A strong start to the season for Munster outhalf Jack Crowley has nothing to do with him trying to nail down the Ireland number 10 jersey for the upcoming autumn internationals, his sole focus being to help his province hit the ground running in the URC.
Crowley said it would be disingenuous to his team-mates if his motivation was an international target rather than concentrating on helping Munster build on their bright start under new head coach Clayton McMillan.
Crowley has had a strong URC return, landing a decisive drop goal and picking up the Man of the Match award as Munster edged out Cardiff 23-20 at Thomond Park on Saturday.
But the 25-year-old said his Ireland aspirations for the autumn are not a factor in his recent good form.
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“If I’m being brutally honest, I don’t think it would be respectful to the (Munster) group for that to be a driving factor for me. I don’t think it would be fair to the rest of the lads.
“My main focus is how I can best prepare the team and myself for the opponent that’s coming up this week. This week it’s Edinburgh, how we can best prepare for that and how we can get the best out of ourselves, how I can get the best out of myself?
“If we start looking down the line then that’s where we will be able to deliver in performances. I don’t think it would be, for me anyway, placing my energy in the right areas.”
Crowley landed his third drop goal for Munster to push their lead over Cardiff to 23-15 with four minutes left in last weekend’s game, taking his haul for his native province to 350 points in 73 games. The risk paid dividends as a late try from the visitors saw Munster win with a three-point margin.
“(The drop goal) wasn’t really anything we discussed, it was just the situation we were in,” Crowley explained. “We didn’t really have momentum in that passage of play and we’ll try and look at it and see how we can be better in those scenarios to find a way back into our game. It was just a scenario that came about and we took it and were able to fight another day I guess.”
While there was obvious satisfaction in claiming the score, he added the main thing was securing the win to back up their opening win away to Scarlets.
“To be fair to Cardiff, I thought they were unbelievably physical, put us under a lot of pressure and probably didn’t allow us to play exactly the way we wanted to,” said Crowley. “Ultimately, it led us to a bit more of a scrappy game and we got there in the end. I think there’s more satisfying performances hopefully to come.
“Certainly as a collective we’d hoped to be a little bit more physical. We didn’t deliver to our own standards we felt in the game, so that is something as a group that we’ll be driving and hopefully deliver on further down the line.”
Edinburgh, whose game against Ulster fell victim to Storm Amy, lost their opening round match when they were pipped at the post by Zebre in Parma.
However, Crowley noted Edinburgh also lost to Zebre last season, a week before coming to Cork where they saw off Munster 34-28, so he’s on his guard this time round.
In an injury update on Monday, attack coach Mike Prendergast said the extent of Craig Casey’s hamstring injury should become more apparent this week.
“He’s still doing a couple of tests on it. We’re hoping that it won’t be too long, hopefully in the next week or two and there’ll probably be a bit more clarity towards the end of the week, maybe around Thursday or so. We’re hoping to wait and see that we get a bit of good news there, but as of now, nothing is clear or set in stone in terms of availability.”
Winger Shane Daly (HIA) and hooker Niall Scannell (hand laceration) will miss Friday’s game but there were a lot of positives as seven players – Edwin Edogbo, Tom Farrell, Mike Haley, Mikey Milne, John Ryan, Roman Salanoa and Andrew Smith – are set to return to full training this week, with their availability to be determined next week.
JJ Hanrahan’s position will be decided on later this week as he continues to follow return-to-play protocols, while winger Diarmuid Kilgallen is increasing his training load.
