Munster under pressure to get a win at Exeter after slipping up at home to Bayonne
United Rugby Championship Winners Munster Honoured at Cork County Hall - Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr. Frank O’Flynn welcomed the Munster Rugby team to a civic reception at Cork County Hall to mark their triumphant victory in the United Rugby Championship over reigning champions, The Stormers. Pictured with the Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr Frank O'Flynn are, from left: Simon Zebo; Alex Kendellan; Peter O'Mahony; Stephen Archer, Niall Scannell and Munster head coach Graham Rowntree. Pic: Brian Lougheed
MUNSTER make the daunting trip to Sandy Park in the south west corner of England on Sunday to face 2020 Champions Cup winners Exeter Chiefs, in what suddenly looks an extremely important fixture on the back of the potentially costly draw with Bayonne last Saturday. Here we look at the main talking points around this tie:
One of the big takeaways from the opening weekend of the competition was the excellent form of the English clubs, with Northampton getting the ball rolling with a big win up in Glasgow, before Bristol and Bath scalped Lyon and Ulster, and on Sunday Harlequins won away to Racing 92, while Sale and Leicester also had big wins.
But the best of them all was arguably Exeter’s thrilling 18-19 victory over fellow former champions Toulon in France, with England international Henry Slade slotting a last-gasp penalty to seal the win.
The Chiefs currently lie in 6th place in the English Premiership, with five wins gained from their eight games played this season.
They have won all four of their home games in the Premiership to date, while putting up big scores in these triumphs, as they managed 43 points in the win over Sale, they put 65 on Saracens, and they scored 25 and 29 against Gloucester and Bristol, respectively.
Their tails will be up after last week’s exploits in the south of France and they will be looking to put down a marker against Munster this weekend.
One week after conceding five maul tries to Glasgow Munster looked underpowered at home to Bayonne in Round 1 of the Champions Cup in Thomond Park with them time and again coming up short in their attempts to batter their way through the strong visiting French pack.
Munster seemed overly reliant on the likes of Alex Nankivell, Gavin Coombes, Tom Ahern, Tadhg Beirne and John Hodnett to make the hard yards, and against a grizzly French pack they just seemed to run out of impetus after a few carries, when close to the Bayonne line.
The current injury crisis at Munster certainly has not helped in this regard, and a lot of these problems could be solved should the likes of Peter O’Mahony, Edwin Edogbo, Oli Jager, Diarmuid Barron and Shane Daly be deemed fit enough to return this Sunday.
Every fit, and available, body is extremely important this weekend.
If Peter O’Mahony is available it will certainly be interesting to see whether he gets the no. 6 jersey back given the brilliant form of Tom Ahern at blindside in recent weeks.
Whereas the maul was the problem area against Glasgow it was at scrum time where Munster seemed to struggle the most against Bayonne.
It may be a cliché, but it’s one for a reason, if you struggle at set piece time in rugby union then invariably you’re going to struggle.
Also, it is worth saying that should Munster find themselves struggling to break down the Exeter defence then they might be well advised to take their points when on offer, as every successful three points that are slotted in a venue like Sandy Park can be priceless.
Most fans probably long for the pool stage structure of old, where you had six pools of four teams, and the six winners and the two best placed runners-up qualified for the quarter-finals, as it made for some wonderful drama in terms of the scramble for qualification.
The format has been changed a few times since with this year’s version being four groups of six teams, where the top four in each pool qualify for the last-16 of the competition.
This means there is a lot of leeway in terms of qualification for the knockout stages, but after last week’s draw Graham Rowntree’s side probably need all the help they can get now, and a defeat on Sunday might mean that Munster are actually in a spot of bother with two games remaining.
In the old format getting losing bonus points in the road often proved the difference between reaching the knockout stages and not, so even if the game is getting away from them on Sunday Munster must ensure they get something out of this.
Their season might depend on it.
App?
