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Great clubs don't decline so Munster will be back
The Crowd
Roar Guru
22nd May, 2012
3
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The Crowd
Roar Guru
22nd May, 2012
3

Today’s announcement that Denis Leamy is to retire due to a hip injury is yet another punch in the guts for Munster followers.

They must never have envisaged their bitter rivals, Leinster, equaling and then surpassing their haul of two Heineken Cup victories within four years of their last victory in Cardiff in 2008.

The recent retirements of Mick O’Driscoll, Jerry Flannery, David Wallace and John Hayes to add to last year’s similar announcements from Alan Quinlan and Ian Dowling as well as the departures of Tomás O’Leary, Dennis Fogarty, and Lifeimi Mafi has seen the side lose a mass of experience from its core. Only Ronan O’Gara and Paul O’Connell remain.

Much has been written elsewhere about the great job that departing coach Tony McGahan has done in blooding new players, but Munster’s recent stuffing at the hands of the Ospreys in the Rabo Pro12 semi-final will have left incoming coach, Rob Penney, in no doubt that he has a massive rebuilding job on his hands.

Hopefully Munster’s demanding following also realise this, give him some space, and accept that Heineken Cup final appearances and victories are off the menu for longer than they had hoped for.

Anthony Foley may have been disappointed to have missed out on the head coaching role, but he has nowhere near enough experience, nor the skill set required to run a broom through the club a la Matt Williams, and rebuild as required. Rob Penney’s background in business, along with spending time in charge of the Canterbury provincial academy suggests that he is more suited. He was the Crusaders assistant coach in 2005 and won four ITM Cups in charge of Canterbury between 2008 and 2011.

Tony McGahan may have promised change when he took over from Declan Kidney in 2008, but in truth he did little on this front until they were knocked out of last year’s Heineken Cup at the group stages. Were it not for their “premature” exit last year, Conor Murray would not have made his late run to bolt into Ireland’s 2011 World Cup squad. McGahan’s remedial work on Munster’s academy, badly neglected during Kidney’s tenure, is widely acknowledged and while still regarded as being light years behind Leinster and Ulster’s, is beginning to bare fruit.

If the need for a rebuild wasn’t obvious after Leinster handed Munster their arses on a plate in Croke Park on the second of May, 2009, it should have been more than apparent after the shut out in the RDS six months later. It’s hard to blame McGahan for being wary of upsetting a successful and experienced but ageing dressing room as, despite appearances, he was only in his mid-thirties when appointed in 2008.

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Penney is in his late forties, looks like an old sea dog and has a stare that would make Hannibal Lecter think twice before attempting to eat his wife. He’s unlikely to be intimidated by O’Gara and O’Connell.

Teams decline, but great clubs don’t. Munster will be back.

“We hung on to them lads for too long” said one Munster fan to me in a pub in Richmond in the aftermath of last Saturday’s wonderful Heineken Cup final. “Yep,” I said “It’s called getting old for a reason.”

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