Munster Team Talk Thread - Beirne After Reading

That’s a massive stretch to say they don’t trust him, he has featured a bit this season and his time has increased over the season into starts against the Dragons and Glasgow.

When he came on against Edinburgh early in the season he did very well and helped turn around a losing game into a win.

Him or Tom wood are no worse that JJ, and last season leaving sitting behind Billy burns was a worse decision.

Back row next week needs to be sean edogbo, kendellan and gleeson, hodnet and coombes can bench for impact…second row ahern and wycherly, o'connell can bench, coombes as emergency 2nd row (assuming edogbo snr will be out along with Beirne and Klyne, front row and hookers, it is what it is but anyone other than Alalatoa please. 9 will be casey…10, you'd hope for crowley but if not then play Wood, JJ can bench…centres Nank and Kelly, wingers Daly (if not injured), Smith and full back ben o'connor (not on the injury list but only seems to play champions cup for some reason). Mix of youth, who we should be pushing to the fore next season, and a few others who should be helping to lead. See if these youngsters want champions cup next year…

It's hard to see how he could be much worse than JJ tbh and he's a full ten years younger, but McMillan seems to have very little interest in him. Like, repeatedly going with a 6-2 split with no-one who can even theoretically cover out-half is a very clear signal about where Butler stands.

And since JJ is contracted for next season, it might not get better for him in the short term.

3 different coaching set ups clearly dont trust Butler

3 different coaching setups whose combined abilities created the performance we saw on Saturday. Butler gave a MOTM performance against a string Argentina side back in October. Did JJ ever give a MOTM performance?

More than enough staff in there according to my sources.

I won't cry if a few if them have to find another job.

I only care how the team play, and last night was fcuking embarrassing.

I disagree with this tbh. There are good people working there, further down the org structure, who are now at risk of losing their jobs because of mismanagement from on high.

Flanagan leaving is the most important thing that has to happen in the coming off-season. He has to go, I don't see how his role is tenable any more. We need to draw a line under this sh*tshow of a season and start building for next season.

I watched Butler play a few games in Jan/Feb time and he was awful. Worse than JJ is now almost.

Both him and JJ are not good enough to be back up to Crowley if we want to get back being competitive at European level. Tom Wood needs to be next up to see if he's good enough. And we probably need a signing in the summer.

100% agree with this. As poor as JJ has been, I think people are forgetting some of Butler's performances this season, and his most recent ones in particular.

And as much as we're in need of more quality at 10, the problem is JJ has another year to run on his contract for next season, so I don't think a signing will happen. But Wood needs to start seeing more gametime next season.

Last game of the season with your Champions Cup place on the line probably isn't the place for it tho.

And all those aforementioned players were given opportunities to play and improve. You can argue that they didn't, but they were at least given a chance

You could say the same thing about a lot of teams, Racing92, Toulon and Saracens were the teams to beat for a long time

Lions are beatable, as evidenced by a mid-strength Leinster starting team beating them at the weekend. But they will be hard to beat despite their away record being so poor. Things could have been quite different in the Leinster game - a pretty marginal call overturned Lions 7 points, which would have brought them level. The Leinster bench made a massive impact.

If the coaches can't get the basics right then how do we expect our players to get it right? Yes, the players have been playing very badly this season, perhaps some of them need to go just to get dead weight out of the team, I don't disagree

It depends on us and if we show up. If we put in the same performance as we did on Saturday there's not a team in the world that would be able to lose to us

Even losing to the Lions won't be enough to miss out on the play-offs, barring a fantastic series of results on Friday night. On the flip side, a home QF is out of reach barring a win for Benetton in Pretoria…

So there's very little pressure for a result, maybe that will help and we might see a better performance. The Lions are decent but ultimately Munster should be able to see them off.

A marginal call!?

Ah here, the Lions 14 was *significantly* offside. And his actions led directly to the disallowed try.

The logic seemed to be we needed to replace Zebo's X-factor….

It really would've been so much better if we had been allowed to sign a TH instead.

Maybe "marginal" not the right word, it was nearly not given, quite late in the process before it was flagged. Hadn't the conversion been taken already? And it was the TMO that alerted the referee to it. That's what I was trying to get at, not that it was the wrong call.