Former Munster back Paul Warwick on what the southern province need to do in order to rejoin Europe’s elite
Saracens are a strange team to play against. They play conservatively in their own half but, when they manage to get out, they take on a more expansive game and put the squeeze on. At that point, it is up to you and how you can cope with that pressure. They choke teams and take advantage of slip-ups. That is what happened to Munster, and their Champions Cup elimination, last weekend.
Duncan Williams, through no fault of his own, was left exposed and Sarries profited from a couple of bad clearance attempts. The Munster line-out, usually so reliable, struggled to deliver that clean ball and their scrum copped a hiding as well.
Munster had a couple a decent Champions (or Heineken) Cup results in recent years – the quarter final win over Toulouse, last season, and definitely that win away to Harlequins. Those big performances have been the exception.
I know they were missing a couple of capped players, through injury, but a lot of the younger guys haven’t earned their stripes yet. You have Peter O’Mahony, the captain, but there’s a gap after him. There are few signs of genuine leadership coming through. You have Damien Varley but he has been injured a bit. When Paul O’Connell leaves, there is going to be a huge hole left in that team. They can’t trade on their reputation and history forever. Rugby moves on.
What Munster were always good at was bringing through the home-grown talent and letting them bed in beside a core of senior players, and foreign guys like Rua Tipoki, Doug Howlett, Jean de Villiers and myself.
Attracting those big imports has become increasingly hard. You have the French clubs taking their pick of the best Southern Hemisphere players and English clubs, like Saracens and Bath, plucking the rest. Don’t ask me how they are getting around the Premiership salary caps.
There has been talk about Munster finding a benefactor or the IRFU upping its funding, to attract players, but the guys I played with – Doug, Rua and Jean – came to the club because they wanted to play big names. Munster being in the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup was huge when it came to signing players. Anthony Foley can’t guarantee that any more and that is a huge problem.
Another factor in attracting players was Munster’s history with touring teams. During my time at the club, we played New Zealand [losing 18-16 in a fantastic game] and Australia. Those games do wonders for the club’s name across Europe and in the Southern Hemisphere.
If Munster could line-up more games against touring sides, it would be an extra incentive to players, especially guys, like me, who missed out on Test rugby. Those games were amazing and the added bonus is that it exposes the wider squad to world-class players.
The New Zealand game – mixing it with Joe Rokocoko, Liam Messam, Brad Thorn – did wonders for players like Donnacha Ryan, James Coughlan and myself. Tim Ryan [now at Coventry] played well that night and signed a couple of good contracts off the back of it.
When we beat Australia [15-6] in 2010/11, it did wonders for younger lads like O’Mahony, Tommy O’Donnell and Conor Murray. Conor came off the bench in that game and ended up starting the Celtic League Grand Final that we won.
Setting up more matches like that could provide another platform for that next generation of match-winners that Munster desperately need.
