Although palpably frustrated and disappointed after a game that gradually and grimly got away from Munster, Clayton McMillan also expressed pride in his team’s performance despite an opening day loss at Thomond Park against Glasgow.
“I think it became a game of territory and possession and generating pressure off that,” said McMillan after seeing Glasgow overturn Munster’s 17-7 interval lead to win 26-20, leaving McMillan and his team with the small consolation of a bonus point.
“In the second half, definitely, they had the lion’s share of that and probably took away a little bit of our legs. But I was pretty proud. I think we made 100-odd tackles more than them. We kept bouncing up and going forward and fought right to the end. It wasn’t good enough, but some green shoots there.”
With JJ Hanrahan calling the shots and their Kiwi-reared Irish qualified scrumhalf Ben O’Connor a focal point of their attack, Munster unveiled a string of clever launch plays. Scoring two good tries, they had preserved their 17-7 lead thanks to some superb scrambling defence and a wonderful maul turnover by Fineen Wycherley to look well set at the interval.
RM Block
“I think that last two or three minutes in the first half shows the character of the group,” said McMillan. “To hold out a team that scored more tries for fun last year. It was probably more disappointing in the first five minutes of the second half, where they scored a try off an error that I thought should have went our way. And then momentum swung and we became an arm-wrestle.”
McMillan was referring to the officials somehow missing a blatant Glasgow knock-on in midfield and wrongly awarding a scrum against Munster in a pivotal moment early in the second half.
“Yeah, I think it was a clear knock-on that should have went our way. And a couple of plays later they’re scoring in the corner on the far side.
“That’s going to happen and at the end of the day we make no excuses. They just had the lion’s share of possession at the right part of the field and did enough to keep the points on the board.”
Still, McMillan believed there were some encouraging signs in this Munster display, all the more so given an extensive injury list.
“Yeah, definitely. Early on in the game when we had our possession in the right parts of the field, we were able to stress them with our strikes and phase play.
“That’s a reflection of new guys coming in and being really clear about how we want to play. You guys would have got a little bit of an insight to that. Possession dried up a little bit, which we’ve already talked about, so we weren’t able to do a hell of a lot more in the second half. But that was nice to see.”
