Experienced Munster hooker Niall Scannell says while the addition of the South African teams has brought a new dimension to the league, the Irish derby games remain special and he’s looking forward to another showdown against Leinster at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday.
The 30-year-old said Munster’s troubled start to the season left them looking no further than the next game. But he’s now looking forward to having another crack at Leinster on the back of their morale-boosting 31-17 win over the Bulls on Saturday night.
“The Irish derbies, they’re still special in every way. We saw against Connacht last week and we saw Leinster against Connacht at the weekend. They’re hotly contested and we know next weekend will be as well. We’ll be ready for it.
“We haven’t been playing as well as we know we can play and I think you have to go out there and earn it. But when you look at the teamsheets we’ve had over the last few weeks, there’s a lot of good players on our team and we just weren’t playing to the level we should have been and we knew that.
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“We were working really hard and sometimes that’s maybe the most frustrating thing, that you’re just going and going again and working harder and you’re trying more things and it’s just not clicking. But that’s why it was so satisfying against the Bulls, to see not all of it but a lot of bits of it just click,” said Scannell.
All four tries on Saturday night came from the pack but one of the highlights was how Munster kept their line intact when the Bulls were camped inside their 22 for the closing 11 minutes but did not score from 53 phases built across five segments of surges.
“It was hugely encouraging for the lads,” said Scannell, who had given way to Diarmuid Barron at that stage.
“We can’t beat around the bush, they’re a hugely physical team. They’re big men and that’s an area of the game they pride themselves on and it’s an area of the game that we really pride ourselves on, so we knew there would be a bit of warfare in there and to come out on top of the two big exchanges was huge.
“Yeah, you just don’t want to put yourself in that position where they score and all of a sudden now there’s a lot more in the game and more on the line, so it was a good positive to just close that out and that’s a big boost to the confidence as well.”
The Cork native, with 144 appearances for Munster and 20 Irish caps under his belt, can appreciate how the standard of the league has risen.
“The quality of opposition is just so high now and you know it’s brought in the whole league on. Players from around the world want to play in the league and teams that traditionally weren’t as competitive, now we’re seeing that they are and it’s certainly not the narrative we’re seeing when we’re previewing teams.
“You can see teams, these guys are really attacking or these guys have a serious defence. I think sometimes the perception is that Munster should be going and beating these teams but there has to be an appreciation that the league standard has lifted across all the competition,” he added.
