Injury hit Munster hoping to make home advantage county against Ospreys

MUNSTER face the Ospreys in Thomond Park tonight in the quarter-finals of the URC expecting to utilise their home advantage to book a place in the last four, despite losing three key players to injury in last week’s 29-24 victory over Ulster.

The injuries sustained to Rory Scannell, Joey Carbery and Tom Ahern last Saturday meant that this victory came at a very high cost. 

Munster have done extremely well from January onwards, winning nine games in a row and taking 44 points out of a possible 45, and one of the main reasons for that upsurge in form, that led them to the summit of the URC table, was the fact that they got so many players back fit and playing again during this period. 

To lose three players of such quality puts huge strain on the squad now as they officially enter the business end of the season.

There was positive news around the availability of Antoine Frisch, Josh Wycherley and Diarmuid Barron, but there can be no denying that luck is now required if Munster are going to be in a position to secure a second successive title at the end of the month.

Ahern’s injury robs Munster of a huge amount of their bench impact, as the Waterford native has been outstanding off the pine this year, while losing both Scannell and Carbery in one fell swoop suddenly puts a huge emphasis on the importance of Jack Crowley remaining healthy. 

It also means that Munster are likely to abandon the 6-2 bench split for now, as head coach Graham Rowntree is unlikely to have young Clare out-half Tony Butler filling every back position, bar scrum half, for such important fixtures.

Back in March Munster took the Ospreys scalp in Swansea in a 17-27 victory, but only for two early gifted intercept tries to Sean O’Brien the outcome could have been a lot different. 

The home side dominated possession on the night and must have been scratching their heads when looking up at the scoreboard to find themselves 0-19 down after just seventeen minutes.

A feature of that evening was how the Ospreys scrum had their Munster counterparts on toast, with the front row of Nicky Smith, Sam Parry and Tom Botha being well on top, and they continued their set piece dominance when Rhys Henry replaced Smith after 33 minutes. 

WEAKNESS

There will be no prizes in guessing how the Welsh side are going to go after Munster, and it will be up to Munster to shut down the scrum as a potential avenue of attack for the visitors.

Toby Booth’s side followed that performance with a 21-27 victory against the Stormers down in Cape Town, which was a seriously impressive result, considering they were missing a lot of their more heralded Welsh internationals that day. 

They did lose their next two fixtures heavily to the Bulls and Leinster, but all their eggs had been placed in the basket that was their last two games against the Dragons and Cardiff, and they got the two wins they required to book this quarter-final place at the Lions’ expense.

There are no easy games at this stage of the season, but Munster earned the number one seed spot the hard way, and you cannot see them wasting this glorious opportunity to reach the last four stage of this competition once more.