Munster Team Talk Thread - Beirne After Reading

Unless we win the champions cup it doesn't matter that we aren't being "smashed out of the gate in Europe" because our URC position is what will count. We could lose in the final but not take part in the Champions Cup next season. On that note we close out the URC season with fixtures against Glasgow, Connacht, Bulls, Ulster and Benetton. There's only 9 points separating 4th placed sharks from 15th place Zebre. With that kind of competitiveness the chances of us not making champions cup next year are very real this season

With regards my "rebuild" mentality. If we are playing Challenge Cup next season we would hopefully be up against opponents that we have a better chance against. This gives us an opportunity to rest our bigger name players during the European weeks and use them more during URC weeks. Something like that would help the injury profile and the issue we had last season of having to rest the likes of Crowley and Murray for the Leinster game wouldn't happen in such a scenario

A year in Challenge Cup would be unlikely to hurt finances that much

"Oh yeah, sure, because less revenue, smaller crowds, and weaker sponsorships are exactly what Munster needs. Maybe we should start applying for the AIL while we're at it?"

The Challenge Cup has the same number of home games and we will still have the URC TV rights so should be a minimal revenue change. Smaller crowds, not sure if they can get much smaller. The best attended matches this season so far are the Leinster and Maori ones, we can always host another side for a friendly and Leinster is guaranteed every year. We didn't play much better than an AIL side on Friday so you make a good point there

The Challenge Cup has the same number of home games

Same number of games, yes. Same number of tickets sold? Very unlikely.

I would have preferred to be in the Challenge cup this year….. we have had a horror show in S&C and injuries, but with all the returning players after the 6 nation, we could have possibly won it.

Challenge cup would be a financial disaster for Munster.

Season ticket renewals would suffer.

Munster Rugby is affected by people travelling long distances.

It could be more financially beneficial to swap two URC games in Cork for two challenge cup games if such a disaster occurred.

Yere all very pessimistic lads, go for a walk on the sunny side of the street :)

he has a poor discipline record, and as someone pointed out above, or previous page, in 2022 he got an increase to his sanction.

6 red cards for him in total, since 2013

This post is completely incoherent. Being competitive in the champions cup doesn't matter because we need to finish top 8 in the URC to qualify for the champions cup. But it would actually be a good thing not to finish in the top 8 so we could be competitive in the challenge cup, even though being competitive in Europe doesn't matter because we need to focus on finishing top 8 in the URC, which of course we don't need to finish top 8 in because its better to be in the challenge cup.

I never said it would be a good thing to finish outside of the Top 8, obviously like everybody here I want to see us winning as many games as possible and finishing as high in the table as possible

If we continue with the current mantra of collapsing scrums, forward passing and gifting tries I don't see us finishing in the top 8. A loss in our next game away to Glasgow and wins by Cardiff (home to Lions,) Edinburgh (away to Benneton) and Connacht (away to Ospreys) puts us in 8th

Another way of putting it, we're only 2 losses away from having an uphill battle to close the season out