Quality Is Key For Academy

With the latest signings announced earlier today Academy Manager Peter Malone gives his thoughts on the newest members to join the Munster Rugby Academy.

"It’s a very young academy this year, we’re bringing a lot of players in from a younger age group. There’s been a big turnover of players, moving to the senior squad and moving on. We see it as a younger academy with a lot of potential so it may be a year or two before we see the same numbers moving through to senior level.

I think it’s an intake of great promise; there are guys there who have had excellent performances for Munster and Irish age-grade teams over the last two years. We’ve targeted a few positions where we might see needs for further down the line in one or two years.

Prop wise, we’re bringing in one prop, Shannon's Niall Horan, but there’s always the potential to bring in more based on performances. We’re very slow to contract academy players straight out of school, especially in the front row as we would like to see how they perform first at an age-grade level or in senior rugby.

There’s no fixed date with academy contracts and we offer contracts post Interpros if performances are good enough and we’ll be considering that again this year so that’s an important factor. We are constantly looking for players who are performing well and if those performances are good we will certainly look to bring guys in, so there are always opportunities there.