JAMES COUGHLAN offered a pragmatic appraisal of where Munster stand as they go chasing a home quarter-final in next Saturday’s final pool match against the Northampton Saints at stadium:mk. The province are the only team in the Heineken Cup with five victories but know they’ll need a sixth in Milton Keynes to ensure their next match, in the play-off stage of the tournament, takes place at Thomond Park.
Munster’s blemish-free progress in terms of results has been accompanied by a recurring failure to translate scoring opportunities to points on the board.
The evidence was there again in the 26-10 victory over Castres Olympique in Limerick on Saturday with Coughlan critical of his own mistake in not ensuring a two-man overlap resulted in an early try. However, he refuses to be disheartened, alighting on the many things the team is going well, while acknowledging the work that’s still required.
“It is frustrating. We’re still a pass away from adding that polish. I should have put the boys away in the corner and we’d a couple more. If anything, it made us work harder because we felt if we kept it going we could grind it out. I thought we created an awful lot; our tempo was excellent, especially in the second half. We just kept at our job.
“If somebody had said at the start we’d have 20 points with a match to spare, we’d have bitten their hand off. We need to carry this form into next weekend and add that polish.
“Next week is about driving it on and making sure we’ve a home quarter-final. There’s no point in resting on our laurels because we’ve qualified. We have to go up another notch. We’ve an eight- week break before we’re all back again together so we need to put in a massive effort this week.”
The team’s failure to make the knock-out stage last season is not a primary galvanising factor, according to Coughlan: “It’s not a motivational thing for us that we missed out last year. We’re not proud of it. But we play what’s in front of us and you can’t be looking back on what happened last season.
“If you start worrying about that, you lose sight of what’s in front of you. We’re delighted to be in and it’s about the home quarter-final now.
“Saints won’t lie down. They want to stay in (and qualify for) the Amlin (Challenge Cup).
“It’s a massive thing for the club financially and it’s a huge incentive for us to push on.
“We’ve adapted to massive injury losses (Jerry Flannery, David Wallace, Felix Jones, Doug Howlett) but you can’t dwell on that. Castres didn’t care who was injured in our squad, neither do Northampton. We’ve had to deal with it. It’s unfortunate for the lads involved but we’ve adapted accordingly.”
Meanwhile, Harlequins director of rugby Conor O’Shea knows his good friend and Connacht coach Eric Elwood is preparing a warm reception when the two teams meet at the Sportsground on Friday night (8pm).
“We go into the last round with an opportunity to go through and we will forget Connacht have lost 14 in a row. We know what it’s like to go there and how hard it will be.
“We’ve all learned from Munster over the years you don’t start thinking about getting any extra points in Heineken Cup matches. We’ll go to Galway looking to win and take it from there.”
