Opinion: Are Munster strangling the life out of rugby?

Published on Saturday 17 May 2008 20:02

NO: Tom English I ALWAYS said Morri was a one-off, a unique mind in this great game. Morri thinks Munster are boring and to an extent he's right. They're so predictable, aren't they, with their army of brilliant fans and their relentless victories and their spanking new stadium in Limerick and their Doug Howlett and – yawn – their fourth Heineken Cup final appearance of the millennium. Zzzzzz. Wake me up when they're interesting for goodness sake.

Oh, sorry. It's their style of play that's boring? Yeah, in fairness, they overdo it through the forwards. I mean, why do they persist in utilising donkeys like Paul O'Connell and Donncha O'Callaghan and David Wallace and Denis Leamy and Jerry Flannery? You'd ignore them, wouldn't you? If they were on your team you wouldn't let them anywhere near the ball.

It's a myth, in any event, to say Munster play ten-man rugby. Just because they can doesn't mean that is what they are; a ten-man team. Think about it. Munster had the Heineken Cup champions, Wasps, and French champions, Clermont Auvergne, in their pool this season. They had Gloucester, the leading team in England, in the quarter-finals. Four out of five of those games were monstrously physical encounters. One was played in a monsoon. In the five games, Munster scored 11 tries. Eight of them were scored by the backs. Boring, they were not.

Morri has an ally in David Knox. Knoxy had a go at Munster rugby during the week. Called them dull and limited, all grunt and no grace. You've got to hand it to him, he should know dull and limited when he sees it given that those words neatly sum up his contribution as backs coach at Leinster these past three seasons. In Ireland, Knox's credibility took a final and fatal blow last year when his Leinster team went to Cork and won there for the first time in two decades.

It was an historic night. Played in high winds and heavy rain, the Leinster forwards ground out victory. They revelled in the fact that they'd done a Munster on it. This was the source of great pride at the time and still is now. Knox, alas, was absent. He missed the train. He watched it on telly in his flat in Dublin, far removed from reality. Were you with him Morri, by any chance? Only joking.

YES: Iain Morrison

MUNSTER offer much to admire but little to love. I blame Neil Back.

When he tapped the ball out of Peter Stringer's hands just as the scrum-half was about to feed an attacking scrum in the dying minutes of the 2002 final everyone was appalled at the gamesmanship. Well, almost everyone. Munster copied it.

In this year's semi-final Saracens broke through and threatened to score so Rua Tipoki did what all Munster players do in a dangerous situation and killed the ball. He was correctly yellow carded. So far, so cynical but worse was to follow. Playing with one man short in a nail-biter of a Heineken semi usually means coughing up points so Denis Leamy decided to even the numbers.

The big breakaway grabbed Nick Lloyd by the throat (don't try this at home kids) knowing full well that there could only be one reaction. Sure enough the prop lashed out in fury and joined Tipoki in the sin bin. Munster will do absolutely anything to win an important match with the possible exception of playing any rugby.

They play terminally dull, ten-man stuff that only their supporters could ever love. The one-time Wallaby fly-half David Knox, Leinster's assistant coach for three years, gave his assessment of Ireland's most successful province recently. "Munster get 30 points on the board by grinding away and when the other team is shot, they try and throw the ball around a bit. Then people say, what a great team. It's rubbish."

Knox was even more scathing about Munster's Player of the Year, Ronan O'Gara. "I have been here, coaching in Ireland for three years, and I have never seen that guy create space for anybody…Yet over here, in the world of Irish rugby, he ranks with Dan Carter as the best fly-half in the world. I have never heard such rubbish."

In amongst the sour grapes Knox is essentially right. Munster play very little rugby, instead they win by stopping the opposition from playing any at all.

And on top of the cynicism the sad fact remains that Munster is fast losing it's identity as a rugby club and is morphing inexorably into a "brand". The club's latest signing is a legal expert, which says something.

I will be supporting the men in red next Saturday evening but only because Toulouse won the toss and will sport their own favourite colours. ALLEZ LES ROUGES!