Ronan O’Gara tips his hat to impressive Munster

He keeps a closer eye on them than any other team outside of Racing 92 but despite the scale of this salutary defeat, even Ronan O'Gara was struck by how good Munster actually were when encountering them for the first time.

Admitting with typical candour that his side were outplayed in every department, the iconic former Munster outhalf was particularly taken with the sharp contrast in athleticism between his younger former players in their physical prime and Racing’s comparatively venerable outfit.

“I knew they would be good and watching them up close they were really good, yeah. They were really good. They’ve great detail in their game and the biggest thing that struck me was athletes in their prime against fellas that are in their 30s.

“You look at CJ [Stander], Peter O’Mahony, Conor [Murray] was a class above everyone else on the pitch I thought, and they just schooled us in every department really.”

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He was asked if part of him might have enjoyed seeing Munster in full flow like this.

“No, I didn’t, because if that’s what you work at you want to be good at it, and today wasn’t a good day. We’ve changed the team and you kind of expect that but you’d kind of hope for a bit more.

“Maybe I was expecting a bit much. It was my wife who said to me ‘you knew this morning you were going to get hammered’,” he said, laughing “and I said ‘no I didn’t’. It’s just another day learning. That’s the reality of it. The first time playing Munster and first time getting tonked.”

Looking ahead to Munster’s prospects for the rest of the tournament, O’Gara said: “From our point of view hopefully you’d be thinking you’d be coming out of the group. Now Munster are coming out of the group, the likelihood is that they’ll get a home quarter-final, so you’re looking at 160 minutes way from doing something.

“That’s putting them into a pressurised situation which they don’t need by me saying that. I think one side of me says that 14 games ago they weren’t a good team, now they’re a very good team but they have to go again because Saracens probably have more trust in the bank in them as a team in big pressurised occasions.”

Receiving end

That said, Racing have also been on the receiving end of back-to-back defeats by Glasgow, and he agreed Munster face a decidedly tricky task in Scoutstoun next Saturday.

“Glasgow are good. They will have a big advantage as well because they are playing on that synthetic pitch which is very different to a real sod. It’s a different game altogether when you play on it, run on it and the ball bounces on it.

“That’ll pose different dilemmas for them and Glasgow will be sick after what happened them in Limerick. Glasgow have backs, like Scotland have, that are good backs so they are a good team. I wouldn’t underestimate them at al. It will be a humdinger of a game. It’s a small crowd but they still get behind them”

It will also be highlighted by what O’Gara believes are two very good outhalves, and he should know. Tyler Bleyendaal having overcome his “injury issues”, O’Gara said.

“He’s an impressive specimen. I saw him up close and I did before at CIT and he has a serious frame on him, he’s a good athlete and a very good player. He is only going to get better the more he plays because he will get more confident and all his basics are good. Finn Russell is a good player as well. I saw him twice and he was man of the match both times so he is a player to stop.”

As for Racing, they face two more games which, for them, are dead rubbers, at home to Leicester and then against Munster in his old Thomond Park stomping ground, which now looms as an even larger mental challenge.

Mentally that makes it look even tougher for the last two games and particularly going back to Thomond Park?

“It poses all kinds of questions because I know what it’s like,” O’Gara admitted of that final pool game on Saturday week.

“I don’t think anyone in the Racing dressing-room realises what it could be like and there’s the capacity to put three times the score on what happened today. That’s the reality. Even though I thought they took all their chances and it wasn’t as though they really dropped the ball, but that’s the game they play.

“They’re well marshalled at half-back and they’ve great line speed, and they’ve an unbelievable maul and they’ve unbelievable forwards and they clean past the ball and CJ’s a threat every time he gets it and Peter’s a threat, and [Simon] Zebo scores again. So it’s a good team.”

Some pride

That Racing front up and show some pride in Thomond Park is important for the club, rather than him.

“It’s not about me. It’s nothing to do with me,” he insisted, adding: “To be fair, it’s not making an excuse, but I think the fact that we were out with three games to go [meant] the priority was on performing against Lyon in the Top 14 on the 28th of January.

“If you’ve got intentions of winning that game you’d want to be kind of going well for the weeks previously, so today didn’t go well, we’ll see how Leicester goes and Thomond Park is a big challenge. How do we expect to win in Lyon? You need to be playing well. So we’ll have to see what the best policy is to get performances out of us.”

“A lot of things need to change but that’s the good thing about it in that it can change quickly in sport. It’s a similar enough squad that got to the final last year and won a Top 14 but it feels like two seasons rolled into one with a five-day pre-season. We need to have a full overhaul and decide how we are going to do it.”

While others, such as Munster and Glasgow, have “definitely” improved this season, O’Gara also conceded: “Subconsciously hunger levels wouldn’t be as high as they need to be and that’s something that really champion teams do but we haven’t done that. Hopefully it’s similar to 2006 when 2007 wasn’t a good year and 2008 was a great year. It happens but it’s sickening being involved with a team getting hosed like that.”