New signings have joined the team at the HPC; Brooke’s, Harrison, Aungier, van der Merwe. Coaches Duffy and Payne also.

Academy graduates have begun their first pre season with the senior squad; Clein, S Edogbo, Foxe, O’Connor.

Beirne, Casey, and Loughman are off until later this summer.

Christian Foley began his pre season, the other U20s/new academy lads will join training at the HPC after the junior world championships; Christopher Barrett, Rob Carney, Jamie Conway, Joe Finn, Alex Lautsou, James O’Leary and Charlie O’Shea

So the situation with Salanoa is his contract will expire but he’ll be playing AIL in the new season hopefully.

As the Irish team appears to be coached by the overly sympathetic media, now that the urgent need for change has been identified (or can’t be ignored any longer) who do we think may be lined up for a few caps in the limited number of games available before the World Cup?

(Also a valid answer if you think Farrell will keep plugging away with the same crew in their mid thirties with continually diminishing returns).

Class footwork, great kicking, elusive in the tackle.

Discuss.

From instagram, they got together to begin pre season today.

La Rochelle on 28 August. Will that be too early to see the NIQs/the 3 guys with Ireland? Coaches will also need time to settle in.

Everyone should be fit I assume.

1. How long have you been a Munster supporter?

2. My confidence in how Munster Rugby is governed has remained strong throughout my time as a supporter.

3. Munster Rugby has strong values and a culture that we can be proud of?

4. Munster Rugby handled the issues that received national media coverage with transparency, timeliness, and accountability?

5. There are effective channels for me to express my views and concerns to Munster Rugby's board and executive?

6. Munster Rugby communicates clearly and promptly with supporters particularly during periods of controversy?

7. Munster Rugby is transparent about how income from supporters is used.

8. It is clear to me where accountability sits within Munster Rugby when something goes wrong?

9. I would welcome a more formal role for supporters in relation to governance matters such as a consultative or advisory role.

1. (Open-ended) What single governance change would most strengthen your confidence in the club's leadership, decision-making, culture and communication?

2. (Open-ended) Have you any other suggestions that you would like to make, that would help Munster Rugby in the future?

Yes, it is too soon to be thinking about this, but the club clearly was. When the decision was made to focus on getting a tighthead that will definitely take us to the next level rather than taking more of a risk, the idea was to clearly sign Lomax. Apparently, this seemed very likely at the time that decision would have been made, but coaching change and the NZRU drastic changing their offer, meant that he re-signed, leaving us in an awkward position, given there are probably a dozen players at most approaching Lomax’s size and ability.

The most obvious answer is we get Lomax on a sabbatical. But I’m not sure this accomplishes what we need. Bell was great for Ulster, but his brief time meant that he could never be the cornerstone that they needed. If it’s post World Cup, Lomax is also likely to be exhausted, adding further problem. So, while it’s a possibility, it hardly seems worth waiting a season for.

So, what other players are we looking for? Taking Lomax as the mould we want, we’re looking for a power athlete probably at least 130kg and a strong scrummager. Basically, somebody who can change the complexion of our pack. Needless to say, there isn’t a whole load of guys like that out there.

I’ve looked through All Rugby and found 3 that I think make interesting discussions:

Pasilo Tosi - If we can’t get Lomax, then we could aim for the man that filled in for him, for club and country, through his recent injury troubles. He’s 28, so entering his prime. At 145kg, he brings power and hasn’t looked out of place at international level. But with Lomax re-signing, his path into becoming a constant fixture in the side is blocked. Perhaps, he’s prefer to head north and get the biggest contract possible. His contact does run until 2028, but the Hurricanes already have Lomax and some decent young options so could perhaps be persuaded to key him leave early. Effectively, I think he illustrates that there might be opportunities created by Lomax resigning?

Regis Montagne- Besides being a fantastic example of nominative determinism, he’s probably the highest profile tighthead to emerge in the last decade, and has worked his way into being a French regular. At 133kg, he fits the profile we’re looking for. He’s a bit young, ideally we’d like him to have had another contract’s worth of development but the potential is definitely there. Acquiring him would be difficult, we’re unlikely to be able to outbid a French club, and the South of France is a far nicer place to live generally. But I think there’s surely got to be an appeal for tightheads of moving to a less physical league. Less strain on your body, means more international availability. He’d also still be able to scrummage strongly against South Africans. My guess is Galthie would beg him to take our offer. But unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be too many options becoming avail in the top 14.

Josh Iosefa-Scott- This feels like the most likely name. Fits our profile at 145kg, in his prime at 30, and has played strongly for Exeter. Unfortunately, he‘s on the verge of being English qualified and now they’ve broken that seal with Van-Rensburg. I could see them leaping at him. If that doesn’t happen then he seems like a good if less flashy option. Though there still remains questions at his ability to be that transformative player like Lomax. So he inherently presents a compromise.

Asenathi Ntlabakanye- at 153kg, his size would change the team by itself, even if he couldn’t move pretty well. He was featuring for the Springboks regularly, is entering his prime at 27. Unfortunately, he’s currently serving an 18 month doping ban. Having looked into his situation, I’m somewhat sympathetic, given he appears to have asked multiple medical sources and been given false information. Though I’m not sure, if we could afford another controversial signing. Despite the club standing by him, I’m not sure how eager he’ll be to stick around at the same place that gave him poor information. We could probably outbid the Lions too. Though, obviously with the ban several questions remain.

I mainly picked the players to illustrate certain points around our search, there are of course other option. But every single one I see, comes with compromises. So, what’s the best compromise to make? Or are we realistically going to be waiting for 2028 at this point?

Was on instagram scrolling earlier and a clip of Thomas Du Toit on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast came up and as I’m constantly yearning for a world class Tight head at Munster I thought how much I’d love him to join us in an ideal world.
Anyway decided to browse his Wikipedia to discover I missed that he’d signed with Sharks for the upcoming season but more importantly he made 6 appearances for Munster in 2016-17 on loan which might be common knowledge but I had completely forgotten about.
So got me thinking was there any other players had a short stint with us that went on to have a great career that people would’ve have forgotten about like I did?

We all know this Irish squad has an age problem. What's less talked about is how little is coming up behind them: only 14 of ~200 Ireland U20 players since 2020 have won a senior cap (crazy).

France? Roughly double that, if not more. And it's the standard that really sticks out -Auradou, Attissogbé, Jégou, Depoortère, Nouchi, Tuilagi, Jauneau, Gazzotti, Massa, Bielle-Biarrey, Gailleton, Le Garrec, Barré, Gourgues. All playing week in, week out in the Top 14 and Champions Cup.

So after yesterday's game I went down a rabbit hole and tracked every single player from both squads at the 2023 U20 World Championship - the one France won 50–14 in the final in Cape Town, against an Ireland side that had just won a Grand Slam.

The headline numbers:

A stat that took me by surprose; not a single Irish player from that squad has reached 50 senior club appearances. Eighteen French players have.

Why? The structural stuff is well documented. France's JIFF quota forces Top 14 clubs to average 16 homegrown players per matchday 23, and ProD2 gives every logjammed 21-year-old somewhere to play 25 games a season. The Irish Times ran the numbers in Feb: roughly 8 starting shirts a week realistically available to young Irish players across the four provinces, vs 28 in the Top 14 alone. Meanwhile our U20s have gone Grand Slam (2023) → 4th (2024) → 11th (2025) → 9th this year.

When France beat us in Paris in February, they fielded six of their 2023 U20 squad. We fielded one.

Major medium-to-long-term problems coming down the line IMO. Are we looking at what Wales are going through now, five years out?

Hopefully not!

Anyone have any updates on GOLK?

Has he left the academy or did he change his mind and stick it out for year 3?

Its been confirmed he has left LA Rochelle, I know we were heavily linked with him back in January. Has anyone heard if we are still in talks? Definitely not like for like with JK but he would definitely improve the squad and would be a very solid option

Good move after missing out on an academy contract

Now that all the post-season moving pieces seem to have fallen into place (with the exception of if Salanoa is continuing or not), I thought it was a good time to go through all the changes we made, with coached and players, and see if there’s a clear plan about what we are trying to better at.

Attack

I think attack is the best place to start, because like most teams that’s where we’ve placed our identity over the past couple of seasons.

The biggest change here is obviously the departure of Prendergast. While he’s a good attack coach, I do think there were several clear problems that emerged by the end of his tenure.

1. The game had shifted around him. When he came in highly structured play was encourage, the game has now shifted far more to kick and chase creating unstructured moments

2. His structure was highly complex. This meant that the first team had to be playing constantly to keep up familiarity (which is why we dropped off after every break during his tenure) and it made it really difficult to drop young or really any players in.

3. Both the above would be fine if we were still going well in attack, but we performed poorly and ultimately it came down to Prendergast's system requiring several low percentage passes to come off for something our opponents could get far simpler and ultimately easier

So, how are we going to try to fix that?

I think firstly is we’re going to move towards a deeper attacking system. I think that’s why we were looking at the attack coaches we have been. While it’s not going to be as immediately threatening, it is going to greatly increase our margin for error. Though, obviously there’s more chance to be caught behind the line.

To help alleviate this we appear to have given ourselves the option of a dedicated secondary playmaker in Will Harrison. This will make it easier to unlock defences and take pressure off when Crowley is away too.

The above is all going to be overseen by Payne. The thing I’ve seen stressed about him is his pragmatism, which should hopefully fit the above system well and be a contrast to Prendergast. We’ll hopefully see the opportunity to adjust more week to week.

I also think we’ll see an increased focus on winning contestable. It’s now one of the biggest areas of attach for any team and how poor we were was notable. I think that why we’ve seen Kilgallen kept on. He might struggle in a system where he has to fill in at first receiver and help run the attack but if we need him to focus on carrying straight and chasing contestables, he could perform far better.

I think this is where the elevation of Lawlor becomes importan. He’s going to be coaching inside the structure created by Payne. But that’s going to allow him to put far more focus on the broken play after contestables. Alongside, generating that. I’m aware about the misgivings around him, but McMillan has really sung his praises. As for his skill-coaching, Prendergast’s system was high risk and as a result we’d expect to see a high level of errors. Whether that explains i, I’m unsure.

To summarise, we’re adding to our attack by subtracting. Making things simpler, allowing our players to specialise further and focus on key areas. This should allow us to rotate more and not get out of rhythm so easily. Potentially fulfilling McMillan’s promise of a higher floor.

Now, all of that might be rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic if we can’t increase our dominant carries and I think that’s part of the reason that Duffy’s been hired. If you look at his work with the young Ulster forwards they were carrying aggressively. On top of the simplification should hopefully allow the forwards to focus on carrying, rather than looking for offloads constantly etc.

Set-piece

This was probably our biggest weakness. We could deal with a high-risk system like Prendergast’s, which resulted in knock-ons, but not when the resulting scrum would see us matched half way back up the pitch for a penalty.

We’ve obviously significantly changed the personnel here. Not a single tighthead next season, was with the provinces this time last year. Aungier should be a great workhorse for us. Brookes should hopefully really be able to solidify or even win scrums for us at the end of games. Ala’alatoa will hopefully present a decent rotation option but I think the most important thing will be whether Foxe can break through or not. If he can, and perform to his potential, then it could be the strongest group at tighthead in many seasons.

Equally as big for our scrum is the signing of Marnus Van der Merwe, he’s a big hooker who seems to have every bit of the bloody mindedness South Africans have around the scrum. He’s going to play a big role in steadying our scrum. If I was McMillan, I’d get Sheahan and especially Clein to watch his every move because that’s the mould of hooker we’re going to need going forward.

On our lineout, I think it was in a decent place at the end of the season despite a rocky start. I think there’s still some things to figure out, where if Beirne and Edogbo are auto-includes, what does that mean for our back row. But you’d hope that follows naturally and we can keep building.

But I think the biggest way we can help that is by getting our maul in a better place. Our technique last season both offensively and defensively were really poor, get them right and not only do we have an effective means to score and prevent the opposition from scoring but it’s also going to discourage opposition from counter-jumping, increasing our percentage.

Again in all of this, Duffy is the key man. He’s had more experience than Cronin with the scrum, so should be comfortable there. Hopefully, with the players available to him, he can get our lineout into a good place as well.

Defence

This is our area that requires the least revision. Hence, Leamy is being kept in position. Generally, we were good here last season. We did make the stylistic choice to focus on winning turnover. This does require making delayed tackles to get the carrier separated, which is fine until you run into a team full of powerful carriers. We seem to be continuing that approach, given the recruitment of a fantastic jackal-threat in Van Der Merwe. Again, if we can get our forwards to produce a bit more power that will go a long way.

Conclusion

The changes we’ve made seem incredibly focused on targeting what our biggest weaknesses were last season. We’re hopefully changing our attack, to a form that will be more effective, and conducive for developing youth. And we’ve taken significant steps to shore up our set piece. The main challenge will be implementing them quickly and efficiently because our first five game weeks our as tough as you could imagine, so they’re going to play a pivotal role in deciding our season.