MUNSTER’S CONSISTENT INJURY trouble was discussed by Bernard Jackman and Murray Kinsella on the latest episode of Rugby Weekly Extra, the podcast for subscribers to The 42.
“For this stage of the season or for really any stage of any season, it’s bordering on farce the number of players who are unavailable to them,” Rugby Weekly Extra host Gavan Casey said.
“To be honest, I’ve come full circle on this,” Bernard Jackman said.
“For the first two years I kind of understood it. I felt that it was just the athletes getting used to a different regime, a different load. I actually think now they need to do a full review of this because to have so many players injured this early in the season and to have some hamstring injuries, there’s something going on there.
“I’m not blaming anybody but collectively, whether it’s training load on the pitch, work off the feet, recovery or nutrition, there is something there and you need to go through it in a forensic way. You can’t operate a professional rugby team and have that many players unavailable for three seasons in a row at different stages.
“There’s been three big crises, but particularly this early in the season! What are they going to be like after Leinster, the Sharks and the Stormers which are three physical games where you’ve also got the travel element?
“I think they’ll be ok this weekend. I think Sean O’Brien coming back is a positive. From my understanding, (Alex) Nankivell’s injury isn’t too bad. They’ll still patch together a decent 23, well 19 or 20 I’d say realistically in terms of fellas who would have been in the group anyway.
“But it’s at crisis point. I feel so sorry for the coach and for the players who are unavailable.
“It may just be bad luck, but I think it’s at the stage where you have to go through all aspects of their preparation with a fine comb and see if there’s anything they can do better. They have reduced their squad size and they’re going to be more reliant on their academy. Now that’s all good stuff but you still want to have more of your key players available more regularly,” Jackman said.
The 42’s Murray Kinsella added: “This is something that they obviously looked at last season and they did feel that a lot of it was down to misfortune and impact injuries.
“However, we know that they quite greatly altered how they did pre-season. It was shorter. Having been able to go down and watch their training sessions a couple of times, it is very high intensity and that has been their calling card because that’s how they want to play: at a pace that other teams can’t live with.
“They’ll have to absolutely adjust that especially if it’s going to continue to cause those soft tissue injuries.”
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