Munster need to beat the Dragons to keep their league hopes alive
Northampton Saints vs Munster
Travelling to the Rodney Parade stadium in Newport, with its bleak industrial backdrop, can be a hard sell when coming down from the highs and hype of a Champions Cup weekend, but it is a trip that Munster must successfully negotiate if they are to get their URC campaign back on track this Saturday evening.
The Munster line-up will have changed significantly in the space of just seven days, as Ian Costello must plan without the services of all his players who have joined up with Andy Farrell’s Six Nation’s squad.
That list consists of Calvin Nash, Jack Crowley, Conor Murray, Tadhg Beirne and Peter O’Mahony and with the likes of Alex Nankivell, Craig Casey, Sean O’Brien, Dave Kilcoyne and Jean Kleyn (and a few others) still on the injured list, it means that the squad is really being stretched to its brink this weekend.
With Evan O’Connell, Ruadhán Quinn and Alex Kendellen all signing new contracts this week this fixture seems as good a time as any for some of Munster’s young guns to stamp their identity on the side and begin leading from the front.
With Crowley and Murray up in Abbotstown on Ireland duty, and Casey recovering from a knee injury, it means that Munster must try and get the points in Wales without much experience in the key half back jerseys.
Billy Burns and Tony Butler are the options at fly half, with Burns not impressing since his move from Ulster in the summer, while Butler is still coming to terms with the jump in responsibilities in running a professional rugby side.
With Burns unlikely to have his contract extended beyond this season most Munster fans would like to see Butler get more opportunities at this level.
The starting no. 10 will have either Ethan Coughlan or Paddy Patterson for company, and while both have impressed in the past in Munster red, they still are not the steadying influences that Murray or Casey would be.
Since Butler and Coughlan know each other’s games so well from growing up together at Ennis RFC it might make sense to start them as a pair, which would allow Munster to use the manic energy that Patterson springs from the bench to close the game out.
Munster go into this fixture lying in 11th place in the league table on 21 points, and even though they are missing a lot of their leading lights this weekend they will still be expected to pick up a win against a lowly Dragons side who are the basement boys of the URC, having collected just eight points from their nine league fixtures to date.
The Dragons began their season with a 23-21 victory in a local derby at home to the Ospreys, but they have lost all of their eight games since, with half of those defeats coming on home soil.
Their Challenge Cup campaign also ended last weekend with a 60-10 defeat to the Emirates Lions, so they have little to motivate themselves for the remainder of the season.
This is far from a foregone conclusion, however, and some of the travelling Munster squad will still have PTSD from their trip to south Wales in September of 2022 when they left Rodney Parade with their tails between their legs after a superb try from Rio Dyer inspired the Welsh side to a 22-17 win.
Munster somehow turned that around to end that season as URC champions.
It is hard to imagine history repeating should Munster be on the wrong end of the result this time around.
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