IT IS JUST as well Munster’s squad depth has grown this season because it is needed now.
Dave Kilcoyne’s season is over; RG Snyman’s barely started before his was also declared finished last October; Gavin Coombes should return before the end of the year but it would be a major shock if he returned this weekend while Andrew Conway and Tadhg Beirne are also big doubts for this weekend’s European quarter-final against Toulouse.
Then there is Simon Zebo. He had an ice pack strapped to his knee following the win over Cardiff on Friday. We won’t know until tomorrow at the earliest what the prognosis is on that situation. Just when the list seemed long enough, another name was added: John Hodnett.
“John Hodnett, we’ve sent him for another opinion,” Johann van Graan said. “We would like to make sure. We’ll report back on that next week once we know from the specialist. In terms of Conway, we’ll just take it week on week.
“Everybody’s pushing, everybody wants to play in these big games and we’ve quite a few of them coming up over the next seven weeks so as soon as we can get guys back in we will do so.
“The challenge is going to become who do we leave out, and that’s a great position to be in.”
It certainly is. There is genuine debate now around Craig Casey and Conor Murray at scrum-half while Mike Haley and Jack O’Donoghue’s noticeable improvement has reduced the concern surrounding Conway and Coombes.
They’ve grown used to life without Snyman and now have Jason Jenkins available as a viable second-row option, with Fineen Wycherley also due back after being rested following an intense period of matches.
“The season is so long now that you need a squad. I trust the squad and I trust that what we’ve done through the year, they’re good enough to play.
“That word ‘momentum’ is big in sport and it’s big in rugby. We’ve certainly got momentum on our side in terms of what we’ve done the last few weeks and we’ve kept the emotion down, to take it week by week…so we have to make sure that we keep working hard and focus on our strengths and I thought we did that on Friday night.”
That win over Cardiff guaranteed play-off rugby yet again for Munster in the URC. Still, they’ve work to do to secure home advantage in the quarter-final, and if they were to win that, the semi-final. Their remaining regular-season game is away to Leinster on 21 May.
