You had to feel for Peter O’Mahony after his side’s 46-22 beating at the hands of new Guinness PRO12 champions Scarlets.
The Munster captain stared dead ahead for the first five minutes of the post-match press briefing as Rassie Erasmus fielded questions.
When he finally got a chance to speak, O’Mahony revealed how the Munster squad had urged each other, at half-time, to stick to a game-plan that had worked for them all season. Tyler Bleyendaal had scored a try late in the first half to give Munster hope but it was expunged pretty soon into the second half as the hapless errors continued.
Erasmus was then asked if Munster needed a Plan B for next season – he feels a further evolution is coming – and O’Mahony went back to simmering; staring at the back wall.
Erasmus smiled a rare smile as he backed O’Mahony, Conor Murray and CJ Stander to star for the British & Irish Lions but his captain barely blinked. It has been six seasons since Munster has claimed silverware. Next May it will be seven.
The next seven the Cork native will see will be on his watch when he flies out to London at 7:00am on Sunday morning to link up with those Lions.
“It’s a huge honour and I’m really looking forward to it,” he said before he was reminded that Scarlets have three players on the Lions Tour – Jonathan Davies, Ken Owens and Liam Williams.
“Yep,” he repeated, hardly meaning it, “looking forward to it.”
The final question of the conference was courtesy of SportsJOE and concerned what we regarded to be Munster players ‘falling off’ tackles for Scarlets’ last two tries. “Was that a disappointing thing,” O’Mahony was asked, “that the fight wasn’t there until the 80th minute?” He responded:
“No, I wouldn’t accept that at all.
“When you go out and you are chasing a lead like that, you have to play rugby. When it gets to 60, 65 minutes and you’re twenty-odd points down, you’ve got to throw your plan out the window a bit. It’s no big surprise to people that we don’t play in our own twenty-two or up to our 10-metres line or whatever.
“When you’re firing balls out the back like that, you’re going to concede tries because, you know, that’s not the way we train. Any team that’s chasing a lead is open to a couple of intercepts or getting a pass behind you, getting caught behind the gainline and you’re in trouble then.
“So I wouldn’t accept that for one second, that there wasn’t effort or there weren’t trying out there.”
It was the captain’s prerogative and he handled the question well.
This defeat will burn for a long time but at least O’Mahony and the 11 other Munster players on international [Ireland and Lions] duty they have a chance to blow off some steam; unleash some hurt.
