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Munster's van Graan on the speculation that he is wanted by Bath
By Liam Heagney
Munster boss Johann van Graan has addressed recent speculation that he is being courted to take over at Bath, the struggling Gallagher Premiership club who kick off their latest Heineken Champions Cup campaign with a trip to Leinster this Saturday. The possibility of the ex-Springboks assistant joining the English club was something that first emerged in 2016 when Bath were moving on from Mike Ford.
Nothing came of the speculation on that occasion, Bath instead opting to appoint Todd Blackadder as their director of rugby and Tabai Matson as head coach. The club has now reportedly revisited that situation following their dreadful start to the current Premiership season and the knowledge that van Graan is out of contract at Munster next summer.
The Irish province is reportedly keen on keeping their South African on beyond his current deal but the fact that no agreement has yet been reached on that two-year offer has led to speculation that his future could be elsewhere, namely at Bath.
Van Graan has refused to add fuel to fire ahead of this weekend's trip to Wasps in the Champions Cup, the Munster boss stating at his midweek media briefing: “In terms of my own future, as I have stated earlier in the season, I’m never going to get into any contract discussions or speculation over the media. So until there’s a decision about my future, I’m not going to speculate anything.”
It was late 2017 when van Grann initially arrived at Munster, taking over after Rassie Erasmus decided to head home to take over the Springboks. So satisfied were the Irish with his initial work that the original deal penned by van Graan through to 2020 was extended a year early in 2019, taking him through to the end of the 2021/22 season.
Now, with assistant coach Stephen Larkham having already decided to return to Australia to take over at the Brumbies, it remains to be seen whether van Grann will stick with Munster or twist and explore options elsewhere such as Bath.
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Latest Comments
If Pollock is in the squad, who gets left out?
"I think the Eddie Jones style development player approach is whats called for"
(i) Why?
(ii) The churn of players under Eddie Jones was generally considered to be quite a bad thing. Do you want Guy Pepper, Ted Hill, Ben Curry, etc. to give up and go to France like Marchant did?
(iii) England already have a really young squad, and especially a young back row. If they do badly in the six nations Borthwick will probably lose his job, so shouldn't they prioritise winning in the short term and developing the players already in the squad, rather than bringing in newer, younger, guys?
(iv) England have a development tour in June. If you really want Pollock to be in the squad prior to graduating the u20s, why not wait until the summer?
Go to commentsWhen England's defence was able to get into shape it could be dominant though (especially in the game against NZ). Is the number of tackles really the main issue?
I get that making loads of tackles is tiring, but so is building multi-phase attacks. I'm just worried England would get tired out from attacking, then struggle to get set when they're subjected to counter attacks.
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