Grahamunster - Graham Rowntree's Munster 2022/2023

[dropkick]

This match against Zebre will tell us where Munster are at the moment. I expect a lot of aggression but technically it's hard to see major improvements in a week. Judging by the first 2 performances it looks like it could be a rocky few months coming up.


The easy thing for Rowntree to do was continue the 80% approach but credit to him for taking the long term approach even if its riskier.


On the dangons match there wasn't too many positives. Healy stepped his game up a notch which was needed. Having casey outside him helped. The emerging ireland tour has hit Munster hard but its good for the players.

[wixfjord]

Munster: Mike Haley; Conor Phillips, Malakai Fekitoa, Dan Goggin, Patrick Campbell; Ben Healy, Craig Casey; Dave Kilcoyne, Niall Scannell, Keynan Knox; Fineen Wycherley, Tadhg Beirne; Jack O’Donoghue, Peter O’Mahony (C), Jack O’Sullivan.

Replacements: Scott Buckley, Jeremy Loughman, Stephen Archer, Edwin Edogbo, Ruadhan Quinn, Conor Murray, Joey Carbery, Rory Scannell.

Fair play to Rowntree, some braver than normal selections there on the wing, on the bench and starting Knox again is a good sign.

Wonder if he's making a point to a few guys who underperformed last week.

[LeRouxIsPHat]

Exciting selection on the wings but you’d wonder how much ball they’ll get from Goggin and Fekitoa. Earls is injured and Nash and Daly are away so you’d have to think that’s a big statement towards Zebo unless he’s injured too. I’m sure they’ll be nervous but it’s a bit of a free hit for them in the circumstances, hope they go well.

Early days but it looks like Prendergast wants two powerful centres in there rather an a baller.

[fourthirtythree]

This match against Zebre will tell us where Munster are at the moment. I expect a lot of aggression but technically it's hard to see major improvements in a week. Judging by the first 2 performances it looks like it could be a rocky few months coming up.


The easy thing for Rowntree to do was continue the 80% approach but credit to him for taking the long term approach even if its riskier.


On the dangons match there wasn't too many positives. Healy stepped his game up a notch which was needed. Having casey outside him helped. The emerging ireland tour has hit Munster hard but its good for the players.

Surely the internationals being back training rather than having taken time off for weddings will show. Also they will be up for it after last week. I'm not sure we'll see a sticking with the process so much as angry response. Which is fair enough.

[ronk]

Congrats to Archer for 250 caps. It's an amazing achievement.

We may also see the youngest Munster player of the pro era. It takes stones for a new coach on a losing streak to put an 18 year old on the bench. I respect that.

[hugonaut]

Berch's comments on Munster's loss against the Dragons:

"... I think there have been a lot of players who have had a very comfortable career in Munster without significantly moving the province forward or even keeping them at the levels their predecessors had them at. I think that was exposed yesterday ... we know they haven’t had a skills coach for four or five years, training has been very slow, etc. and they’re trying to change that, but for me watching them so far this season, I wonder how far behind some of their players are."

https://www.the42.ie/munster-rugby-week ... 2-Sep2022/

Archer stands to win his 250th Munster cap with this appearance. It's a good option to use him off the bench while Salanoa is away with Emerging Ireland. I don't rate Archer at all, but I'm not that vindictive that I'd leave a guy hanging on 249 appearances if he's a tighthead prop and you can give him 10 or 15 minutes to give the starter a breather. But I would genuinely sit him out for the rest of the season and let him go at the end of his contract. He's not good enough to make a difference in any pro game and they're just wallowing with him there at No3.

Dan Goggin has already been signed up until the end of the 2023-24 season [source: https://www.limerickpost.ie/2022/01/28/ ... nd-french/ ], which I think was just a witless play. He is a player whose gametime decreased season-by-season under van Graan ... but he was still signed to a two year deal by the same coach who had already announced he was leaving, and had used him less and less the longer he was in the job:
2018-19: 21 games [14+7, 1175 mins]
2019-20: 15 games [9+6, 880 mins]
2020-21: 9 games [6+3, 475 mins]
2021-22: 8 games [7+1, 523 mins]

It's good to see Rowntree showing a sense of adventure and positivity with some of his selections in this game. Up until last season, van Graan was probably the most conservative, risk averse and frankly mediocre selector I can recall in the last decade of Irish rugby. So many players given contracts but not chances.

[Oldschool]

Begs the question.
Didn't rate quite a few of the coaches appointed by Munster so why are they continuously appointing the wrong coaches and why isn't the IRFU doing something about it.
PENNEY was the last decent coach they had and they dumped hm by offering him a one year extension instead of biting his hand off to sign a 3 year one.
Rowntree is worth a punt at least but Munster need to be more imaginative in the future. ROG will only agree to coaching them in the twilight of his career, which will be too late even for ROG.

[ronk]

Begs the question.
Didn't rate quite a few of the coaches appointed by Munster so why are they continuously appointing the wrong coaches and why isn't the IRFU doing something about it.
PENNEY was the last decent coach they had and they dumped hm by offering him a one year extension instead of biting his hand off to sign a 3 year one.
Rowntree is worth a punt at least but Munster need to be more imaginative in the future. ROG will only agree to coaching them in the twilight of his career, which will be too late even for ROG.

Penney left over politics. Which goes a long way to explaining Munster's issues over the years.

Erasmus was a good coach.

[munster#1]

Begs the question.
Didn't rate quite a few of the coaches appointed by Munster so why are they continuously appointing the wrong coaches and why isn't the IRFU doing something about it.
PENNEY was the last decent coach they had and they dumped hm by offering him a one year extension instead of biting his hand off to sign a 3 year one.
Rowntree is worth a punt at least but Munster need to be more imaginative in the future. ROG will only agree to coaching them in the twilight of his career, which will be too late even for ROG.

Was Penny a decent coach? What metrics would you use to judge that?

Penny has had a very underwhelming coaching career since leaving Munster, and was fired mid season by the Waratahs for being the complete opposite of a decent coach.

Since being sacked I haven’t heard much about him, which suggests to me that not many rate him.

When saying that Penny was the only decent coach that Munster have had you are disregarding a World Cup winning head coach who took a shambles of an SA team and turned them into the best team in the world.
That would be the metric for me of a decent coach.

[Oldschool]

Begs the question.
Didn't rate quite a few of the coaches appointed by Munster so why are they continuously appointing the wrong coaches and why isn't the IRFU doing something about it.
PENNEY was the last decent coach they had and they dumped hm by offering him a one year extension instead of biting his hand off to sign a 3 year one.
Rowntree is worth a punt at least but Munster need to be more imaginative in the future. ROG will only agree to coaching them in the twilight of his career, which will be too late even for ROG.

Was Penny a decent coach? What metrics would you use to judge that?

Penny has had a very underwhelming coaching career since leaving Munster, and was fired mid season by the Waratahs for being the complete opposite of a decent coach.

Since being sacked I haven’t heard much about him, which suggests to me that not many rate him.

When saying that Penny was the only decent coach that Munster have had you are disregarding a World Cup winning head coach who took a shambles of an SA team and turned them into the best team in the world.
That would be the metric for me of a decent coach.

Lancaster with Leinster has been a much better coach than Rassie was with Munster.
Maybe you are using the wrong metric.
Anyway your team are having a good day at the office against Zebre so enjoy.
It's always good to see some of the younger players doing well.

[Dave Cahill]

This is a tough watch so far

[Ruckedtobits]

This is a tough watch so far

As tough as it comes. Several AIL games this afternoon were more entertaining.

[wixfjord]

POM's whinging and mouthing is ridiculous.

A stronger ref would tell him where to go.

[wixfjord]

POM just dropped a pass, blamed someone else then grabbed a Zebre player by the throat.

Cracking leadership.

[cormac]

This is a mess of a second half

[cormac]

Absolute garbage there from Murray

[Dave Cahill]

Not one for the highlights packages unless you were one of the young lads who debuted

[wixfjord]

No TBP for Munster.

My god that was a poor game.

There was an attacking lineout inside Zebre's 22 with about 10 mins to go that summed it up.

Forwards got totally mixed up, nobody lifted anyone and Buckley threw it crooked anyway.

Some of the backplay was like lads who just met up before the game.

[wixfjord]

Ruadhan Quinn was a bright spark. He's going to be some player.

[hugonaut]

That was an atrocious game. The second half was particularly bad.

I don't know what to say about Joey Carbery. How many passes did he throw to the ground in half an hour, three? A catastrophically bad performance.

The Zebre lineout was the most inept lineout I have ever seen in a pro game.