Foley Happy, But More To Do
15th September 2014 By Munster Rugby
Following his first competitive win as Head Coach, we get the thoughts of Anthony Foley on Muster’s 21-10 win over Benetton Treviso at the Stadio Monigo in the Guinness PRO12.
Although happy with the Round 2 win and the marked improvement on the Edinburgh performance, Foley identified some areas to be worked on post the Italian job.
“Certainly in the first half, we played with a lot of intensity and physicality in our game. Good discipline, good use of ball, but unfortunately we didn’t turn around in the second half and have the same level of performance. We fell back in the penalty count and after that Treviso played a lot more rugby in our half. It was disappointing because any time we got into their half we looked very threatening.
“Our physicality was much better and the use of ball, we used it a lot better this week. In particular in the first half our ball carries were beating the first man we were getting them on the front foot and we had them under pressure.
“That said we still had some missed opportunities. There was a glaring one at half-time where Treviso intercepted a try scoring pass to Simon from Andrew, and there were missed opportunities again in the second half. We’ll now go away, mull over those and look to rectify them.”
The high penalty count at scrum time was something that hindered both sides over the 80 mins.
“We can control that better, we don’t need to be going to ground and we can’t allow a referee to make those decisions. We came out the worst end out of the penalty count even though at times it looked like we had the dominant scrum, we have to take those decisions away from the officials and keep them in our own hands.”
Although Friday night represented a good overall team performance for the team, there were a number of players whose performance stood out to the Head Coach.
“It was great to have James Cronin back, I thought he was a force up front. Duncan Williams created an awful lot in and around the base and had a good connection with Keats. Ivan Dineen stood up at 12 and put in a very physical performance for us. I thought Felix Jones as captain led the team well and gave a very solid performance out the back.”
Munster next face Zebre in Round 3 of the Guinness PRO12, this Friday night at Thomond Park, KO 19:30. As this game is not televised, come and experience Fortress Thomond first-hand, cheering on Munster.
*Family ticket – 2 adults & 2 kids under 16.
