Munster interim head coach Ian Costello said he was astonished to find three players surpassed their personal bests on the speed front during Saturday’s Champions Cup win over Saracens, which he described as their best performance of the season.
Costello, the head of rugby operations at the province who has temporarily stepped into the top job following the departure of Graham Rowntree in October, said the data showed the effort expended by the players in taking control of their own Champions Cup destiny.
“I won’t say who they were because that would not be right, but we had three guys exceed their PBs from a speed point of view. That’s something I’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen more than one person in a game hit over 100 per cent to their max,” said Costello.
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“And that tells me a lot. It tells me about our commitment, the mindset, the attitude, and what it means to guys. And we’ve been building that now for the last seven or eight weeks. We have really focused on how we train, how we prepare, and freshness was probably the biggest thing going into the Saracens game. We were going to ask guys to go to a place physically, mentally, emotionally that they were going to have to put their bodies on their line.
“We made sure that they were equipped with the tools to do that, and they delivered on Saturday night. We have a lot of data and metrics that tell us that was, from a work rate point of view, the best game we’ve had in the season by a distance and also what we saw with our eye, you know, the scramble, the catch-up, the chase, the speed up the ground, the physicality. So it’s a lovely blend of what you can see and also the data, that’s there as evidence as well. I suppose it all culminated in a really passionate performance.”
Munster head to Northampton this Saturday in control of their own destiny and could even have qualified by the time the game kicks off at 3.15pm at Franklin’s Gardens, depending on results elsewhere.
“It’s in our own hands and we’d have taken your hand off for that going into last Saturday,” added Costello. “We didn’t expect Northampton to lose. We probably felt very confident about us having a strong performance and a result on Saturday. But, yeah, we found ourselves in that great position where all things can happen, but it’s in our own hands to make sure we qualify and have a home run [in the last 16], which would be outstanding.”
Costello also revealed that they are looking at extending Chris Boyd’s time with Munster. The New Zealander came in at the start of December as a performance consultant for two months.
“He’s here till the end of the month, which was the original agreement, and now we’re having conversations around what that looks like for the rest of the season and Chris and our commitments as well. He’s been excellent. He has a wealth of knowledge, experience, and he’s got a really good manner that’s really easy to work with. He works in the background. Personally I found him to be a great sounding board in terms of they need to sense, check things, ask really good questions.”
Boyd spent four seasons up to 2022 as director of rugby with Northampton so his experience is even more valuable this weekend. “He obviously knows them very well,” said Costello. “They knocked us out of the Champions Cup last year, they’re the reigning Premiership champions and they probably play one of the most exciting brands of rugby across any competition.
“So it’s a whole different threat than what it was last weekend and one that we’re really excited about, but, we also know that if you get it wrong against Northampton you get punished.
“I suppose we can see certain things in terms of reviews through video, et cetera, but also what Chris is able to do is he understands their identity, their DNA, which is a really important thing when you go head to head with an opponent because we’ve got to be clear about who we are, what we stand for, what we represent. But having a better insight into them means we can target certain things to take away from them or certain things to capitalise on.”
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