Where Munster need to improve despite win over Glasgow Warriors

Despite saying his side played some “beautiful” rugby in their victory against Glasgow Warriors on Friday night, Munster head coach Graham Rowntree is not entirely happy with their performance.

Rowntree admitted to being frustrated by his side’s struggles during the mauls in their 40-29 triumph at Musgrave Park.

And although the United Rugby Championship‘s defending champions outscored their opponents by six tries to five, what is particularly concerning for Rowntree is that all Glasgow Warriors‘ five-pointers were scored from their devastating line-out maul.

“We looked sharp [in attack], didn’t we?,” he told RTE. “We were really sharp in attack. Discipline, we’ll look at how we’re giving them mauls at our own try-line and we have to be better there.

‘Forwards have some work to do’

“I said to the lads, we have some work to do as a forward pack, otherwise we’ll be defending mauls all season. We’ve got some work to do there, but it stems back to our discipline around the middle of the field.”

Rowntree admitted to being happy with how Munster‘s attack improved further after an impressive effort against Leinster in their previous match, but feels their issues at the maul “tainted” the end result against the Warriors.

“Beautiful, beautiful, we got our game going. We had momentum last week, even though the scoreline didn’t reflect it, we had momentum in our attack and took it through to this week,” he added. “It’s what we asked and spoke about all week. It’s tainted for me, with those maul tries.

“They’ve got good plays off the maul, which holds eyes, holds defenders and they stack backs behind the maul so you have guys hanging off the maul looking at them rather than looking in here [at the maul].

“We’ve got to be better, we’ll fix it. We’ve done it before, it’s a technical issue and we’ll get it right.”

Meanwhile, Rowntree had special praise for Thomas Ahern, who moved from lock to flank recently, and crossed for a brace of tries which earned him the official man-of-the-match award after Friday’s game.

“We’d spoken about him, even when he was in the second-row, about using him on the edge of the field more,” said Rowntree. “And then we made the decision last week before the Leinster game to put him back to six.

Shining in his new position

“I remember telling him the morning of training, ‘How about six?’, and he just lit up. Tom’s not that expressive as a person, but I was impressed by it, how he’s taken to the position. It’s good, he’s not perfect, but he’s showing to be a very versatile back five player.

“He was a full-back not long ago, no it does play into his strengths and you can see he’s enjoying his game.

“I’m chuffed with how he’s going. We’ve got some serious competition in that back-five now.”

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