Munster Rugby v DHL Stormers Match Programme

GREENCORE MUNSTER RUGBY
ACADEMY UPDATE
It’s a big weekend for the Greencore Munster
Rugby Academy with the men’s AIL season
kicking off.
Academy players and members of the NTS
(National Talent Squad) missed out on the
valuable opportunity to line out for their clubs
last season due to the cancellation of the AIL.
We spoke to Academy Manager Ian Costello for
the latest news from the HPC.
On players training and playing with their
clubs…
“We have been in constant contact with the club
coaches and we have released players back at
various stages throughout the last few weeks.
When a game was cancelled, we released
everybody back and we had a down week and
released everybody back. That was all with a
view to acknowledging how important it is for
these guys to play rugby and how important it
is for them to play club rugby.
“As soon as we knew who wasn’t going to be
involved with the senior team and available for
club action, we sat down and spoke with the
clubs and there will be a lot of guys playing
in the All Ireland League over the next three
weeks.
“The next phase for the Academy players and
NTS players is to transfer the work they’ve done
over the last couple of months onto the pitch
and give a good account of themselves.
“The exciting bit for us a coaching group is
we get to split up and will watch them all play
live over the weekends. Our analyst Elliot
Corcoran will cut that footage and it adds to that
knowledge base that we have on players.
“There are a few things that are tricky logistically,
they have to come out of the bubble for a number
of days but the IRFU have accommodated that
so hopefully we’ll see a number of Academy
players playing for their clubs right across
the country this weekend. Everyone is really
excited and we really understand the value
of these lads playing in very competitive club
games and how important that is to their longterm
development on and off the pitch.
“The relationships we have with our clubs is
so important and we’re just looking forward
to seeing the lads play this week and looking
forward to getting out to watch some quality
club rugby.“
On young players in action for the Munster
Development XV…
“With so many guys out of rugby for so long
because of the gap with Covid, we made the
decision to run a residential camp in UL with
our U20s and some late developers. We had
a very enjoyable and successful programme
there for a couple of months and on the back of
that we had a game against the Leinster U20s
and had a really good win in UL.
“We then had a couple of internal games against
our U19s because, frustratingly, we had some
other games called off due to Covid.
“It was great for that squad to continue,
supplemented by some of the Academy players,
into a development game against Ulster and
that was an excellent win up in Dublin.
“Last weekend against Leinster a few more
Academy players came in along with some
of the young senior players who came in
for game-time, which is the beauty of those
development games. Unfortunately, that was
a very frustrating game where we struggled. It
was the opposite to the Ulster game, where we
started very well, and quickly found ourselves
14-0 down. It was a disappointing end to the
programme but it was a very enjoyable and
successful three months.
“The beauty of that is hopefully we have
identified the next layer of talent and the
majority of those players will populate our
NTS (National Talent Squad) programme and
populate our Academy going forward, and
that was the main aim of that programme. We
learned a lot about the players and have set
ourselves up nicely for the next 12 months.”
30 WWW.MUNSTERRUGBY.IE