Are Munster Strangling The Life Out Of Rugby
May 18th, 2008 | By admin | Category: SportsI ALWAYS said Morri was a one-off, a unique mind in this great game. Morri thinks Munster are boring and to an extent he’s right. They’re so predictable, aren’t they, with their army of brilliant fans and their relentless victories and their spanking new stadium in Limerick and their Doug Howlett and – yawn – their fourth Heineken Cup final appearance of the millennium. Zzzzzz. Wake me up when they’re interesting for goodness sake.
Oh, sorry. It’s their style of play that’s boring? Yeah, in fairness, they overdo it through the forwards. I mean, why do they persist in utilising donkeys like Paul O’Connell and Donncha O’Callaghan and David Wallace and Denis Leamy and Jerry Flanne.
It’s a myth, in any event, to say Munster play ten-man rugby. Just because they can doesn’t mean that is what they are; a ten-man team. Think about it. Munster had the Heineken Cup champions, Wasps, and French champions, Clermont Auvergne, in their pool this season. They had Gloucester, the leading team in England, in the quarter-finals. Four out of five of those games were monstrously physical encounters. One was played in a monsoon. In the five games, Munster scored 11 tries. Eight of them were scored by the backs. Boring, they were not.
Morri has an ally in David Knox. Knoxy had a go at Munster rugby during the week. Called them dull and limited, all grunt and no grace. You’ve got to hand it to him, he should know dull and limited when he sees it given that those words neatly sum up his contribution as backs coach at Leinster these past three seasons. In Ireland, Knox’s credibility took a final and fatal blow last year when his Leinster team went to Cork and won there for the first time in two decades.
It was an historic night. Played in high winds and heavy rain, the Leinster forwards ground out victory. They revelled in the fact that they’d done a Munster on it. This was the source of great pride at the time and still is now. Knox, alas, was absent. He missed the train. He watched it on telly in his flat in Dublin, far removed from reality. Were you with him Morri, by any chance? Only joking.
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