True to type, Clayton McMillan was not remotely inclined to shout from the rooftops or even sugarcoat Munster’s slightly laboured 31-3 bonus-point win over an understrength Gloucester in Munster’s brave new venture into SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
“To be fair, we never expected it to be easy, but I think we’re grateful for the win,” said the New Zealander. “We’re happy to get ourselves on the scoreboard in terms of the European Cup stuff, but I think we’ll probably wake up in the morning, or even now, and know that we could have been a lot better.”
Reflecting further on the performance, when Munster finally translated 66 per cent of both possession and territory, as well as 12 line breaks to one, on to the scoreboard with three tries in the last 13 minutes.
“I still think we’ve got a long way to go in terms of reaching that level of consistency that you need to have to really be contenders at the end of the day.
RM Block
“But there were still lots of positives. I think my overriding sense would be that sometimes your will to do something so well becomes the reason it doesn’t.
“And, you know, there’s a lot of care in the team and there’s a lot of willingness to want to step up and do something well for the team, but I just feel like we forced a lot today instead of just letting the game come to us.”
The Munster head coach did not attribute his players’ desperation to atone for last week to the sense of occasion.
“No, we had a really good review on Monday. I’ve already articulated through all the different sorts of media forums that we felt there’s a real sickness in the gut for what we didn’t produce last week.
“But the only way you can make yourself feel better is to come out and put in a performance that you can be proud of. And there were lots of things that actually went well today. When we did get it right, when our skill execution was here, when our patience was here, we looked good. We’ve just got to build more of those moments.
“I think we’re probably in the habit of stacking a couple of negatives before we get a positive, and we need it to be the other way around.”
A particularly pleasing aspect of Munster’s performance was the impact of their bench, and specifically 30-year-old Young Munster prop Conor Bartley, his club team-mate and try scorer Ruadhán Quinn, and Edwin Edogbo.
“They brought what we expect from them. It’s a 23-man game now. We put just as much time into the selection of our bench as we do into the starting guys. Because when we get into the back end of the game, we need those guys to inject something different to what’s already been out on the field and I thought they did well.
“They all had their moments, but I was particularly happy for Conor Bartley”, added McMillan of the prop who was making his Champions Cup debut after just 17 minutes off the bench against the Scarlets earlier this season before being injured.
“He’s pretty unheralded. He’s a guy who has been away for 30-odd years of club rugby. Never thought he’d put on a Munster jersey until he did in round one, got injured. He’s been sitting out for the last seven/eight weeks and then went out and had a couple of really big impacts at scrum time. Super proud of him and he’s going to get more opportunities.
Conditions were probably worse than they might have seemed from the stands, never mind on television, and Munster did play into a stiff first-half wind as captain Tadhg Beirne pointed out afterwards.
“I think we managed the game quite well in terms of the area of the field, particularly in the first half. We knew it was going to be a battle into that wind,” said Beirne.
“Credit to the lads, maybe the first five or 10 minutes, we weren’t really there but we kind of found our way then and managed the game pretty well and finished the first half well.
“So, look, the positive is we got the five points today and that was the target, and we got the job done.
“But we left a lot of points out there and that’s the part that would be a bit frustrating for us in terms of our conversion. We weren’t very clinical and we had the opportunity to be. The game could have been over a lot earlier than it was. That’s what we’ll be looking at to improve on. But we kept him scoreless, other than the three points, so that’s a big positive too.”
