Graham Rowntree: ‘I’ve pushed us on this summer, because we can’t stand still’

URC: Munster 10 Stormers 3

For the first time in a dozen years, and as they are being reminded every week, Munster have a bigger target on their backs this season. This is particularly true when the scheduling pits them against the team they beat in last season’s final followed by a rematch with the auld rivals whom they overcame in the semi-finals.

It goes with the territory of being reigning champions.

“Yeah, it does. It does,” agreed Graham Rowntree after this arm wrestle in the slanting rain and swirling wind which blew diagonally and unrelentingly across the pitch from the Mayorstone End.

“What can we do? Keep getting better. I’ve pushed us on this summer, because we can’t stand still. I’ve just got to keep pushing us on, getting better, train harder, make sure everything we do in training is relevant.

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“We spoke about that target on our backs but if we just keep getting better, things will take care of themselves in my mind.”

Looking ahead to next week against Leinster, Rowntree laughed out loud when asked what areas needed improving.

“The to-do list is quite large,” he admitted, not least with a lengthy injury list.

“The big one for me, it keeps reoccurring, is the breakdown. It’s everything to us and the opposition. It’s just putting time in the tackle to stop opposition ruck speed; doing that legally.

“But it’s us, our ruck speed, it’s us clearing people out appropriately. I’ve noticed a real heightened pressure from opposition in that area of our game. So that will receive a lot of attention this week, as it did last week,” said Rowntree, whose team generated the quickest ruck ball in the URC last season.

Munster prevailed thanks to a close-range finish by Edwin Edogbo after opting for the corner at the end of a first half in which they had played with the wind. They then saw out the win despite the Stormers turning the screw at scrum time and laying siege to the Munster line for two prolonged spells.

But Rowntree was more inclined to reflect on Munster’s failure to push further clear when Edogbo was held up short in the 50th minute as they looked sure to score.

“I’m not in the ‘gains’ state of mind at the moment, I’m in the ‘what we left behind’. The last quarter of the game has a different context if we go up 17-3 after 50 minutes. We’ll look at that. But we scrapped it out.

“I just said to John Dobson [Stormers head coach] there, crikey they turned up tonight. I felt they don’t like us, the Stormers. They’ve got an edge to them. It was sticky, the breakdown, their power and we fought through it.”

Asked about this “thing” with the Stormers, Rowntree responded: “A thing? We’ll take rivalry. It’s good anyway. A sticky team, an aggressive team, a gnarly team. Evan Roos, he’s everywhere. It’s like 15 Evan Roos on the field. If it isn’t a maul it seems to be Evan Roos coming from every angle around the field.”

Indeed, Roos had 21 carries for 75 metres in a game where every inch was hard fought.

Jack Crowley earned the man of the match award with an assured performance which demonstrated the variety of his two-footed kicking game, although arguably his most valuable contribution was combining with Craig Casey to hold Roos up over the line.

Even so Munster were indebted to Gavin Coombes for preventing Roos from grounding the ball, and he also held up the Stormers’ number eight over the line soon after.

“He’s important to us. He’s very important to us,” admitted Rowntree of Coombes, Munster’s leading carrier with 16 for 25 metres, and tackler, with 13.

“He’s covering a couple of positions there. Yeah, got to keep upskilling Gav, keep on top of him. He’s a big man, keep him fit. I don’t go in for having favourites as players, it’s not appropriate, but Gav is very important to us.”

In tandem with Tadhg Beirne, the introduction of Conor Murray’s savvy and lengthy kicking game into the wind was invaluable.

“It’s their calming influence. Both of them are calm players. They are exactly what they are. That was the version of themselves, that’s why they play so well for Ireland. They were good.”

That said, Dobson noted his side’s improvement in the aerial game compared to last May’s final, while maintaining that the advent of the South African franchises to the URC has been good for both them and the Irish sides.

“It’s another game building to a very nice rivalry, except we don’t win them,” noted Dobson wryly. “I think that’s four we’ve lost. But it’s a game we might have drawn, we were held up twice over the line.

“Munster are so good and so organised we call them ‘The Machine’ and one of the things Munster were brilliant at in the final last year was the contestables. Conor Murray destroyed us, but we actually won the aerial battle slightly tonight.”

As Munster showed last season, when losing five of their first seven, the URC is a long campaign, and targeting a win in Cardiff next week, Dobson believes his side can still be in the title mix.

SCORING SEQUENCE – 15 mins: Crowley pen, 3-0; 40: Edogbo try, Crowley con, 10-0 (half-time 10-0); 46: Feinberg-Mngomezulu pen, 10-3.

MUNSTER: Shane Daly; Calvin Nash, Antoine Frisch, Alex Nankivell, Shay McCarthy; Jack Crowley, Craig Casey; Jeremy Loughman, Scott Buckley, John Ryan; Edwin Edogbo, Tadhg Beirne; Peter O’Mahony (capt), John Hodnett, Gavin Coombes.

Replacements: Jack O’Donoghue for O’Mahony (h-t); Josh Wycherley for Loughman, Stephen Archer for Ryan (both 48 mins); Tom Ahern for Edogbo (54); Conor Murray for Casey (60); Alex Kendellen for Hodnett (69). Not used: Chris Moore, Rory Scannell.

STORMERS: Warrick Gelant; Ben Loader, Ruhan Nel, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, Leolin Zas; Jean-Luc du Plessis, Paul de Wet; Sti Sithole, Joseph Dweba, Neethling Fouche (capt); Ruben van Heerden, Gary Porter; Willie Engelbrecht, Ben-Jason Dixon, Evan Roos.

Replacements: Adre Smith for Porter (7 mins); Brok Harris for Engelbrecht (43-48) and for Fouche (62); Andre-Hugo Venter for Dweba, Keke Morabe for Engelbrecht (both 54); Ali Vermaak for Sithole, Herschel Jantjies for De Wet (60), Angelo Davids for Du Plessis (66); Clayton Blommetjies for Loader (69).

Yellow card: Fouche (39-48 mins).

Referee: Sam Grove-White (SRU).