Munster Team Talk Thread - Beirne After Reading

This turned into a tome, so broke out the bold function…

Crowley:

Crowley's poor form is being over-stated. He was excellent against Ospreys and good against Leinster (very good in the first half, I thought). Certainly better than his opposite number Frawley, who's his main competition, and who had a good game too to be fair to him. I guess the higher levels of scrutiny are to be expected when you're Ireland's starting 10 and under the spotlight more.

I will say tho, I think his place kicking isn't where it was last season. To be fair, the Ospreys game was played in an orange weather warning, but he has missed a few outside of that that I'd ordinarily expect him to convert.

Coaching Ticket:

With regards the coaching ticket, I'd back them to turn this around - particularly when we start getting players back from injury - as they have done before. 1st season, we lost 5 of our first 7 games and went on to win the URC. 2nd season, we were in the bottom half of the URC, and went on to win 11 games in a row, getting 44 out of 45 available points, to finish top of the table.

It's obviously not optimal, and you'd rather not have a poor start, but I'd rather this form early in the season, with a view to peaking towards the pointy end.

Lineout:

I will say tho, the lineout absolutely has to improve, it's just not good enough. TRK had some stats, we're pretty awful on both sides of the ball. Even on some lineout ball we're winning, it's not tidy ball that you can set a good platform off of. Improving things there will go a long way towards improving everything else (and results, I'd wager) as generally our maul and set plays off the lineout look really good.

POM returning and just firing him up at 2; that alone would go some way to solving it short-term (a la Ireland vs SA). But there has to be some stark improvement and fast.

The Indo are reporting we’re looking into getting a medical joker at LHP. Loughman is going for a scan on his knee (he’s been in the wars the past few games).

I think with Loughman, Killer, Whycherly and Donnelly all out, that’s our 4 best LHPs all unavailable. Likely John Ryan will be covering for the foreseeable future anyway.

Not sure tbh, he was still on the rehab list in the last squad update too.

I watched the Stormers match and seriously, Munster were poor. Crowley in particular was error ridden. The forwards were poor and were for the most part hammered in the scrum.

The damning thing is, Stormers were poor too! 2 intercept tries! Rowntree must be livid. That's two matches in a row that Munster were not at the races. Then there's the collapse v Zebre.

There wasn't any Munster player last week that I thought played well. I thought Coombes was the pick of the team. He came off the bench. It's not like there were wasn't quality on the Munster team. The break should help the coaches rehab the squad. This opening block has been poor.

Long afternoon a head

Sharks just out powering Munster.