Van Graan counts cost of Munster win

Emotions were mixed when Munster reconvened in Limerick yesterday after a weekend which saw them progress to a European quarter-final for the 18th time.

Van Graan counts cost of Munster win

Emotions were mixed when Munster reconvened in Limerick yesterday after a weekend which saw them progress to a European quarter-final for the 18th time.

There was both delight and relief at their achievement following a substandard performance when defeating Exeter Chiefs on Saturday but there was also a huge sense of deep regret following injuries sustained by key personnel in achieving a place in the last eight.

Second-row Tadhg Beirne misses the first two games in the Six Nations Championship due to a damaged knee while Tommy O’Donnell’s shoulder injury which forced him off at half-time is more serious than first suspected.

“At first, he thought it was a stinger,” said van Graan. “But it seems to be serious, he is seeing a specialist and I don’t want to guess, but I think he might be out for a long time again. He has worked so hard to come back early (from an ankle injury) and he really played well over the past two weeks. If he is out long-term, I will be gutted for him.”

There’s a general belief that if Munster had to travel in the European quarter-finals, then they could hardly have done better than to draw Edinburgh as their opposition. Van Graan quickly dismissed that talk.

“They are a quality, quality side,” he insists. “If you just look at the history of Europe, you don’t win a quarter-final easily so we are under no illusion as to what awaits us at the end of March. But therein lies the most important thing, it is at the end of March and there is a whole Six Nations to take place. Our focus is on the Dragons (in the PRO14 on Saturday afternoon in Newport).

“One line-out steal, one kick at goal, that one point we have spoken about so many times, that is the difference in big games. I don’t know if you saw the NFL on Sunday night, it comes down, in all sports, to small margins. That is why we have to work day in and day out. Hopefully, once you get to the knock-out stages, you use it to your advantage.

“Look, there are eight teams left in the competition and everybody wants to knock each other out. There are four quarter-finals, we are in one of them. Before we get to that in two months’ time, we, as a squad, have got to grow, we have to use our squad without the Irish lads. It is a great time of year. The focus is on the Six Nations but we want to improve every single day and every single week. Hopefully, we can do that this week.”

The nerve-wracking affair that was the Exeter game may be recent history now but van Graan is happy to look back and put the experience to good use in the weeks and months ahead.

“We knew from the outset that this was going to be a really tough pool, playing the French champions back-to-back and the Premiership leaders as well as Gloucester, a team that has been going very well throughout the season,” he said. “Getting out of our pool was something we set out to do and we have done that.”

When the comparison in the level of performance between the clearcut away win over Gloucester and the less than convincing display against Exeter was pointed out, van Graan countered:

“This was a different type of game. This was pressure-cooker stuff. We made a few unforced errors in the first-half and knew that we had to improve a lot in the second.

They put a lot of pressure on us with their line-speed. But on the positive side of it, I thought after the line-out steal that we gained a lot of momentum and ended the game well.

It hasn’t escaped van Graan’s notice that two of the three players involved in Billy Holland’s brilliant line-out catch on the Chiefs throw that may well have saved the day only came into the game as replacements.

“It’s one of the moments of our season,” he stated. “It’s credit to all involved in the line-out analysis. Most importantly, a jumper can only jump as high as the two supporters lift him. If you look at the height that Billy got from CJ (Stander) in the front and Jeremy (Loughman) at the back it was a season-defining moment.

“The way that we then got out of our half, and transferred momentum, it was massive.”

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