Change Not For The Sake Of Change

Although there may be wholesale changes in the Munster match day squad for Friday’s Magners League game against Edinburgh tomorrow evening, it’s not a question of change for the sake of change or a knee jerk re-action to defeat in Treviso last Sunday.

After naming the squad earlier today coach Tony McGahan explained the rationale that sees eleven changes to the starting XV. “Last week we travelled to Italy with a number of players who hadn't been available to us for the previous three weeks because of first, their involvement with Ireland A and then, in the week of the game, with the
National squad. So the idea of them starting wasn't practical.”

“However,” he added, “that gave us the opportunity to continue to expose a number of  players at the professional level.  The short turnaround and availabilty of national squad players has seen a number of changes to a game that takes on greater importance after dropping three points last weekend.”

Four of those introduced in the second half in Treviso – Wian du Preez, Mick O'Driscoll, Donnacha Ryan and Denis Hurley are in the starting line-up this time around along with the three players McGahan refers to, Ronan O'Gara, Peter Stringer and Denis Leamy – captain tomorrrow – and it was O'Driscoll who kick started the Munster come back last Sunday that almost saw Munster snatch a 'get out of jail' victory.

“It was a very strange sort of game,”O'Driscoll said.” We had loads of possession in the first half and nothing to show for it. Then in the second we lost players and things went badly wrong for us. But if we're to take positives, it has to be getting the younger lads getting out there. Then how we came back to put ourselves in a position where we could have won it, when at one stage earlier it looked all over.”

“There's no point in us beating ourslves up. That game's done with. If we learn from it we can move on positively. We need to continue on tomorrow from where we finished last weekend. Keep our focus for the run in because the games we've left are going to be harder and we really want to be involved in the knock-out stages.”

“We know what Edinburgh bring to the table, but tomorrow night is about us. It might sound cliched but we need to concentrate on our performance, the way we want to play and the result will take care of itself.”