My mind goes back to early July. The Kerry footballers were struggling against a variety of seemingly journeymen teams. Longford, Sligo and Antrim were all in turn just minutes from ending a miserable season for the Kingdom. They were tired and stale, apparently, some were justifiably claiming that they were a spent force. As a Corkman I was just hoping they would survive long enough for us to “do” them for a third time in the championship. They survived, unfortunately.
Kerry have proven yet again, if proof were needed, that the better teams do whatever is needed to get to the dance, then they dance. There’s little point in playing your best games on the way to the final if it gets you nothing more than the team you are facing. In this modern age of professional sports a sustained momentum cannot be maintained for months. Form dips, players tire and perhaps most importantly the wisest of managers know when their teams need to peak.
Joe Girardi, manager of the new World Series Champion New York Yankees, when asked if he was confident about his team being so much better than their opponents in advance of the final remarked that it wasn’t the team who played best all year that would win, but the team who played best in October. Alex Ferguson has said on many occasions that all he wants from the first six months of the season is for his team to just get themselves into position in March, knowing that this is when the real title race begins. Conversely, Graham Henry knows what being the best team in world rugby for three years leading up to the last World Cup got New Zealand; nothing.
And so it is that many a Munster fan are looking at their team after two months of a patchy season and wondering where their team have gone. Another whipping at the hands of Leinster, two miserable outings to Scotland and a patch Heinekin Cup opener in Northampton have diehards questioning everything from squad morale to Ronan O’Gara to Jean De Villiers.
Maybe some players are bang out of form. Perhaps the Lions tour is still taking a toll. Could be that Declan Kidney’s Irish needs have determined a different training regime this season that doesn’t suit the players concerned at this time.
I’d suggest the answer is simpler and more subtle. Munster coach Tony McGahan and his staff would have spent most of their summer contemplating how the most promising season imaginable effectively ended with the glorious quarter final victory over the Ospreys, a Magners League title notwithstanding. They’d have thought of how on the same day that they demolished a worthy opponent in every facet of the game, Leinster were grinding a result at Harlequins. Munster were never going to get any better; it simply wasn’t possible.
The best coaches examine every minute detail to get some improvement; they don’t miss details that are this big. The best teams rarely make the same mistakes twice; especially not when they’ve had so much time to dwell on such a devastating defeat.
Munster just want to get to next April still competing, in whatever way they can. They’d take an away draw at Toulouse right now, such will be their appetite for redemption.
