Munster Rugby Squad Training, 10 Acres, UL, Limerick 1/10/2024 Jack Crowley with Conor Murray and Max Clein Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Ben Brady
Tadhg Beirne’s leadership mettle will have been tested to the full ahead of his first appearance as Munster’s club captain against Ospreys in Cork on Saturday evening but the Ireland star has backed his squad’s senior players to help him drive a return to the high standards they expect of themselves.
A week on from perhaps the worst performance of the Graham Rowntree era as head coach, Munster welcome back both their newly-appointed skipper and his O’Maho ny to add 157 international caps of experience to the forward pack while Jack Crowley also returns from his player-welfare delayed pre-season with what Beirne feels is a more mature outlook to his fly-half play.
“He’s not as… erratic would be the word. He’s calm now and you can see how much better he is when he is calm. At times when he came in, he had that sense of ‘I need to prove myself here’, but he has got that out of his game and that’s why he’s become such a good number 10.”
All of that rugby intelligence possessed by Crowley, Beirne and O’Mahony will be sorely needed at Virgin Media Park as Munster bid to rebound from the horrors of their 42-33 defeat at Zebre Parma last Saturday, an Italian job which went badly wrong as the long-time whipping boys exploited sloppy handling, porous defending and bad decision-making to run in six tries and record their first ever victory over the Irish province.
The Ireland Test trio form a part of Rowntree’s response to the humiliation at Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi, the head coach making eight changes and one positional switch to the starting line-up for this URC round-three outing against an Ospreys side buoyant after coming from 13-3 down to dispatch the Stormers 37-24 in Bridgend last weekend.
“We had them in the quarter-final last year and at the time I think I said they were the most underrated team in the competition and definitely they’ve got a quality and spirit about them that’s very evident.
“Teams like that are a handful, they’ve got quality. That back-row of Morgan Morris, Justin Tipuric and Jac Morgan, I said it to the lads this morning, they’re one of the best back-rows out there.
“They’re an interesting trio to watch in terms of how they work around together, they’re excellent in how they’re a foil for each other; they complement each other really well.
“They’re great going forward… their running lines, their 10…”
Having conceded 11 tries in the first two rounds, the warning from Leamy is pertinent but he added: “The main thing is that it’s very much about what we bring, that’s the key message. We’ve got to look at ourselves, what we do well and while there’s a very good team against us we’ve got to get ourselves right.”
