Bath’s 63-10 thrashing of Edinburgh leaves Munster with a decent chance of gaining a home tie in the Last 16
Jeremy Loughman(Image: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne)
Jeremy Loughman may have been born in Reno and schooled in Dublin but he has racked up almost 130 performances for Munster since joining them in 2017/18.
There is quiet efficiency there, returning from injury to start the last two rounds of the 2022/23 URC league- proper before starting all three of the knock-outs games .
Those were five away games too, Munster securing the title via Cape Town, Durban, Glasgow, Dublin and Cape Town again.
Moreover Loughman’s quiet efficiency in an Ireland shirt hasn’t gone unnoticed, not least as Andy Farrell frets about the Six Nations loosehead position in the face of Andrew Porter, Paddy McCarthy and sometime crossover Finlay Bealham being ruled out.
Loughman has five Ireland caps, five wins (Fiji 2022, England, Samoa 2023, Romania RWC2023 and Italy 6N 2024) and each one a step up class too.
How close is Loughman to the 2026 Six Nations if he is starting ahead of Michael Milne at Munster, Jack Boyne is starting for Leinster, Academy prop Billy Bohan is starting for Connacht and ineligible Australian Angus Bell starts for Ulster? Very close, you would think.
At 30 years-of-age Loughman hasn’t given up on Ireland rugby by any manner or means: “I think, yeah, there’s always that thought in the back of your mind and it’s definitely something I still have massive aspirations for so I wouldn’t shy away from that.
“But for me, personally, I believe that putting out my performances for Munster and putting the best foot forward there puts me in that position to take advantage of whatever comes but I’d be solely focused on Munster but definitely it’s something I wouldn’t shy away from.”
“Last year was a tough year, I definitely came out at the start of the year thinking I wanted to kind of pick up where I’d left off and hit the ground running and probably, personally, didn’t feel like I did it as well as I’d like to.
“But the last few weeks, I’ve got a lot of confidence, I think I’ve been playing some good rugby under Clayton McMillan, Sean Cronin, Alex Codling and I’m feeling much better and back to it now, really enjoying playing under everyone.
“I’ve really enjoyed where the team is playing and how everything’s going and, you know, I think everyone’s seen it, there’s those last few little bits to go maybe and I think we’re in a really good place as a team, it’s really enjoyable being here.”
What will have attracted Andy Farrell’s attention was Munster’s rock-solid scrum against Toulon – 11 in all, no penalties conceded, just one free – while there is second French side on the menu this evening, Castres, another noted for their big front-tow.
“That last week was probably one of our best weeks as a team in practice, how we trained, how we prepared, scrummaging wise, the level of competition from everyone in the sessions was really good. “You saw that feed into the game.
“And then also just as a pack, I feel we’re slowly getting that cohesion together, it’s starting to come right there and you’re starting to see that there – we’re really proud of that performance scrummaging wise against a really dangerous pack that brought a lot of challenges.”
Munster, he says, have been ironing out some teething problems.
“Just the connections between, say, second-row or the back-five as we call it and the front row.
“Maybe at the start of the season we had a few times where maybe our tight-head was hitting first and then our loose head, or vice versa, and those kinds of ripple effects just disrupt them and don’t allow us to use their power.
“So it’s about getting us all on the same page when we were hitting because if you have eight people that are 100 kilos, that’s 800 kilos hitting now once, and it is a lot more weight than 200 here, 100 there.
“So it’s all about getting that cohesion and those connections so that we can take advantage of that weight and power, it’s just those last little bits.”
There are lots of things starting to come together at Munster, last week was just unlucky, there is a hope there will be lift-off against Castres.
The name of the game now is discipline,” says Loughman touching on the disappointment of that last minute penalty last Sunday. “It allows teams, especially a big French team like that, into it.
“We gave them access with those penalties and gave them shots at goal or whatever so they are the frustrating ones, when you kind of let a team off the hook when you’re building a lot of pressure against them.
“Once we get those small things right, everything will start flowing and I’m really confident how the teams are going and where we’ll be playing in the next few weeks, just with how the performance we put in there it’s just those last few little touch ups.
“Castres have a big, physical pack so it will be confrontational up front for us, and then they have some electric players out wide and in the backs that can cause some real damage to us. If we give a messy ball or give them opportunities, they are dangerous.”