IN THE MEDIA room underneath the main stand at Musgrave Park, Graham Rowntree is asked for his initial interpretation of Munster’s 33-19 pre-season defeat to Gloucester.
He stares at the floor for three or four seconds before replying, “What do you think I’m gonna say, now?”
What about, ‘That’s what pre-season is for’?
“There’s an element of that,” Rowntree nods. But he lays it plain that for his side to ship five first-half tries just 15 days out from their URC opener at home to Connacht is intolerable carry-on.
“We’ll have a good review of it,” Rowntree says. “We’re not perfect, are we, going into the season? Good God, plenty of things to work on.
I was disappointed with our energy, our actions, collisions. We spoke about it a lot during the week. It’s quite evident we weren’t at the races early on.
“Nothing against them,” Rowntree adds of George Skivington’s Gloucester, who carved up their off-colour hosts in the first 40. “They looked sharp, particularly off set-piece.
Plenty for us to work on and I’m hoping I’m going to look back in 15 days’ time and think, ‘That’s exactly what we needed: a kick up the backside going into the URC.’
“Lots of things for us to look at,” Rowntree reiterates.
Not all of them bad, either.
Whereas Munster were collectively poor, there were silver linings in the likes of scrum-half Jack Oliver sniping over for a score on a difficult first start, or in Gordon Wood claiming a ball out of the sky on his first involvement, or in Seán Edogbo coming on and taking names.
Rowntree was “proud” of plenty of his younger players, who gained valuable reps against a good Premiership side and learned a few lessons the hard way.
He was excited, too, by new signing Thaakir Abrahams.
The 24-year-old South African wing, who arrived this summer from Lyon, flickered and sparked at Musgrave Park without quite having the opportunity to electrify the 4,497 in attendance.
The ground certainly fizzed for his every involvement. Abraham’s very first touch in Munster red ultimately yielded a try for Liam Coombes as the lightning-quick new recruit collected a peach of a cross-field kick by Billy Burns and raced into Gloucester territory.
“Thaakir Abrahams is everything that we’ve been watching,” Rowntree said of his new back-three option. “That’s why we signed him. He looked very agile, he looked dangerous.”
Asked whether Abrahams’ raw speed alone could potentially add a new dimension to Munster’s attack this season, Rowntree replied simply: “Yes.”
The Munster coach expanded: “His agility to step out of tackles, step out of heat, across the back three, I’m looking forward to it.
“He’s had visa issues, only been on deck with us for a couple of weeks but he’s proving everything that we signed him for.”
Much of the next two weeks may be about ensuring the ball makes it as far as Abrahams without being ceded to Munster’s opponents as it was on countless occasions on Friday night.
The overriding positive from a poor Munster performance is that it’s far better to get kicked up the backside in early September than it is to do so in an interprovincial curtain-raiser.
