No rush to install new Munster head coach with solid temporary support in place

Forwards coach Andi Kyriacou exited a fortnight ago, to be swiftly replaced by “consultant” Alex Codling, on secondment from Ireland's women's team, and permanent hires Mike Prendergast and Denis Leamy last week signed on for two more years in their roles in charge of attack and defence respectively.

It also emerged during Munster’s media day to discuss this Saturday’s Champions Cup pool opener at home to Stade Francais, that head of athletic performance Ged McNamara was absent on “personal leave” with the IRFU’s head of athletic performance and science Nick Winkelman currently assisting Munster’s strength and conditioning staff. Also present have been the Irish women’s leadership and culture lead Sean Ryan and IRFU head of high performance coach development Darragh Sheridan.

Yet while Boyd, a former Super Rugby-winning head coach of the Hurricanes in his native New Zealand and ex-Northampton Saints director of rugby has been hired on a temporary basis to provide additional support to Munster’s coaching staff, Costello explained there was no rush to find Rowntree’s replacement with such a solid, if temporary management framework.

Costello enjoyed a welcome URC victory over a potentially tricky Lions side last Saturday in his first competitive game at the helm and has been impressed with the way the backroom team has gone about identifying the areas that had led to such a poor start to the season, when Munster won two and lost four of their opening six matches before the November Test break.

The head coach search, he said, had no timeframe to reach its conclusion with an appointment.

“It's just ongoing. Yeah, and it'll be all around the right person,” Costello said.

“That's not me being vague. That's literally where it's at. And I think it's important that, look, I've got to be careful because I don't want to come across as biased but the coaching group and the wider support team are doing an unbelievable job, having to navigate and negotiate and manage quite a bit of change.

“And they've just done a really good job at creating consistency and stability over the last month.

“So the beauty of that is now we get somebody to come in and can add to that rather than maybe, you know, coming in a month ago before we had time to get into that flow."

With Prendergast remaining the perceived leading candidate to step up from attack to replace Rowntree, Costello was asked how important previous head coaching experience was for the incoming boss.

“Again, it probably depends on the candidate,” he said. “You guys will have speculated about who might be, you know, a candidate within the building.

“And there'll be lots of interest outside the building. There has been and will be, we won't get into individual candidates. But again, it's looking at the CV, the experience, the fit.

“And I think us being at a stage where we're a few years into our integrated model and our alignment as a club and we really are zipped up top to bottom.

“And there's been a bit of turbulence in the last period, but we're very happy with the direction of travel because a lot of work has gone into that.

“So it's finding the right person that will come in and complement that, add to it and evolve to that. That's probably the essential criteria.” 

In the meantime, Munster will lean on the vastly experienced Boyd, whose four-year tenure with Northampton helped transform them back into title contenders, with his mentoring of eventual successor Phil Dowson delivering the English Premiership last season, two seasons after stepping down and return to New Zealand as the club’s long-distance consultant.

His title role, Performance Consultant, will be performed exactly as it reads, Costello said with on-field involvement at training, not any involvement in the ongoing search for a permanent head coach.

“No, everything will continue as normal. So the coaching functions will be exactly the same, my role will continue as interim, Mike doing the attack, Denis doing defence.

“What he's here for, is literally to support us. and that's probably where he stands out, I suppose in terms of his expertise, he's doing that now with the Highlanders, with Tonga, with World Rugby, with New Zealand.

“So definitely coach development would be one area he’d be really strong in but, but right across all areas, our performance support.

“Can he add another set of eyes as a sounding board to bounce things off and keep adding to what we're doing at the moment.

“I had some really good conversations with him over the last week and I suppose it's really important like anything, we're massive into making sure we've got real clarity, everybody knows what the role and function is and clear on our purpose is.

“We had a couple of really long conversations around that, where we are, what the environment is like, where our game is at.

“So he's got real good context and then with his experience that he has and he's unbelievably sound as well as a smart operator.

“So that's the thing, he really gets the context and he'll have that time probably to think about that before he comes over later in the week. And then probably adds to us on the ground.”