were the dominant force for a long time, then France and then Ireland had their time. In the English Premier League, Chelsea, and Arsenal before them, took command before inevitably struggling when senior players departed.

The trick is to realise and accept you are not as good as you were the previous season and plan for the future. It is about minimising the down period. It requires about two years of planning and development.

Munster are doing just that. They are out of the Heineken Cup but into the Amlin Challenge Cup. A European trophy remains an aspiration. And they are top of the Magners League. Not bad for a team supposedly on an irreversible downward spiral.

There remains a great honesty about their leaders. We saw this in the post-match interviews of Ronan O’Gara and Paul O’Connell in Toulon.

A clever combination of recruitment and promotion of the next generation (those who are ready, that is) is crucial to regenerating a team as quickly as possible.

Munster, all things considered, have recruited well over the years. They have brought in characters that immediately bought into the core values of Munster rugby.

People like Nick Williams and Julien Brugnaut may not have worked out while Jean de Villiers only stayed for a season. Injuries cursed the signing of the great Christian Cullen and Brian Lima only saw about 10 minutes of pitch time.

Even Alex Ferguson has got it wrong in the transfer market but he gets it right more often than not. So do Munster.

Just look at Jim Williams, Dutchie Holland and Shaun Payne. Foreigners who not only became leaders within the team but they moved onto the management/coaching ticket afterwards. That is the ultimate in successful recruitment. These foreign players integrated themselves to such an extent that they gave back into the system.

The legacy of men like John Langford, Trevor Halstead, Mike Mullins and Rob Henderson is also secure.

Young players must be given their opportunity. Having played down in Munster as a schoolboy and served time as an AIL lock in the Killing Fields, Dooradoyle and the rest I find it hard to believe the Limerick clubs and Cork schools are not still producing serious talent.

If not for injury, Felix Jones would have featured this season, Duncan Williams looks capable of coming through at scrumhalf, as does Paddy Butler in the backrow and winger Simon Zebo. Ian Nagle has already made a statement.

No, I think in time Munster will be just fine.

I am still gutted about the knee injury I sustained on Thursday (forgot to ‘touch wood’ after last week’s column about longevity in rugby!) as it meant my first view of the new Thomond Park was as a spectator.

You can feel the tension as soon as you arrive at the ground. Match day is a major event in Limerick.

We stayed in the Strand Hotel (the Irish squad checked in last night) and the place was crammed afterwards, like most pubs and hotels. You can see how important Munster rugby is to local businesses.

There is a natural and heartwarming association between the people and the team. When I left the ground at 7pm, the party was in full swing. And it is all going into the Munster coffers as it is their premises.

Actually, mine was more than just a watching brief and the famous Thomond Park crowd gave me an insight into the communication problems all teams suffer here. Their supporters really are a captive audience. That the players are so passionate about the fans’ reaction is a recipe for success in itself.

I was busy taking notes on our lineout and the Munster defensive structure but getting messages into this frenetic cauldron can prove a nightmare. I see why coaches retreat to a corporate box. Too much white noise. Everyone has an opinion on the sideline. Be it subs, the manager or me! Sure, the fourth official is within earshot but you can’t really sway him. Maybe deliver one message he can carry to the officials at half-time but will it really matter? Probably not.

It made me question a future career in coaching again. You feel helpless when you’re not out there.

The timing of the message to the pack leader has to be spot on and I know from experience if you are bombarded with information you can only take what you feel is most relevant on board.

This is not a trip to Newcastle where you can hear a coach yelling from the line, this is Thomond Park where the noise levels (like the silence) are effective weapons.

We were 14-7 up with 13 minutes remaining. The pressure was all on them. Our islanders had been flooding Rog’s channel all afternoon and he had taken a fair whack of punishment but, when Munster exploded to life, O’Gara came good. As he always has done. It was some show of mental strength to remain calm and composed.

Ian Keatley replaces Paul Warwick this summer and they are grooming him for the future but he only has to look at the temperament on Saturday of the man he will understudy next season.

Of course, we helped them on their way by losing a vital restart and having two men sin-binned at different times.

I was talking to Rog afterwards and he said they simply stopped going east to west and just straightened up. It was ferocious and they were clever in the manufacturing of scores.

There were plenty of unforced errors on both sides but when it really counted our mistakes were glaring. It was the championship minutes, down the home stretch, that the game was won.

The difference in confidence levels between our game and Leinster’s victory in Paris was best shown by the passing.

When a team is playing well they put the ball out in front of the next man. Sounds so simple, but when a group is trying to come off a low ebb, they err on the side of caution and tend to target the inside shoulder of the man outside them.

On Friday night it was not just out in front but long, crisp delivery from Reddan to Sexton to O’Driscoll to Nacewa. Very difficult to do but you wouldn’t know it. All of a sudden, Luke Fitzgerald was skipping over the gainline. Such passing wasn’t evident in the “dead rubber” at Thomond Park.

A nothing game it may have been to some, but it left me emotionally and physically drained after my sideline activity.