By myleftboot
December 12 2019

  It seems a very long time ago when we enjoyed the hospitality of the Mighty Munster at their second home of Musgrave Park for a friendly  in 2007. I recall Paul Warwick seemingly winning the game single handedly, and  a pub crawl of the ground with an affiliate club having their clubhouse in each corner shortening many travelling fans night on the town!  After that came a torrid time at Coventry the season that followed, my first, heart-breaking taste of the rarefied atmosphere of H Cup knockout rugby, and the pantomime villain Alan Quinlan getting the better of HRH to steal victory. Since then, until the recent double knockout, generally the home team has won. Here’s hoping!  

Munster come to us this weekend gunning for top spot, desperately in need of the head start the Munster roar gives this far from vintage squad. Every week under Larkham you suspect will add more variety in attack, but with Carberry still a week or two away from a return, and still no date suggested for Bleyendaal’s return, one suspects, especially with Van Graans concern in interviews this week about how they might cope with a windy Allianz Park, it’s going to be the bog standard Pump and Thump from them. Botha picked up three weeks for a forearm smash to the Duracell Bunny, but Cloete should be fit to replace him. More of a concern would appear to be Kilcoyne’s absence if they plan to bash us. O’Mahony needs to put in a big one with the Irish Captaincy seemingly up for grabs but he so often resorts to just niggle and whinge against us.

Simple pride would dictate a slightly stronger Sarries team this week. On a more even surface, and some precious minutes under his belt last week, Max Malins will surely have a bigger part to play. With similar conditions fairly likely, Jamie George seems pretty nailed on this week, with many wise heads suggesting straighter arrows could have seen us upset the odds last week. If the sides were unchanged, you would probably be looking at a close win for the home side. The only problem would be who would feel most at home with the typical Munster hordes not likely to be that affected by the proximity to Christmas. With the expected reinforcement hinted at by Mark McCall this week, we can hope for a win. By more than seven would be good, but if the wind behaves, who knows, it ain’t over til its mathematically impossible!