INTERVIEW: ANTHONY FOLEY:It will be registered as a disappointing season because Munster were knocked out of the Heineken Cup. That's the reality, as Anthony Foley tells GERRY THORNLEY

WHILE IT must be difficult for the Munster fans to get their heads around not being in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals for the first time since 1998, making almost everything else this season seem a little anticlimactic, they still have a huge amount to play for.

There are still home semi-finals to play for in both the Magners League and Challenge Cup (along with a home League final) and all the financial imperatives such big days entail, not to mention two trophies and further enhancing their status as one of the ERC’s top-tiered seeds. With the best winning ratio this season of any frontline team in Europe, most clubs would bite your hand off for such an “unfulfilled” season.

“And we all recognise that,” says Anthony Foley, “but unfortunately, we’re Munster and it will be registered as a disappointing season because we were knocked out of the Heineken Cup in the group stages and that’s the reality we deal with down here.

“But we’re in the professional game, we need to win games, there’s a big game this weekend and there’s a quarter-final that we need to win, for the financial impact it will have. But as players and coaches you win for your own selfish reasons. You want trophies. You want to win European trophies and your domestic league, and that’s where we’re at in our mindset.”

Foley admits it’s hard to put his finger on why it is that Leinster have had the edge on Munster for the last five clashes. “They’ve muscled up in their forwards, their pack is as good as what’s around, with a lot of current internationals in it. And the old adage applies, forwards win games. You couple that with Sexton, D’Arcy, O’Driscoll, Nacewa, McFadden, Fitzgerald, Kearney, Horgan, Eoin O’Malley – who I think is a great player – and if you concede quality ball to that backline, they become very difficult to beat.”

A little to his own surprise, Foley was asked to oversee the Munster defence this season. “It’s not an area I would have said I wanted to specialise in, but when it came across to me that that was a job they wanted me to do I went away and researched it, put systems in place, modified stuff, made sure people were accountable for the systems and their actions on the pitch.”

Helpfully, Tony McGahan was a defensive specialist himself, and Foley also speaks regularly with Les Kiss and IRFU coaching director Stephen Aboud. Munster have conceded the least tries and the least points in the Magners League, and also conceded the least tries in their Heineken Cup pool. “Axel is excellent,” says one of Munster’s main players emphatically.

“We’re a stingy opposition to play against,” says Foley, in time-honoured Munster fashion, and with some pride. The key? “Working together. If everyone does everything together, even if it’s the wrong thing, you can cover up for one another, and then fix it the following week. The one thing I’ve seen is that if people have their own agenda and are not working together within a line you can become easy to break.”

Next season, Foley assumes a more natural habitat as the Munster forwards’ coach. “There’s a lot of aspects to that. You can’t just hand it to someone and expect them to do it. There are aspects like scrummaging which are a major part of the game. Again, I’ll go away and do my research, talk to the best people and formulate my opinion and go after it that way and see if that works.”

Hopefully therefore, Foley will be around for the long haul, which makes talk of an end-of-an-era all the more pertinent when you factor in how the likes of Stephen Archer, Ian Nagle, Dave Foley, Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray and Scott Deasy have progressed this season.

“You’ve left out a few too, like Mike Sherry and Simon Zebo. We have young quality players who are getting their opportunity. I played senior rugby at 18, Munster at 20 and Test rugby at 21 and people ask me what’s the difference? I was afforded that opportunity. I had that generosity of game time. These guys don’t get that. The more games you play at the higher level, the better you’re going to get because you get challenged; you get asked to make decisions with less time; the physicality is obviously a lot higher, and that makes you change your game.

“But we’re now in the business of professional rugby and it takes a brave coach to back a player for four or five games. That’s what I see at the moment and I suppose I’m in the heart of it, in a results-driven business, and you tend to go with what you know and the people who have gotten you results in the past, and that can at times restrict your development of younger players.”

Tomorrow’s high stakes, televised demolition derby in front of a 26,000 capacity is a classic case in point. With that 12-point buffer, Munster could more readily afford to lose tomorrow, whereas the Brive quarter-final next weekend is a knockout match. But trying telling that to the Munster faithful, all the more so as Leinster have progressed in the Heineken Cup and, even more pertinently, the Drive for Five has been replaced by the Hit for Six.

“There’s nobody here talking about Brive next week,” says Foley, “let’s put it that way.”

Heineken Cup comes hot on the heels of World Cup final

NEXT SEASON’S Heineken Cup and Amlin Challenge Cup tournaments will kick-off in November 2011, less than three weeks after the World Cup final in Auckland, New Zealand, on October 23rd, writes John O’Sullivan.

Due to rugby’s premier, four-yearly, global extravaganza, the two European tournaments will start later than their normal October slot. Once the opening two rounds are completed in November, the tournaments will revert to their customary format, with rounds three and four in December and five and six in January.

HEINEKEN AND AMLIN CUP DATES

2011

November 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th: Round One.

November 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th: Round Two

December 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th: Round Three.

December 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th: Round Four

2012

January 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th: Round Five.

January 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd: Round Six.

April 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th: Quarter-finals. April 27th, 28th, 29th: Semi-finals.

May 18th, 19th, 20th: Finals.