Nov 02,2024
Ronan O'Gara has ruled himself out of the running for the vacant Munster head coach position.
The Corkman, widely regarded as one of the province's greatest ever players, won two Champions Cups with Munster but has set his sights on winning a third as a coach with French club La Rochelle - where he has been in charge for five years and is contracted to until 2027 - before moving into international rugby.
"The news on Graham's departure shocked me," O’Gara said in his Irish Examiner column about Graham Rowntree's surprise exit on Tuesday.
"Of course, the Munster elephant in the room is that the current instability has very little to do with who's coaching the team.
"There are financial and environmental issues that pre-date Graham Rowntree's time, and when you wash in some inter-personal stuff into that mix, it all has the feel of disarray.
"Whether you are in Auckland or Samoa, Mallow or Belfast, it's really sad to see what’s going in with Munster.
"In purely economic terms, a fact not lost on the departing head coach, Munster and Leinster has the feel (if not quite the look) of Cardiff City against Manchester City.
"The competitor in me demands that I try and win a Bouclier (Top 14 title) here and another Champions Cup with it. And I feel I have a better chance of doing that with La Rochelle than with Munster.
"The greatest days of my rugby life were in that Munster top but I'm not interested in the Munster head coach role. Not now and hardly in the future.
"Munster is in my heart but not my head now. Besides, I would hope my next coaching move is into the Test arena."
The former out-half tipped his ex-team-mates Mike Prendergast and Denis Leamy, currently Munster attack and defence coaches respectively, to step up.
"These are turbulent times, but the solution for their next head coach is already in the building with a combo of Mike Prendergast and Denis Leamy.
"Prendy has been on the road for 11 years, cultivating his rugby knowledge around France to get it to a level commensurate with the duties and role of a head coach. He knows rugby inside out, he knows Munster inside out, that's why it works.
"Plus there is a possible add of someone else with gravitas and judgement, an elder lemon. But Prendy as the director of rugby. Munster will be better if Leamy and Prendergast are given more control. Felix Jones has been mentioned but is less experienced than Prendergast."
"I think he has been honest in terms of where Munster are" - Donal Lenihan
"It comes as no surprise to me that Ronan isn't throwing his hat into the ring," said Lenihan.
"His kids are in this school cycle. He has won two Champions Cups there, but they've never won the Bouclier de Brennus, which is the big one. They've been there or thereabouts, beaten in the final last year [2023] in the last second. So that's where he wants to be.
"I think he has been honest in terms of where Munster are. They have won the URC recently, but in Europe, they haven't been competitive for a long time."
Lenihan said that while he had heard some rumblings of discontent under Rowntree, he hadn't expected the Englishman's departure.
"The fans really got Graham Rowntree and he got them. There was a great synergy between them. He was old-school in so many ways, but you know, a lot of the Munster people like that. The problem was, coming through the Leicester Tigers school of hard knocks, if you like, internally within the group, that didn't always go down well.
"Certainly with some players, and even within the coaching group, there were suggestions that they needed to change the way things were done. So that tension has been there for a while. But that said, I certainly didn't see that announcement coming out of the blue on Tuesday."
Speaking yesterday, Ireland defence coach Simon Easterby, who takes over as interim head coach following the Autumn Nations Series, was asked if he had any ambitions to return to the club game.
Lenihan expects the choice of a new head coach to be between Prendergast and another former Munster man Jones, who is working remotely for the England national side after stepping down as defence coach in August.
"I think there are only two people in the running," said Lenihan. "One of those, Mike Prendergast, I think is well capable of doing the job and he's within the setup, understands the players extremely well and has been hugely instrumental in terms of the way Munster's game has developed, from an attacking perspective, since he came into the squad. I think that makes him favourite.
"The other candidate, in my view, should be Felix Jones. I think he should be interviewed. I think he's a brilliant young coach who has proved himself at various levels. There are two caveats thrown at him. One, Munster would have to pay an exit clause from the RFU because he is contracted to them till next August. And secondly, he hasn't been a head coach.
"But look, I think if he's good enough, I'm always reminding people that Joe Schmidt wasn't a head coach when Leinster plucked him from Clermont Auvergne, almost on the recommendation of Isa Nacewa, and, he didn't do too badly after that."
