Munster Team Talk Thread - Beirne After Reading

Sign of the times on here how little chat this fixture now generates compared with a few years ago, this place is gone fierce quiet, especially this thread. Lot of good posters have jumped ship...

We've a horrendous injury list so I don't expect a win, we've proven ourselves to be able to go on a run once we get our key players back over the course of a season so I'm not too concerned about early season jitters (but that Zebre match and general defence has been extremely poor).

We used regularly lose or under-perform in games in the league before important European nights from 2000-2008, even when our team was one of the very best in Europe, but you'd like to think this fixture in particular they'll leave it all out on the pitch. Whether that's enough to win we'll see, but that's all you want them to do and whatever after that will be. Our first 15 should be good enough (announcement pending), it's the bench and the last 15-20 is where it'll be in the balance. I hope Ross or Harry starts.

I'd considered going to this but I genuinely can't be arsed with Dublin at all and matches there. Match itself should be a great occasion, fantastic numbers attending which is great to see, good for the league - enjoy if you're going to it!

Really nice clip here:

On Route here, stopped for so fuel and tea. Form is all over the place, along with the injury list damped the spirits but Derbys are usually tight affairs. Gotten just chase each point. Take a lossing bonus point and work from there. Stamp out the silly handling errors and make any territory count in the scoreboard and we will be close enough I hope

Anyone up for the South African road trip

Embarrassing performance. What excuses will Graham Rowntree now

100% agree with this. You could go back 7,8 years and we still had Niall Scannell, Archer and John Ryan in squads when our front-row was still flagged as a problem.

Not too disheartened with that in the end tho, after the awful start. Beirne was great and thought Haley had a fine game. Crowley was excellent in the first half (missed conversion aside) and thought Coombes had a good game too. We had to force it a fair bit, but Farrell and Nankivell have the makings of a very good midfield, you'd hope we'd make things stick a bit better offensively as the season progresses.

Set-piece-wise, the scrum is looking excellent but the lineout continues to be a major problem for us. Which is compounding things because our maul, and particularly set plays off it, look really good.

first 20 killed us ….centers look like they could be a force ….crowley stays improving …Beirne is beirne ……we showed good character after that first 20’……one thing that is and has been obvious a while now is that we are very light in the forwards injuries aside .we need props and utility back /second row cover …..ultimately lack of quality options in the pack (Britney/kleyn )aside mean we will ever only do so well

Was surprised how few munster fans were at the game. OK maybe 10k but vast majority were Leinster!

As others have said poor start but overall tried their best. What was Crowley at going for 3pts so far out in first half and then turning down an attempt in front of the posts a minute later! A crazy minute by him imo

when Crowley went for the 3pts from far out was when we had both our hookers off for HIAs.

hard to compete with the Leinster money .

The sarries/toulon of our time.

Munster played well with what players they had left standing.