Asked to sum up his feelings after Munster’s edge-of-the-seat, rollercoaster 35-33 derby win over Connacht which kick-started their season in front of 15,705 attendance on a pleasant evening in Thomond Park, head coach Graham Rowntree admitted that “relief” was his abiding emotion.
“We had to win that. The resolve we showed to stick in that game ... Crikey, they [Connacht] were good. I just said to Pete [Wilkins] there, how physical they were in their carry, their ruck, their shapes in attack out the back and they get to the edge of the field. Crikey, they were good.
“We had to be good then. Look at the tries they scored early on, Craig Casey getting done off the side of the scrum, you don’t see that very often.
“But relief, I’m chuffed with how we stuck in the game.
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“Half-time was calm. You know, there’s elements of that first 20 where the last little pass didn’t go to hand. Mike Haley could have just put [Thaakir] Abrahams down the wing there, next thing we know we’re back defending a scrum, give a daft lineout penalty away.
“We’re just snatching at things a bit, but we wrestle control again at the end there and Tony Butler, a real clutch kick from the edge of the field. He got a good workout defensively. Plenty to work on, but delighted with the win.”
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Further reflecting on those “clutch kicks” by Butler, Rowntree admitted: “I’d hate to do that for a living. I’m proud of him. He just had a nice chat there, he knows he has a lot of work to do in that channel defensively.”
The main blight on Rowntree’s landscape was the shoulder injury which forced Billy Burns off on his debut.
“We’ll see how Billy is on Monday morning, he’ll have a scan tomorrow and have a look at it. So we’ll see from Monday who is available. It’s an AC joint. There’s no denying that.”
Connacht head coach Pete Wilkins admitted that the defeat was “a bitter spill to swallow”, adding: “We gave ourselves a terrific opportunity and I think the excitement, physicality and intent we played with around all aspects of our game, it didn’t surprise us. That’s what we were preparing for and that’s the growth we’ve seen in the team over the last 10 weeks.
“We gave ourselves an opportunity and it’s very disappointing not to have taken it. There will be lessons to be learned out of it but also important things that we acknowledge that we’re doing really well and that have given us momentum and this stage of the season.”
Highlighting some of those positives, Wilkins said: “I think there was a robustness and a physicality in our defence that was a little inconsistent at times last year, I thought that was an important aspect to it, in phase play at least.
“You saw our new players, Josh Ioane, Ben Murphy, Piers O’Conor, I thought they were standouts. And then the fact that we went toe to toe with Munster at Thomond Park. We don’t want to just settle for being gallant losers, we want something a bit more than that, particularly this season.
“Certainly the foundations of our game, there’s enough to get excited about and enough to build on.”
The initial prognosis on winger Shayne Bolton after his 34th-minute departure were reasonably positive according to Wilkins.
“He’s okay. It was a laceration to his knee, and the hope was that they could just stitch him up and get him out there, but where it was on the knee it was just going to keep opening up so we just had to keep him off, which is unfortunate because he’s an X-factor player that might have made a difference today.”
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