Mike Haley will be back where it all started on Sunday when Munster visit Northampton in a pivotal second-round Heineken Champions Cup pool game (kick-off 1pm, live on BT Sport). As an 18-year-old he made his Premiership debut away Northampton in April 2013 as a member of the Sale Sharks academy in a 47-7 defeat by a Saints’ side which would go on to reach the final and go one better by winning the title the following season.
The stakes will be rather higher on his latest visit to Franklin’s Gardens, now Cinch Stadium, with Haley accepting that Munster are in must-win territory after last week’s home loss to Toulouse.
“The nature of this tournament now – I don’t want to say it’s knock-out rugby immediately – but you have to win all your games, you have to put yourself in the best spots’ possible. I know there’s eight teams that go through from each pool but we need to go away to Northampton and win, and to be honest, with Munster in Europe, there’s no expectation other than to go over and win.”
The playing surface at Cinch Stadium is widely regarded as the best in the Premiership.
“I know it’s a number of years ago and I was playing for Sale, but even back then it was a great pitch, always a really nice surface,” said the 28-year-old, who spent five seasons with the Sharks and is now in his fifth season with Munster.
“And they have really good support. They have really, engaging support that get behind their team and in Europe you love to go to places like that, almost that cauldron environment when you go in there and you know you’re going to have to play your best rugby, otherwise you’re going to be on the back foot.
“You want supporters who are going to be engaged in singing, and that’s what they give to their team so it’s a really exciting prospect.”
Haley himself has been playing consistently good rugby for Munster again this season. With Toulouse kicking the ball out of hand (38 times) last Sunday at Thomond Park more than any other team, Haley made the most carries (14) and the most metres (123) of any player in that match.
Unsurprisingly, Haley admits that he prefers running with the ball than kicking. “I love running with the ball. For me to run with the ball, I need space in front of me and if I don’t see space then I need to be thinking of the best option for me at that time, whenever I’m catching the ball or the area of the field that I’m in and I make my decision based on that.”
It seems as if he has given more licence to counterattack under Graham Rowntree and attack coach Mike Prendergast?
“Yes and no. I mean, there’s kind of things I’ve been told by Prendy that I’ll keep to myself that I’m looking for, but in fairness to Johann previously, he backed my decision making.
“If he thought I thought it was on to go, at that time he would back me and then, if he wanted a discussion, we’d talk about it later after the game or during the following week.
“But it just sort of happened at the weekend when I was counter-attacking it just felt like that the right option was to run. I felt that there was space there and I felt that if the kick was the right option, I would pick that.
“I don’t want to be just doing one thing if it’s detrimental to the team. It just went that way.”
Haley identified more work-rate off the ball as a key element of the new attacking game that evolved in preseason to where Munster are now.
“It was obviously very broken down then. You see it like you are building different blocks and it starts with the foundations. But nothing crazily changed. It wasn’t like discovering a new world. It was more just a little variation on how we were running things and how he wanted us to run things differently, and then maybe a different mindset on different areas of the pitch, and how we can approach attacking the game.
“It was just this was how we were going to run things now, and we needed to start doing this at every single training session, every single rep and it takes time. You have got to almost un-train yourself out of a certain way of playing the game to how we’re playing now.”
