Three of the four provinces enjoyed a prosperous opening weekend to the United Rugby Championship (URC) as Munster, Ulster and Connacht racked up bonus-points victories. Defending champions Leinster suffered a 35-0 shellacking by the Stormers in Cape Town. It was the first time in 17 years that the Irish province failed to score a point in a league match.
Clayton McMillan got his tenure as Munster head coach off to a fine start with a 34-21 win at the Scarlets. Tries from Craig Casey, Mike Haley, Dan Kelly and Tom Ahern sealed a win in which Brian Gleeson had a superb game at number eight.
McMillan said: “Happy to get the result. I think there was enough there for us to be optimistic about. The work that we’ve put in during preseason has been worthwhile and also there were some parts of our game that were really good. That will put us in good stead as we move forward.”
Provincial rivals get a head start on Leinster
Another provincial head coach enjoying his first competitive game in charge was Connacht’s Stuart Lancaster, who watched his side beat Benetton 26-15 at the Dexcom Stadium in Galway. In a bruising encounter, four players went off for head injury assessments, with outhalf Josh Ioane and centre Byron Ralston not returning. They will follow the return-to-play protocols.
READ MORE
Lancaster was keen to share out the plaudits when asked about his impact. “I think all the coaches deserve credit in their own way for bits and pieces that went well.
“I thought the breakdown was excellent, our scrum was excellent, so Cullie [Tucker] took the credit there. John [Muldoon] did a fantastic job in the tackle area, the lineout and the maul defence. Rodsey (Rod Seib), in terms of the attack, the kicking game, the strike play we scored. I think we all contributed but wouldn’t like to single any one moment out.”
Ulster head coach Richie Murphy was reasonably happy after watching his side recover from going 10-0 down to beat the Dragons 42-21, scoring six tries in the process. He was encouraged by some of the creativity behind the scrum.
“We’ve got some very exciting outside backs,” said Murphy. “We’re trying to create one-on-ones for them and space in the outside channels. We need the balance between playing and applying pressure. We only had one preseason friendly, so we’re happy with the win.”
Leinster’s Leo Cullen didn’t look for any mitigation in an off-colour performance from first whistle to last. “We never really showed any composure, which is disappointing. [We need to] bottle up a little bit of the pain because nobody likes to [experience] that type of defeat.
“It was 6-0 at half-time where we were probably hanging in there. The Stormers should probably have been further in front in the first half. I thought the guys hung in well. But then we’re not particularly accurate in terms of how we chase the game after that. There’s a ton of things we need to work on. Over here, the set-piece is huge.”
Looking ahead to next Saturday against the Bulls in Pretoria, he added: “We [must] put in a decent training week and hopefully a much better performance.”
