Munster Team Talk Thread - New season title pending....

Brief_Lives

The Lost Sheep wrote: »

Ahearn was excellent with irish 20s. Should be getting pro14 game time this season now he's out of age grade rugby.
John Madigans biggest issue in Munster was staying fit. He went to France after finishing with Munster and has 50+ appearances in his 3 years there.

thanks for the reply..
50+ appearances.... thats brilliant... is he top league or second league... That guy was enormous, ...

thomond2006

Brief_Lives wrote: »

thanks for the reply..
50+ appearances.... thats brilliant... is he top league or second league... That guy was enormous, ...

ProD2. He was with Massy and is now at Béziers.

Another young product from Munster whose time/development at the province was ruined by injury.

Burkie1203

Brief_Lives wrote: »

Do we set up a new thread for the next season, or does this continue... I like the Larkham Asylum title, to be honest..

I am confident about the new season.... We have a rolls royce of a player in DeAllende....
We definitely need a bit of luck, that is one thing we have not had in the last 7/8 years....
Killer, Cronin, Marshall is a great front row..
Snyman, Beirne/Kleyn is definitely a second row to threaten with...
Jacko, Hodnett, Stander.... that will complete a very good pack...

Outside of Kilcoyne Munsters front row is average at European level.

Hard to know how Snyman will go now that he has a serious injury but Kleyn and Beirne aren't all that great. Beirne is too small and Kleyns biggest attribute seems to be his ability to be an "enforcer". Whatever the fcuk that means.

Holland is a good pro14 player. But that's about it.

Last year, the Cronin try for Leinster off the back of passing from Furlong and Healy (who straightened and fixed his man) is just a dimension Munsters tight 5 don't have

arsebiscuits1

Burkie1203 wrote: »

Outside of Kilcoyne Munsters front row is average at European level.

Hard to know how Snyman will go now that he has a serious injury but Kleyn and Beirne aren't all that great. Beirne is too small and Kleyns biggest attribute seems to be his ability to be an "enforcer". Whatever the fcuk that means.

Holland is a good pro14 player. But that's about it.

Last year, the Cronin try for Leinster off the back of passing from Furlong and Healy (who straightened and fixed his man) is just a dimension Munsters tight 5 don't have

This I think hits the nail on the head for a lot of Munsters issues.

For too many of Munsters players, the first instinct seems to be to carry hard.

How often to Munster play off 10? Or run a screen play behind the pod outside 9? How often to Munster structure a play with 3 or more passes compared to their peers?

I don't think the Munster players are necessarily bad passers - I think they're well capable. But I think the culture of heads up rugby just isn't enforced enough there.

Whatever pack Leinster put out, you can be absolutely rest assured that 1-8 have the capability of either moving or carrying based on what's in front of them. It's the only way to unlock top level defences

Clegg

Alan Quinlan was pretty damning of Munsters tactics and performance up front. Kicking was clearly the strategy, but once it was obviously that it wasn't working the players should've taken ownership and tried something else.

Wasn't impressed by Munsters forwards. Their entire pack ran for 17 metres. Caelan Doris alone ran for 52 metres.

Brief_Lives

Larbre34

Munster's squad have the modern skillset that their Head Coach is either too ignorant or fearful to employ. I don't know why that is but the player roster must be terribly frustrated. I think personally that this is greatest factor in Peter O'Mahony's poor 12 months, for instance.

As a Leinster fan, it does us no good not to be challenged by our greatest rival, it does the national squad and the progress of the game in the Country no good either.

If it were up to me, I'd sack VanGraan, put him in the bin with every other bit of Heyneke Meyer's philosophy, install Stephen Larkham as Head Coach and try and persuade Paul O'Connell to come in to take over the forwards. Larkham, Rowntree, POC would be some ticket IMO.

Paul Smeenus

Paul O'Connell has failed when he's been given coaching opportunities. Amazing player, one of Ireland's all time greats, nothing to write home about as coach. Poor as part of U20s set up, walked away from Stade Francais after a year. Better on A Question of Sport.

salmocab

Paul Smeenus wrote: »

Paul O'Connell has failed when he's been given coaching opportunities. Amazing player, one of Ireland's all time greats, nothing to write home about as coach. Poor as part of U20s set up, walked away from Stade Francais after a year. Better on A Question of Sport.

Whilst I wouldn’t put it in as harsh terms people shouldn’t get caught up in the great player equals great coach thing. Some have an aptitude for it naturally, a quick look at soccer will show that the top coaches come from varied levels of players.
POC May turn into a good coach but it hasn’t started well and I’d be surprised if he got a big gig next up. ROG for me has shown the way to do it right.

The Lost Sheep

Paul Smeenus wrote: »

Paul O'Connell has failed when he's been given coaching opportunities. Amazing player, one of Ireland's all time greats, nothing to write home about as coach. Poor as part of U20s set up, walked away from Stade Francais after a year. Better on A Question of Sport.

Im not sure how much criticism O Connell can get for that 20s.
Stade was a complete failure but then again wasnt there issues with head coach there?
He's done a bit of work recently with underage sides in Limerick.

sydthebeat

i wouldnt at all blame stade not working out on POC.. they were nowhere near the level of professionalism he required.

Larbre34

The head coach at Stade was the aforementioned Heyneke Meyer, whose doctrine JVG seems to follow like a lost puppy.

O'Connell left because his philosophy is everything Meyer's and by extension VanGraan's is not.

lawrencesummers

If POC is such a good coach let him prove it before he gets a job as a Munster coach. Munster have been down this road before And the results didn’t show it to be a good idea.

shaungil

thomond2006 wrote: »

Gavin Coombes 2021
Chris Cloete 2022
Tommy O'Donnell 2021
Jack O'Donoghue 2021
Peter O'Mahony 2021
Jack O'Sullivan 2023
CJ Stander 2021

Jack Daly Year 3
John Hodnett Year 2
Alex Kendellen Year 1

Backrow is one position where they are young replacements. JOS has replaced Arno Botha and had started the two international windows prior to Covid-19. He got a three year contract out of the academy which rarely happens, Munster have to rate him highly. TOD is in the last year of his contract and he should be replaced by Hodnett in the next year or so. Gavin Coombes will be seeking more opportunities but he may also be used at lock. I don't know anything about Jack Daly.

Looking back in the last few years we were unlucky that DOC's career at Munster was ruined by injury, he was very promising. Had he stayed injury free I don't think it's crazy to suggest that he could be a starter right now. Conor Oliver was also luckless and could have been a decent squad option.

When Erasmus was there he was giving Oliver lots of game time but when he left Van Graan was picking Copleand in back row when Oliver was fit and Copeland was going to Connacht. It kind of summed up where Van Graan was going. Grunt over speed and stealth.

Nothing has changed since then from what I see of Munster and ultimately head coach calls the shots.

Cookiemunster

shaungil wrote: »

When Erasmus was there he was giving Oliver lots of game time but when he left Van Graan was picking Copleand in back row when Oliver was fit and Copeland was going to Connacht. It kind of summed up where Van Graan was going. Grunt over speed and stealth.

Nothing has changed since then from what I see of Munster and ultimately head coach calls the shots.

So you're trying to say that Copeland, a number 8, was keeping the specialist 7 Oliver out of the team? Even though 5 of Copelands last 10 games were from the bench and the starts were at 8?

There are enough sticks to be beating JVG with without making stuff up. Olivers problem was that he was never fit and he was behind that Cloete and TOD that season.

Cookiemunster

Squad Update. https://www.munsterrugby.ie/2020/09/08/squad-update-final-week-of-2019-20-campaign/

On the injury front, Andrew Conway was removed with a head injury in the second half of Friday’s Guinness PRO14 semi-final. He has begun his graded return to play protocols under the supervision of the medical department.

Conor Murray was removed with a thigh strain and he will undergo a scan to further assess the injury.

Jean Kleyn (neck) will begin his re-integration to training this week.

RG Snyman’s surgery on his torn ACL went very well and he has begun his rehabilitation.

Continuing to rehab: Joey Carbery (ankle), Dan Goggin (ankle), Dave Kilcoyne (ankle).

Good to see that Kleyns injury wasn't too serious.

Vinnie222

Any news on Matt Gallagher. Surprised he wasn't used yet. Apparently he was training well.

shootermacg

Vinnie222 wrote: »

Any news on Matt Gallagher. Surprised he wasn't used yet. Apparently he was training well.

Daly must be training the house down. He's very impressive at the moment and I don't see him being shifted if he continues at his current level.

aloooof

shootermacg wrote: »

Daly must be training the house down. He's very impressive at the moment and I don't see him being shifted if he continues at his current level.

I think Haley offers more from a counter-attacking perspective but Daly was very tidy with everything he did in the last 3 games, hard to fault him at all.

He probably deserves to keep his place, but at worst he's a brilliant option for the 23 jersey with his versatility.

yerrahbah

Another Season ends in disappointment.

Another season where Leinster knocked us out of the PRO14 and Saracens/Racing knocked us out of Europe.

As for Friday 10 metres from 27 carries by the Munster forwards says it all.

We lack strong ball carriers in the forwards.

How I'd classify our forwards in terms of ball carrying

Strong ball carriers: Killer, Snyman, Kleyn, Stander

Not so strong ball carriers: Loughman, Cronin, LO'C, Scannell, Marshall, O'Byrne, Archer, Ryan, Beirne, Holland, Whycherley, PO'M, TO'D, JO'D, Cloete.

Unsure: Barron, Knox, Salanoa, Coombes, Hodnett, JO'S

So Friday night we were missing 3 of our 4 strong ball carriers, Leinster just needed to mark Stander and that was a lot of the work done.

Going forward I think Coombes and JO'S will add a bit of grunt to the pack. We saw glimpses of that this year. Just need to see more next season.

We also need to see a lot of Knox and Salanoa next season. Ryan and Archer are both 32 now, they have another season or two in them but we need to know if the young guys are up to it.

FrannoFan

If Munster don't give starts to
Hodnet
Ahern
Jake flannery
Casey
Ben Healy
French
Over the next season nothing is going to change for Munster.
Keep hearing about unlucky injuries. That's rugby. Every squad has 3/4 starters out injured at a time and unless you are a french club with a massive budget your academy will have to fill those spots eventually.
Van Gran has shown himself to be reluctant to throw in unproven talent while McFarland has done the opposite and is in a final.

thomond2006

Great news on Kleyn. Hopefully he's back for the new season. Kilcoyne didn't need surgery so perhaps his stint out won't be too long either. The pack will be a lot stronger with those two available.

aloooof

I think whatever way you cut it, this'll be a make or break season for JvG. He's got to give starts to some of the younger guys coming through (which I think he will) but equally with the signings of DDA and Snyman (even with his injury) he'll be under pressure to at least get to a final.

For me, a huge area of improvement will have to be in the handling skills of the forwards. It's easy say we need to get the ball to Conway and Earls more, but we can only do that if we have more efficient and more fluid handling.

There was one phase in the SF when we had ~4 passes where the execution was just a bit off on each. By the time the ball got to DDA with Conway on the outside Ringrose had that extra second to line him up. A bit more precision on those passes and we've put Conway away with open ground in front of him.

sydthebeat

In the Pro14 semi final of 2018 munster had 56% possession, kicked the ball 28 times... and ran for 504 meters and beat 22 defenders

In the semi final just gone, Munster had 44% possession, kicked the ball 28 times, and ran for only 91 meters !! and beat 12 defenders.

even taking the weather conditions into account (which wasnt actually too bad, just a big downpour beforehand) it doesnt at all explain the lack of ambition and ability which resulted in a stat where every player on average carried for under 4 meters, compared to just under 22 meters three years ago.

i mentioned previously on here, in a bit of a rhetorical question, would next year be a rebuilding year for JvG, which obviously it cannot be as it should be the culmination of his previous years....

should munster cut their losses now??

thomond2006

Cut their losses and do what?

It's the final year of his contract so it's definitely not a rebuilding year.

sydthebeat

thomond2006 wrote: »

Cut their losses and do what?
.

dont cut their losses and do what??

youve said it yourself its his final year so its not going to be a rebuilding year.
how much effort is he going to put in to blooding youth for future seasons if this is his final year? what risks will he take altering his philosophy if this is his final year?

are munster just going to find themselves at the end of the 20/21 season in the very same position, or worse?

where is the evidence that it will be better? VanGraans trajectory has been sideways if not downwards in my opinion.

Tier 2 in the forthcoming champions cup means mostly likely facing the top english, french or Pro14 team in the QFs... and i dont think a 2 legged QF suits munster.

Cookiemunster

Craig Casey, Shane Daly, Gavin Coombes, Keynan Knox, Diarmuid Barron, Liam Coombes, Ben Healy, Jack O'Sullivan, John Hodnett. What have they all got in common? They're all academy players who made their Munster debuts under JVG.

Whatever about his tactics, the idea that he ignores the academy and doesn't promote is rubbish. The simple fact is that the Munster academy is nowhere near the Leinster academy. We have a much smaller pool of players to pick from which means that fewer players make it. And players don't come from the schools in the same physical condition, so it takes longer to get them up to speed for pro rugby.

The main issue with young players coming from the academy is that they've not been good enough, or when they are they've been destroyed by injury. The likes of Casey and Daly are rare successes. There are high hopes for Healey, O'Sullivan, Hodnett and Ahern, and they will get games this season, but they have to hold theirs hands up and show that they're good enough like Casey and Daly have.

sydthebeat

Whatever about his tactics, the idea that he ignores the academy and doesn't promote is rubbish

If this is aimed at me i certainly didnt say he doesnt promote, i asked how much of an effort will he put in to blodding teh younger lads....

so lets take your guys for example.

Cookiemunster wrote: »

Craig Casey, Shane Daly, Gavin Coombes, Keynan Knox, Diarmuid Barron, Liam Coombes, Ben Healy, Jack O'Sullivan, John Hodnett. .

9 players over 3 season... so on average hes giving game time to 3 academy players per season.... do you think thats a sustainable policy?

how many players in your academy? 15? ... is 3 players per years promoted to senior contracts acceptable for munster fans?? acceptable for those academy players? im just asking the questions.


casey: 10 apps
daly: 20 apps
G coombes: 15 apps
knox: 8 apps
barron: 7 apps
L Coombes: 4 apps
Healey: 3 apps
JOS: 8 apps
Hodnett: 2 apps

total 77 apps

so over 3 years ... on average what, about 30 games per season... so over 90 games JvG has given less than 1 appearance for a young / academy player per game... and thats not to mention actual game time.

is that acceptable to munster fans? less than 1 appearance per game... really??

is that a sustainable way to run an academy or have a progression route for provincial players?

id argue its patently not, and id argue that JvG can not be praised for being a coach that selects youth where possible. and id argue that this will not change in 20/21 and that will only be to the detriment of the longer term for munster rugby

aloooof

sydthebeat wrote: »

where is the evidence that it will be better? VanGraans trajectory has been sideways if not downwards in my opinion.

I think we saw some evidence of it earlier in the season. There seemed to be more freedom to counter-attack, more attempts at off-loading and generally a more expansive game plan. The best example of this against the highest-level team was the home Racing match.

sydthebeat wrote: »

In the Pro14 semi final of 2018 munster had 56% possession, kicked the ball 28 times... and ran for 504 meters and beat 22 defenders

In the semi final just gone, Munster had 44% possession, kicked the ball 28 times, and ran for only 91 meters !! and beat 12 defenders.

Equally, Munster played Racing in the pools both seasons as well and comparing your stats above for those games:

Stat | 2017/18 | 2019/20
Possession | 43% | 64%
Kicked | 32 | 24
Meters | 215 | 423
Defenders Beaten | 7 | 30


There were some signs of improvement.

Whether or not he should be replaced under normal circumstances I think is a moot point anyways; given the current financial situation due to Covid, he won't be (and shouldn't be) let go.

aloooof

sydthebeat wrote: »

so lets take your guys for example.

9 players over 3 season... so on average hes giving game time to 3 academy players per season.... do you think thats a sustainable policy?

how many players in your academy? 15? ... is 3 players per years promoted to senior contracts acceptable for munster fans?? acceptable for those academy players? im just asking the questions.

I think you're misinterpreting his stat. That's just players who made their debut. There were other guys in the academy that had already made their debut that have also been given game time. (Wycherly, Calvin Nash, Liam O'Connor and Sean O'Connor for example come to mind).

It's no way near as little gametime as you're making out.