Champions Cup: Munster eye Northampton Saints scalp to get their campaign back on track

Munster full-back Mike Haley says his team are eyeing a bounce-back victory against Northampton Saints in the second round of the Champions Cup.

The Irish side lost their opening clash 18-13 to French giants Toulouse in a replay of last season’s dramatic quarter-final that saw the game go to penalty shootouts.

Munster’s glittering history in Europe makes every Champions Cup clash important for the province as they hope to get off the mark for the season.

Familiar environment

Haley made his Premiership debut at Franklin’s Gardens during his time at Sale Sharks and is looking to use his experience in that environment to help his side on Saturday.

“I made my Premiership debut there, so that would be the one that springs to mind,” said Haley.

“I think Northampton went on to win the Premiership that year.

“I know it’s a number of years ago and I was playing for Sale, but even back then it was a great pitch, always a really nice surface.

“And they have really engaging support that get behind their team and in Europe you love to go to places like that, almost that cauldron environment when you go in there and you know you’re going to have to play your best rugby, otherwise you’re going to be on the back foot.

“You want supporters who are going to be engaged in singing, and that’s what they give to their team so it’s a really exciting prospect.”

Must win

Munster desperately needs to win the game to boost their knockout prospects, given they have a trip to Toulouse later on in the group stages.

“100%, but I think the nature of this tournament now it’s almost – I don’t want to say knockout rugby immediately – but you have to win all your games, you have to put yourself in the best spots’ possible,” Haley said.

“I know there’s eight teams that go through from each pool but you’re dead right, we need to go away to Northampton and win.

“And to be honest, Munster in Europe… there’s no other expectation other than to go over and win a game in Europe so yeah, that’s just par for the course I suppose.

“Obviously we lost to Toulouse at the weekend by a score but that is what it is. That’s done and in the past.

“Now we just need to make sure we go to Northampton to put our best foot forward, give our best performance, and go there to get the win.”

Munster struggled at the beginning of the season, dealing with the change in coaching staff as Graham Rowntree began his tenure as head coach at the start of this season.

Change of fortunes

However, a win against South Africa’ A’ in November kickstarted some good form for the side coming into December, which the team hope to maintain.

“I wouldn’t say that the pressure is off,” added Haley.

“The South Africa game was great, because what an occasion, but in reality you still go back to the league and I think we were 12th or wherever in the URC table, and we had two big jobs to do with Connacht at home and Edinburgh away and we needed the five points from both games.

“But what we do is we just back each other and probably the South Africa game just gave us confidence in everything that we were doing.

“Then we needed to back that up week on week for the following two weeks and we ended up getting the 10 points we needed.

“We’ve gone up to eighth now and that pushes us into Europe and then we played Toulouse at the weekend and lost by a score.”

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