Munster, Turning A Corner??
Have Munster finally turned a corner in their quest to find consistency of performance. They have played 5 games and have been well beaten in the two away fixtures at Cardiff and Glasgow. These results have seen questions raised about their performance levels since the season began.
The addition of Joey Carbery has added some attacking flair to the squad that still needs to smooth out the rough edges to be the complete package and there is no better place to start that process than the Aviva Stadium this Saturday at 6pm against Leinster.
It has been well flagged that Leinster will rest a few players with one on Europe the following week but they will still be in a position to field a XV that will have International quality across the field. The work that has gone into the development of the Leinster squad has to be admired by all involved in Irish rugby.
Munster will have players like Alby Mathewson and Arno Botha to call upon if Johan Van Graan decides to rest some of his front line players like Peter O Mahony and CJ Stander. Munster unlike Leinster do not have the same player resources and have to manage their squad very carefully in the face of European rugby and Pro 14.
The game this weekend is massive for both sides but for Munster it will give them a chance to find a win that could kick start their season and get them on the right footing heading into an extremely testing two weeks where they face Exeter Chiefs and Gloucester.
Johan Van Graan is almost a year into his job after he signed a contract until June 2020. He is now gone beyond the honeymoon period and will now need to start producing the results to match the squad’s ambitions. Two Semi Finals last year was a good end result to a season that saw Van Graan take charge in November 2017.
JP Ferreira was brought on board to look after defence while Jerry Flannery and Felix Jones were kept on as scrum and backs coach. This coaching team is almost a year old and will want to see the fruits of their labour starting with this run of games that will end with Glasgow arriving in Limerick at the end of October.
This fixture is massive for both sides and will give Munster in particular a real insight into how far they have come this year. I will now try and select the two teams that will face off in The Aviva Stadium this weekend.
Leinster XV :
15 Rob Kearney
14 Fergus Mc Fadden
13 Rory O Loughlin
12 Noel Reid
11 James Lowe
10 Ross Byrne
9 Jamison Gibson-Park
8 Jack Conan
7 Sean O Brien
6 Josh Murphy
5 Devin Toner
4 Mick Kearney
3 Andrew Porter
2 James Tracy
1 Peter Dooley
–
16 Sean Cronin
17 Jack Mc Grath
18 Michael Bent
19 Ian Nagle
20 Dan Leavy
21 Nick Mc Carthy
22 Ciaran Frawley
23 Adam Byrne
Munster XV
15 Andrew Conway
14 Darren Sweetnam
13 Sam Arnold
12 Rory Scannell
11 Keith Earls
10 Joey Carbery
9 Alby Mathewson
8 CJ Stander
7 Chris Cloete
6 Peter O Mahony
5 Tadgh Beirne
4 Jean Kleyn
3 Stephen Archer
2 Niall Scannell
1 James Cronin
–
16 Kevin O Byrne
17 Dave Kilcoyne
18 Brian Scott
19 Billy Holland
20 Tommy O Donnell
21 Jack Stafford
22 Ian Keatley
23 Alex Wootton