Once upon a time Munster teams revelled in bitterness. They looked on it fondly as a renewable source of energy. Munster might have craved respect – or said they did – but it was much handier being disrespected. They knew how to spin that yarn.
In another era the Autumn Series of internationals just gone by would have stoked a bonfire of resentment in the Munster dressingroom. On Saturday Tadhg Beirne was the only Munster player in the starting XV. Jack Crowley was dropped. Craig Casey is still not trusted to start A-list matches. Peter O’Mahony came off the bench. Conor Murray was excluded from the match day 23.
For Murray and O’Mahony their monumental international careers are ticking towards midnight. Crowley has a fight on his hands. Casey too. Calvin Nash is injured. Outside of those players, though, nobody in the Munster squad can feel aggrieved at being overlooked.
It is another bracing illustration of Munster’s resources. In little over a decade the quality of players at their disposal has fallen off a cliff. Compare Munster’s line-up in the 2011 Celtic League final to the URC final two years ago – the next time they won that competition.
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In 2011 Munster’s starting XV contained players who, in the end, amassed 861 Irish caps. Nine of them enjoyed international careers that spanned at least a decade. In 2023 the number of Irish caps in the team had fallen to 326, but almost 300 of those Test appearances belonged to Murray, O’Mahony and Beirne.
That astonishing end to the 2023 season, when Munster won a sequence of high-wire games on the road, was a classic example of a team being greater than the sum of its parts. In the early days of the Heineken Cup Munster derived great energy from working themselves into that state. But it is a short-term formula. Long before they finally won the Heineken Cup Munster understood that it was unsustainable.
So where are they now? Stuck. The squad has been ravaged by injuries. Too many performances this season have been disappointing or dysfunctional. In recent weeks they have parted company with a head coach and a forwards coach, and the search for replacements is expected to continue until the new year.
It was reported in the French media that Stuart Lancaster – now the head coach at Racing 92 – is Munster’s prime target, but they have also been linked with Felix Jones. The former Munster player, and coach, is being forced to serve out 12 months notice by the RFU, his current employers, having resigned as Steve Borthwick’s defence coach in August.
For Munster money is clearly part of the problem. Even if Lancaster or Jones were interested in taking the job, would Munster have the financial wherewithal to lever them from their current contracts? And what would make it attractive?
Paul O’Connell said last week that he was not interested in the job, at least not now. In his Irish Examiner column Ronan O’Gara made it clear that he is staying put in France and that he hopes his next career move will be into the Test arena. Why would he leave? La Rochelle’s budget for this season has grown to more than €37 million, an increase of nearly 7% on last year, and they are contenders on all fronts.
Munster don’t have a war chest or short-term prospects. In financial terms “Leinster and Munster,” wrote O’Gara, “has the feel of Man City against Cardiff City”. In professional sport nobody makes sentimental decisions.
In comparative terms Munster’s financial situation has stabilised. Last year they broke even for the first time in nine years. As recently as 2019 they reported “a cash flow deficit” of nearly €1 million.
“Player costs increased due to an increase in the squad size and also due to player wage inflation,” Munster reported five years ago. There were 49 players in the Munster squad that season; this season there are 44, but no Galacticos.
Overall the numbers are more palatable. “We’ve rebalanced the business model a lot,” Munster’s CEO Ian Flanagan told a recent meeting of Cork Chamber of Commerce. “But when you’re breaking even you don’t have transformational revenues to invest in infrastructure, facilities and staffing. You must find that money elsewhere if you don’t have it on your balance sheet.”
The key word is “transformational.” Munster don’t have the money to buy their way out of trouble even if the solutions to Munster’s problems could be bought. They don’t have benefactors with deep pockets as Leinster do. In recent years they tried signing South African World Cup winners on massive salaries and, for various reasons, it didn’t work.
Not being as wealthy as Leinster, though, has become an exhausted excuse for not being nearly as good as they should be. Munster’s player pathways are still not producing enough players of the required standard. Underperforming in consequential matches has become a pattern.
Losing at home to Northampton in the Champions Cup last season, failing to beat Bayonne at home in another group match, and losing a home semi-final in the URC were the games that defined last season for Munster. These were clutch matches that Munster ought to have won with the players already in the dressingroom. That is a cultural problem and a leadership issue. More money is not the solution to those problems.
There is every chance that Munster will appoint a head coach from within the building. It is what they did with Tony McGahan, Anthony Foley, Johann van Graan and Graham Rowntree, with varying degrees of success.
Mike Prendergast has been flagged as a future head coach for years. He served a long apprenticeship in France and returned to Munster when he must have had other opportunities elsewhere. He understands the problems, he knows the players, he deserves his chance to make a difference.
Making Munster competitive at the business end of the Champions Cup is a long game that will require inspired strategic planning, patience and stamina. Making the team the sum of its parts – even just that – is the urgent responsibility of everybody currently in the building. On that front there is no excuse for failure. Money has no part in that.
The Champions Cup starts next weekend. A spoonful of bitterness would be no harm.
