Champions Cup absence would damage Munster hugely

Munster are in a right fine mess. The bald facts are the Anthony Foley-led, indigenous coaching ticket has been damaged on the back of a season which has seen crowds dwindle further, Munster coffers hit hard again and the team struggle on the pitch.

On top of only their second European Cup pool exit in 17 seasons, they are now in very real danger of missing out on the premier European competition altogether next season for the first time in 22 years.

That is the bleak prospect facing the organisation unless Munster win their remaining two Guinness Pro12 games at home to the teams immediately above them, Edinburgh and the Scarlets, over the next two weekends. Even then, they could conceivably be squeezed out by the fast-finishing Cardiff Blues.

A nine-point haul by Munster would ensure a top six finish and with it a place in next season’s Champions Cup. That seems like a prerequisite. Of course one season consigned to the Challenge Cup need not necessarily spell the end for Munster, any more than it will do for the Ospreys.

Indeed, there is a school of thought that it might not be the worst thing in the world for Munster, giving them a year to re-group in a competition in which they might be more competitive. But Munster are synonymous with the European Champions Cup, or at any rate its precursor the Heineken Cup.

It's not just that the Red Army trawled around the European rugby map in the dozen successive years Munster reached the knockout stages, nor that they reached four finals and won two of them. More, it's the memories they and their team left behind in all manner of epic tussles, be it the famed Miracle Match or other misty Saturday evening clashes in Thomond Park. They now hang like a millstone around their necks.

The Heineken Cup was the best thing that ever happened Munster and, quite conceivably, vice versa. The competition is already the poorer for its Anglo-French carve-up now. For Munster to not even be partaking next season would make it poorer still, in every sense.

One ventures that the damage to the organisation, both financially and psychologically, would be severe. Aside from confirming their status as the weakest link in Ireland, to be on the outside looking in as the other provinces competed would be the hardest of hard sells to a shrinking fan base.

Tougher days

Hard sells have never been Munster’s forte, the times of plenty ill-preparing them for these tougher days when sell-outs Thomond Park are anything but guaranteed. Their ticket pricing strategy has clearly alienated their supporters further.

Yet in trying to keep up with the Joneses, or the Bruce Craigs and Jacky Lorenzettis, it is believed that despite deferring their payments on Thomond Park, Munster are on course to lose some €2.5 million this year. Apparently though, they are not the only province losing money.

How much the gamble on Rassie Erasmus as their new director of rugby will work, and especially how his relationship develops with Foley, remains to be seen.

In South Africa, Erasmus is regarded as having a very clever rugby brain, albeit with a slightly prickly personality who generally tries to steer clear of the media. As a result, he once turned down the Springboks captaincy under Nick Mallett.

Erasmus is an independent thinker, who has developed his own rugby software programme and doesn’t toe the line. As a player, Erasmus was not the archetypal South African backrower, more a running and passing flanker who eventually did captain the Springboks, albeit in a 32-6 loss to the Wallabies in Brisbane.

For the last few years he has been heading up the Rugby Department at the South African Rugby Union, apparently not always seeing eye to eye with former Springboks coach Heyneke Meyer.

Many believe he should have been appointed Boks coach. As the SARU’s high-performance manager, he has headed up what is called their mobi-unit coaching team that goes around the country helping the Super Rugby teams. The mobi-unit has also been involved in preparing for the Ireland series in June.

His departure to Munster is seen as a loss to South African rugby and to the Springboks’ new head coach Allister Coetzee, whose tenure begins with that three-Test series at home to Ireland, although Erasmus will stay on in his current role until after that series.

Defence coach

It is also understood that Erasmus will be bringing in

Jacques Nienaber

, the well-regarded defence coach who has worked with Western Province, the Stormers and the Springboks.

For sure, Munster’s woes this season are relative. Like the Irish provinces, they were out of their depth competing in Europe in the mid-90s, but could at least always fall back on the impregnable fortress that was Thomond Park.

As both Foley and Ronan O’Gara amongst others have stated, Munster need to re-establish Thomond Park as their impenetrable citadel in the European Champions Cup as a base starting point.

But to not even be competing in that competition would rule that out for starters.

gthornley@irishtimes.com