“THERE’S ONE FELLA that the buck stops with, and that’s me.”
With a relatively inexperienced, all-Irish backroom team around him, new Munster head coach Anthony Foley is aware that the province will be under scrutiny as the new season gets underway.
However, the 40-year-old welcomes the pressure, relishing the prospect of competitive match-days with six weeks of the “phony war” that is pre-season now complete.
Having made the step up from responsibility for Munster’s forwards and defence, Foley is remaining hands-on in his coaching; “the tracksuits are on, the boots are on. That’s the way it should be. The head coach needs to be out there as head coach.”
There have been some suggestions that Foley’s iteration of Munster will involve a radical overhaul of the tactics employed under Rob Penney, while another school of thought centres around a regression to a game plan that has been successful for the province in the past.
There’ll be some of the stuff from last year, but not all of it,” says Foley. “Some of what we feel went well, we’ll keep. You don’t throw the baby out of the bathwater! We’ll hold onto a few things that we’re very good at and try to amend areas that will make us more efficient.”
The former No. 8 believes that the key for his team is “having forwards that understand what it is to be a Munster forward,” and points out that scrum coach Jerry Flannery, technical advisor Mick O’Driscoll and himself will be important in that regard.
Across the squad, Foley’s focus has been on building a set of core skills that function effectively under the most extreme pressure. The ability to perform the basics under mental duress is what separates the best from the rest, and Munster have a way to go.
“At the moment, we’ve had a couple of scrimmages where things that looked very good in open field without pressure broke down very quickly under pressure. So we’re trying to adjust and rectify that,” outlines Foley.
As the pressure is added, we need to make sure that the core is solid. That’s catch-pass, that’s the tackle, defensive alignment, attack shape, line-out, everything. Once we get confidence that under pressure that will not break, we can build from there.”
Away from the pitch, England coach Stuart Lancaster has brought value-based and lineage-centred rugby culture into the mainstream. Given that Munster possess such a rich history and a reputation for passion, will Foley be leaning on those elements?
“It’s only good when you have a good foundation,” says the 62-times capped ex-Ireland international. “Your foundation is your fitness, your whole professional attitude towards the game, how you prepare, your rugby nous, ability to play.
“If you have your foundation right – your mental skills, everything – I think then you add passion and all that, and you’re much stronger. Passion without a good foundation, you’ve a gust of wind.
“We still want our passion, we’re still very passionate about who we are, we still will have a bit of bite about us, but it will be in a very controlled manner.”
With attack coach Brian Walsh and defensive leader Ian Costello making their impact felt on the training pitch, Foley’s sense is that things are bubbling along nicely for his Munster set-up.
He is pointedly aware that the pre-season buzz means little or nothing, however, unless the positivity is turned into performances.
“We’re only six weeks into it. We have two years – we want to see how far we can go, how good we can be. It’ll be interesting to see where that ends up. As I know from being a player, for coaches there are no guarantees.
“We’ve to hold our end of the bargain up but, with the playing group we have, I’m very confident we’ll end up with something. I don’t know what it is, but I think if we get to where we’re as good as we can be, I think we’ll be hard to beat.”
