RUGBY:Age, injuries, loss of form and inadequate imports have made it appear as if Munster have a curse over them over the past two years, but a rejuvenated academy and renewed focus on the pitch could be now bearing fruit, writes GERRY THORNLEY

Heineken Cup q-f, April 12th

JUST OVER two years ago, Munster hosted the Ospreys on a sunny Sunday in mid-April in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals. The then reigning champions, having won the tournament twice in the previous three years, were at their vintage best and routed the Welsh region by 43-9. Oceans of water have passed under the bridge since then, and only six of that side will start against the same opponents at Thomond Park today. Once they were kings.

Nine days later Ian McGeechan and his coaching ticket delved deeply into the Munster zeitgeist. Paul O’Connell was confirmed as captain and head of a record-equalling, eight-strong Munster contingent and a record 14 Irish players in the 37-man squad to tour South Africa. Almost immediately, it was as if a curse befell the men in red.

Just three days after the squad announcement and seven minutes into a Magners League game against the Scarlets at Musgrave Park, Tomás O’Leary suffered a fractured ankle in what seemed an utterly innocuous incident.

Munster were beaten 25-6 in the Heineken Cup semi-finals at Croke Park, after which Alan Quinlan was ruled out of the tour with a 12-week ban, and just four days before the squad departed, Jerry Flannery sustained torn ligaments in his left elbow while training with the Lions. Amidst all this, winning the Magners League was virtually overlooked.

All good things come to an end of course, but this season’s failure to reach the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup after an unbroken run of a dozen years in qualifying from the pool stages hurt profoundly. This was compounded by their error-ridden defeat at home to Harlequins a fortnight ago, remarkably a fourth semi-final defeat in a row, having lost away to Biarritz in Europe and Leinster in the league last season.

Four successive semi-finals would suggest they’re doing something right.

However, as Keith Wood said on Newstalk’s Off the Ball during the week, “a generation of supporters have become used to success” and, a la Barca-Madrid, Celtic/Rangers and other greater rivalries, the dastardly neighbours are doing very nicely, thank you. The natives are restless.

Unhelpfully, key men such as O’Connell (five starts since January 2010), Flannery (five last season and none this) and O’Leary (just 13 starts this season) have been sidelined for long spells.

“There’s a strong correlation between your best players being on the final and competing at the back end of the season in finals, there’s no doubt about that,” says McGahan. “That’s true for every sport, and we’ve under-performed as well. I don’t think we can get away from that, and that’s the psyche of where the group needs to get to, winning semi-finals. That’s the challenge.

“But I don’t think you can navigate your way through leagues and finish top of the ERC pool last season, and have two good quarter-final results, without having some qualities about what the group is doing or where it’s going. But that’s where the expectations are, and we enjoy that and thrive on that, but days like Harlequins, Toulon, the first half against London Irish, the scrum against the Ospreys – they can’t be forgiven because they’re performance based.

“What’s hurt has probably been our Cup rugby nous,” admits McGahan.

He cites the first half away to London Irish, the unrewarded spells of 15 and 12 phases away to the Ospreys and the two occasions at home when Munster were twice within a few metres of the Ospreys’ try line. Sam Tuitupou’s pass instead afforded Tommy Bowe an intercept try but for which, along with O’Connell’s red card, they would surely have gone on to claim a bonus point.

But O’Connell’s red card compounded four yellow cards in six Heineken Cup pool games and a further 17 yellows and one red in the league – only Aironi and Treviso have worse disciplinary records and let’s face it, Italians get binned just for saying bongiorno to a referee. (And, just for another odious comparison, Leinster make off with the Magners’ Fair Play Award!).

“We’ve worked on it,” says a slightly bemused McGahan. “We’ve had a few stupid ones but we’ve also had stuff at the back end of games that there’s been no need – we’ve been winning. We’ve had three or four of those, and take those (away) and we’re half-way down that table.”

Nor did they enjoy a particularly fair time of it from the refereeing fraternity, especially on the road in Europe, with Dave Pearson’s performance in Toulon reputedly coming in for a particularly bad ERC review.

Looking back on that team of two years ago against the Ospreys, Paul Warwick – scorer of two drop-goals and a try in one of the performances of his life – has become a bench player and is on his way to Stade Francais.

Lifeimi Mafi has lost his confidence and suffered for having had four different midfield partners. Ian Dowling has been forced to retire through injury. Tomás O’Leary has been bedeviled by ill-luck, injuries and form issues all season. Marcus Horan and John Hayes are recalled today but have been commonly used as impact replacements, Flannery has simply remained cursed with injuries, Alan Quinlan is retiring and Denis Leamy is on the bench.

Furthermore, of course, even the freakishly durable David Wallace (34) can’t have much more than a season left, while at 31 O’Connell is the youngest of eight thirtysomethings in today’s match-day squad.

Go back to 2007-08 and Anthony Foley, John Kelly and Shaun Payne were still on the roster, since when the likes of Frankie Sheahan, Anthony Horgan and Rua Tipoki have also retired. O’Connell’s prolonged absences have thus hurt all the more.

Again, compare and contrast with Leinster, a team at their peak and also oozing leaders in Brian O’Driscoll, Leo Cullen, Jamie Heaslip, Shane Jennings, Shane Horgan and co.

More than any province Munster were always likely to suffer with the changed emphasis from the club game to the academy/provincial structures, with its ever-expanding number of A games. It was the leadership skills and winning mentality honed in the AIL by Shannon, Cork Con, Garryowen and Young Munster which helped produce the likes of Mick Galwey, Foley, O’Gara, Wallace, O’Connell et al, in turn back-boning the rejuvenation in Munster and Irish rugby. Examples such as James Coughlan at Dolphin are increasingly rare.

Mistakes have undoubtedly been made. Laurie Fisher is generally well regarded amongst the players as a clever coach, and has been particularly good on honing Munster’s breakdown work, but former players privately maintain that tearing up the Munster scrum playbook backfired, while their lineout – for years a pillar of strength – has also regressed. Anthony Foley’s move to forwards coach next season should bring about an improvement.

McGahan also accepts that: “We’ve probably made a few (wrong) selection calls, but that’s the nature of anything. You try and show some faith in players, and maybe we’ve shown faith a bit longer than what we should have, but as I said they’ve been doing it for 12 years. I think definitely we lacked in our ability to be able to decide what we were trying to do, whether we were trying to run or kick. I think we probably got to a point when we were either one or the other, and we didn’t find a great balance.”

Munster have won 19 out of 22 games in the league, but it is the four defeats in eight games in Europe which has made what many others would regard as a relatively successful season into one of failure.

The overall winning ratio reflects well on Munster’s strength in depth.

They have been obliged to use 50 players in their 30 competitive games this season. McGahan has also sought to make Munster’s game evolve, witness the thrilling counter-attacking in that extraordinary 42-37 win away to Brive.

Indeed the outside three of Doug Howlett (leading the way with 13 tries in 27 games), Felix Jones and Keith Earls have given them a real cutting edge.

However, Munster have struggled to break down well-organised defences (no tries in six games against Leinster). Over the years, they’ve struck gold in the likes of Rhys Ellison, Trevor Halstead and Rua Tipoki, but following on from Jean de Villiers, Sam Tuitupou has been a mixed success.

Evidence of this lack of playmaking variety, control and leadership in midfield is that today’s pairing of Danny Barnes and Mafi is Munster’s 12th centre combination of the season. McGahan accepts “it’s an area where we’ve lacked continuity”.

Wood also makes the point that, be it down to coaching or a lack of dynamic ball carriers up front, “whereas Leinster forwards come onto the ball hard and fast, Munster forwards receive the ball and then take off, and it’s really frustrating to watch.”

Again, compare and contrast with ball-carrying forwards like Cian Healy, Richardt Strauss, Seán O’Brien and Jamie Heaslip.

After years of neglect underneath the top tier, like the Red Army, perhaps the Munster Branch had also become used to living off the fat of that golden generation. In a metaphor for our times, tickets are now becoming harder to shift now that Munster haven’t earned their customary home quarter-final in the Heineken Cup. It’s akin to an estate agent now obliged to actually sell houses again, as opposed to merely opening the front door and being trampled upon in the stampede of.

The feeling persists that since becoming the Munster Academy director in 2008 Ian Sherwin has been playing catch-up, with several inherent disadvantages. Yet, necessity being the mother of invention, 21 of the 50 players used this season have been products of the Munster Academy. And out of 40 players from the academy, 26 have entered the professional ranks, all but five of them with Munster.

This also includes six academy Players of the Year, the latest being this year’s winner, scrumhalf Conor Murray.

“He hit every rung of the ladder,” enthuses Sherwin. “A role model for the future. If you’re looking at an academy programme and for a fella who comes in and gets the physical side of it right, the technical side of it right, and when he’s got those two hard years down and you’re looking for the third year to be knocking around the seniors, and challenging and getting a senior position and a contract, you couldn’t ask for a better candidate. And just his attitude to training and everything is outstanding.”

Munster’s production line is in spite of the Leinster under-age game having more numbers, a better brand of rugby at schools level and, more significantly, the closer working relationship between the Leinster Academy and their schools in identifying and working with players from 15 upwards.

“I can’t argue with that,” admits Sherwin. “We’re constantly working with our schools to try and get more access. It’s not always possible. There’s always the trade-off between the development of players and using rugby as an education tool, which is great, and we’re constantly trying to work at this all the time.”

Sherwin also points to one of the best young talents on their radar who is currently playing minor hurling for the Limerick. “He hasn’t been able to commit to a Munster trial and he may miss out. You don’t get that in Leinster. They play rugby and that’s what they do.”

Sherwin says the under-age structure in the Munster club game is very good, but many of the elite rugby schools in Leinster aren’t exactly short of facilities or money. “Another side of things is facilities within the schools,” he says. “Munchin’s are only putting in a gym this year, and they’re a stalwart, bastion of schools rugby. Crescent only use an old squash court as a gym. Ard Scoil Rís are just building a new school and they’re just putting one in, but they’re a GAA school.”

Another worrying sign was the first Irish Under-20 side in the Six Nations, which did not feature a single Munster player, although Sherwin attributes this in large part to the vagaries of selection. He also cites the Munster Youths (Under-18) side he coached, which beat Connacht, Ulster and handsomely beat the Exiles while losing narrowly to Leinster, yet only had one player in the team, whereas the Exiles had five in the selection.

A recurring problem for Munster has been their bi-location and multitude of training locations, but confirmation on Thursday of the professional and academy set-up moving to one location in the Cork Institute of Technology is a major step in the right direction.

Five of today’s squad – Danny Barnes, Simon Zebo, Murray, Mike Sherry and Stephen Archer (whose progress questions the wisdom of signing Peter Borlase) – have come out of the academy in the last two years, while Felix Jones has also made rapid strides. Criticised for not developing indigenous young talent, McGahan appears to receive little credit for now having done so.

Furthermore, earn an all-Irish final in Thomond Park, and then win that, and the 2010-11 season would hardly constitute a disaster.

“It’s hard enough to win any trophy,” says McGahan. “You look at soccer, or other sports, and Man Utd won a European Cup in ’68 and didn’t win one again until 1999. It’s not as if you get to win trophies every time. Any time you have a chance to reach a final or win some silverware, you should look forward to it, because when you’re in the game you know how tough it is to get to that level.”

All the more so when the baton is being passed on. Challenging times for the men in red.