Dec 08,2024
After a turbulent couple of months, things are starting to turn in Munster's favour.
The coaching situation hasn't been fully cleared up yet, but the province has been able to put some stability on the situation by keeping Mike Prendergast and Denis Leamy at Thomond Park for another couple of years, while their injury toll is starting to ease.
The latest bit of good news came on Tuesday, when the province announced the arrival of New Zealander Chris Boyd as a performance consultant.
The 66-year-old is a highly regarded and experienced coach who laid the foundations, both in terms of player and coach development, at the Northampton Saints for their Premiership title in 2024. Boyd may only be in Limerick for a few months, but his advisory role has the potential to be as influential as Graham Henry's brief stint at Leinster in 2016.
While the province have gone well in the URC in the last two seasons, their form in this competition has left a lot to be desired.
It's five years since Munster last reached the semi-final, but more worryingly they've missed out on the quarter-finals in each of the last two seasons, losing heavily to the Sharks in 2023, before they were knocked out by the Northampton Saints in the last 16 back in April.
That 2022/23 last-16 exit owed a lot to a tough draw, with two games against Toulouse in the pool stage leaving them down in the bottom half of the seeding, and travelling to Durban in the last 16. Last season, however, they had no such excuse.
Having secured a top seeding through winning the URC, Munster couldn't make it count. Remarkably, their only win was probably in their toughest game on paper, away to Toulon. Either side of that, they threw away leads against the Saints and Exeter, while the campaign began with a poor draw at home Bayonne's second string.
"It’s so special and that’s where you want to be playing.
"I think it's something that’s strong in the Munster tradition and the Munster DNA, how high we hold European rugby, how special it is to play against the French sides, the atmosphere and energy they bring, and to be able to play against the Premiership sides is something that you want to test yourself against."
If Munster are to get back to a quarter-final or better this season, they need to go after a high seeding rather than be satisfied with qualification. That starts at Thomond Park, where they failed to win in last season's competition.
With a six-day turnaround to their away trip in Castres next Friday night, Ian Costello and his side will be feeling a lot better about going to the south of France with four or five points on the board. Stade Pierre-Fabre is not the type of ground you want to be going to chasing a result.
Like Munster, this weekend's opponents Stade Francais have parted company with a head coach this season, sacking Karim Ghezal after he lost three of his first four games in the Top14 this season.
Twice finalists in this competition, it's been a long time since Stade were a force in Europe. This is just their fourth time in the top-tier competition since 2010.
Former Harlequins coach Paul Gustard has been promoted to head coach since Ghezal's departure, and the Englishman appears to be keeping one eye on their domestic league based on his team selection, with a handful of his frontliners not involved.
Out-half Louis Carbonel is named on the bench with Zack Henry starting at 10, while experienced New Zealander Brad Weber is rested at scrum-half, as is captain Paul Gabrillagues.
Munster got back to winning ways in the URC against the Lions last Saturday, grinding out a 17-10 win at Thomond Park, and their interim coach believes the South Africans were the ideal side to play in preparation for this Champions Cup opener.
"They [Stade Francais] are not unlike the Lions, the Lions would be top two in the URC around transition and unstructured play. Stade Francais are very similar," Costello said.
"They do have a strong pack and a good set-piece, but they come to life around transition. Half their tries come from that.
"The beauty is what we’ve been doing in the last three weeks, the foundation of our game has been enhancing our unstructured parts of our game.
"We saw that on Saturday night, when we got three tries from unstructured; two counterattacks and one transition."
"We kicked the ball 33 times and won 17 scraps, versus seven from the Lions who would pride themselves on that.
"The ball was in play for 42 minutes and our previous high was 36, so we’ve been working towards evolving our game and a lot of it has been around unstructured and transition, which is underpinned by speed.
"Hopefully, what we saw in though conditions on Saturday night, transfers to a greater challenge on Saturday."
