RUGBY NEWS ROUND-UP:IT HASN'T been a disastrous season. Munster have won 13 of 17 matches, lead the Magners League by nine points and are still alive and kicking in the Heineken Cup.

Yet injuries to key personnel continue to undermine them, their scrum remains a problem, they have been copping plenty of flak and their season hinges on events in the cacophonous Stade Felix-Mayol against Toulon on Sunday week.

“That’s the nature of it, and that’s where things are at with Munster,” says Tony McGahan phlegmatically, this being his sixth season in the Munster coaching firmament and his third as head man. “We’re happy with our position in the Magners League, though we’d like to be playing better, but through the Christmas period and playing local derbies, and 21 changes over the two games, 13 and eight to the starting side, you’re going to lose continuity in your play.

“In the Heineken Cup, we all knew from the beginning of the season it was going to be an extremely difficult pool to get out of. You really needed to be winning your home games and at least picking up bonus points on the road, and we’ve done that.

“We would have liked to have beaten London Irish or the Ospreys (away), but we had a really poor (first) 40 minutes against London Irish when we gave away 20 points when we had the ball, and against the Ospreys we had our scrum obviously go down. If we could have corrected a bit of that we could have got an away win, but we didn’t.

“Toulon had a fabulous away win from home (against London Irish), so they’re in control of the group. But we always knew it was going to come down to this either way. Even if we beat the Ospreys, it still would have been 14-13 on match points, so we’d still have to win there anyway.

“The reality of it was that it was going to come down to the last two rounds, and most possibly the last round, so not winning in London Irish or Ospreys, we have to do so in Toulon. But it’s in our own hands.”

Despite heavily rotating his squad over the Christmas period, the league leaders manufactured derby wins over Connacht and Ulster to extend their lead to nine points. Playing in Galway against Connacht “is never easy”, according to the coach, “especially if you’re wearing red”, while he was pleased with the way his side upped their tempo and ambition, and retained possession through the phases, in subduing Ulster with a somewhat flattering bonus-point victory last Saturday.

However, that win came at a cost, given the distressing sight of Jerry Flannery breaking down with another torn calf, to compound a frontrow casualty list already including Denis Fogarty, Marcus Horan and Dave Ryan, whose four- to five-week absence with a shoulder injury rather gives the lie to the notion that Munster were pulling a fast one for the last few scrums on their line against Connacht.

Coming on top of Paul O’Connell’s suspension, McGahan admits the degree to which these blows can even affect morale was “a good question”.

To be without such influential players – the best in their positions in the country – is damaging, but, as McGahan points out, Munster have become sadly used to their absence. “We have reached a period with both of those players that they’ve been out for such a long time that I think everyone has just moved on.”

Traditionally, Munster have never performed particularly well a week before playing in Europe. Admittedly, they won all five League games before returning to Heineken Cup action en route to the semi-finals two seasons ago, but last season lost all five League matches the weekend prior to the Heineken Cup – albeit against Leinster (twice), the Ospreys (twice) and Ulster (away).

The 13-9 defeat to Leinster at the Aviva in October maintained that trend, before they beat Cardiff 16-9 at home in early December, but Saturday’s visit of the Glasgow Warriors looks like a banana skin. One eye on Europe?

“I certainly hope not. For us playing away from home in a big environment (in Toulon) you’d certainly want to be putting some things together. There may be some more changes to the group, with a lot of players coming back in, but we’d want to be displaying some strong characteristics of form that you’d want to be taking in to next week.”

After their difficulties in the scrum against the Ospreys revived memories of last season’s semi-final away to Biarritz, there are no prizes for guessing where Toulon might target Munster.

“We expect that, that’s what French sides do and that’s what sides will do after watching where we’ve been for the last few weeks.

“There’s no hiding from the fact that we need to front up there and give ourselves a platform to play off, because there are other parts of our game that are working okay, so we need to get that right first off.”