The 'brilliant' poetic way Munster have described travelling fans
Such is the appetite for Munster to win a first trophy since 2011, approximately 2,000 of the Irish club's fans will be in Cape Town for this Saturday’s URC final versus the Stormers.
It’s no mean feat given that it wasn’t until May 13 that the grand final fixture was confirmed to take place in South Africa on the back of Graham Rowntree’s team ambushing the first seed Leinster with a dramatic 16-15 late drop goal win in Dublin.
Before Jack Crowley swung his boot, it was the Stormers who were set to be travelling, heading north for a 2023 final at Aviva Stadium against Leo Cullen's men. However, a single kick shredded that expectation and for the second season in succession, the much-improved URC has now boiled down to a single 80-minute showpiece at the DHL Stadium.
For Munster, qualification for the decider means so much. Not since 2008, when they lifted their second Heineken Cup title in Cardiff, have they reached a European final and the league has been a tale of woe ever since they denied Leinster a 2011 league and European double at Thomond Park.
There have been wounding league final defeats versus Glasgow (2015 in Belfast), Scarlets (2017 in Dublin) and Leinster (2021 back in Dublin), but is their 12-year trophy famine now about to end at a sold-out stadium in Cape Town?
Munster have 2,000 good reasons to believe so as they won’t be lacking support in the 55,000-capacity crowd, a backing Denis Leamy is most appreciative of. Having thrived in the back row during the glory years, he knows damn well what the roars of approval from the stands can do for a team. Coming to the end of his first year on Rowntree’s coaching staff, that rapport with the fans from his playing days is seen as being just important now that he is an assistant coach.
“I’m being told it’s more like 2,000 Munster fans, which is fantastic,” he said from Cape Town when asked about the level of matchday support the team will have on the ground in South Africa. “It’s incredible that we have that much travelling support from Munster fans from all over the world.
“We talk about it all the time, it just goes without saying, they will travel from Australia, America, Middle East, from Ireland and England, and it’s just fantastic that we will have that number of fans there.
“Ah look, it is brilliant to go on the road and come to a place like this. You want to give people like that, who have travelled out, a performance. Obviously, we want to perform for ourselves and everyone that is back home. That goes without saying. That’s part of being in the Munster environment.
“The whole Munster region and beyond, the diaspora means an awful lot to us. We are very conscious of what we represent, both in the present and in the past.”
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Some interesting stats that just proved what my first impression of NZ’s drive to speed up Rugby Union would amount to - fine margins here and there to cut a few seconds off the game and nothing else. To do more there would have to be wholesale changes to the game like doing away with scrums, lineouts and bringing back the ELV’s to have free kicks instead of penalties. Very little chance of it happening but, in the end, Ruby Union would be a 15-man version of Rugby League. There are reasons why Rugby Union is globally more popular that Rugby League and what NZ are also not considering is the unintended consequences of what they want to achieve. This will end up turning Rugby Union into a low value product that will not be acceptable to the paying public. If people really wanted a sped-up version of rugby, then why is Rugby Union globally way more popular than Rugby League? Rugby lovers all over the world are also not stupid and have seen through what NZ are trying to achieve here, selfishly to bring back their glory days of dominance over every other nation and compete with Rugby League that is dominant in Australasia. NH countries just don’t have the cattle, or the fantastic weather needed to play like NZ SR franchises do so good luck to whoever has to try and convince the NH to accept going back to the days of NZ dominance and agreeing to wreck the game in the process. I have serious doubts on the validity of the TV stats presented by GP. All they did was expand the broadcasting base by putting it on free to air, not even any indication of arresting the continued drop in viewership. Match day attendance goes hand in hand with broadcast ratings so if there was an increase in the one you should expect to see it with the other. However, the drop in match day attendance is very evident to the casual highlights package viewer. The only club who looks to be getting solid attendance is the Drua. I am calling it now that NZ’s quest to speed up the game will fail and so will the vote on the 20-minute red card.
Go to commentsIt’s a good, timely wake up call for NZ Rugby (seem to be a few of them lately!) - sort out the bureaucratic nonsense at board level. We can’t expect to stay the number one option without keeping fans/players engaged. We’ve obviously been bleeding players to league for years but can’t let the floodgates open (although I think this headline is hyperbolic as it’s a result of a recent Warriors pathways system where they are tracking things more closely) Understand the need to focus boys on rugby if they’re at a proud rugby school too, don’t think it’s harsh at all re Barakat in Hamilton. Reward the committed players with squad positions. An elite 1st XV system in NZ has done more for league than they even realise, think it’s good to protect our game further.
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