{"id":11914,"date":"2025-09-10T10:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T10:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/11914\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T10:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T10:08:11","slug":"clayton-mcmillan-expects-new-leaders-to-emerge-as-he-puts-his-stamp-on-munster-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/11914\/","title":{"rendered":"Clayton McMillan expects new leaders to emerge as he puts his stamp on Munster \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the ongoing Rugby Championship testifies, Munster<\/a> and the other provinces have a pretty good strike rate when appointing coaches. Clayton McMillan, the former Chiefs coach who has evidently been making a very positive impression over the last six weeks of preseason at University of Limerick<\/a>, looks like another prized capture. <\/p>\n

The former policeman, who was a handy fast bowler as well as a number eight before embarking on a varied coaching career in New Zealand, has seemingly been full of fresh ideas. Those ideas have enthused the Munster squad ahead of their second preseason friendly against Johann van Graan\u2019s Premiership champions Bath at Musgrave Park on Friday (kick-off 8pm). <\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I\u2019ve never been a coach to sit down and say \u2018what\u2019s my coaching philosophy?\u2019. My overarching philosophy, which I haven\u2019t written down, is that I\u2019m all about player empowerment and trying to promote people to the next level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a big part of my job is to try get as many Munster players in green jerseys<\/a>. There\u2019s a lot to go into that. If Munster want to be successful, there\u2019s two ways you can do it. You can buy some talent in, and two, you can produce and develop it. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some challenges around buying some talent, and I\u2019m not suggesting that\u2019s what we need to do. If you don\u2019t have that ability or it\u2019s not the approach you want to take, you need to develop it. <\/p>\n

\u201cHaving robust pathways, talent ID, pathway systems and growing your game from the bottom up is really important. That\u2019s my basic philosophy around rugby, how to get people to the next level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe high-performance piece, and something I\u2019m happy to share, is that I believe leaders create culture. Culture is driven by behaviours and behaviours determine outcomes.<\/p>\n

\"MunsterMunster defence coach Denis Leamy and head coach Clayton McMillan. Photograph: Morgan Treacy\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you see (in a game) is the easy part. That\u2019s just the performance. Everything that goes into the performance is largely driven by what you do day-to-day. We\u2019re driving hard standards and behaviours that will keep us in good stead when we\u2019re under the blowtorch on game day. That has to be driven by myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be fair, these blokes want to be better. They don\u2019t have any problems around understanding what\u2019s important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wants Munster to retain solidity up front and be a team \u201cwho will scrap for everything\u201d \u2013 trademarks of the province\u2019s heydays.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ireland suffer at the hands of a vengeful New Zealand<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about being ambitious when we have earned the right to do it, but also being smart enough to know when we need to go to a tactical kicking game and be a little bit more conservative in the way that we approach things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helped by a week\u2019s reconnaissance mission in March, McMillan recognises Munster\u2019s ability to raise their game away to, say, Toulon or La Rochelle, if not so on less high-profile days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something I talked about on day one,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt almost seems to be ingrained in the Munster psyche that when our backs are against the wall or when we get into really big games that really matter, we have the ability to go to another level.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s admirable, but we can\u2019t have those days and then the next week turn up and lose to a team that, for all intents and purposes, we should beat. It\u2019s about not necessarily judging ourselves on the days when we\u2019re at our best. It\u2019s about judging ourselves when we\u2019re at our worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

As head coach, McMillan clearly wants things done his way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely have a preference around some things and I\u2019ve been putting those suggestions forward. We debate and we don\u2019t always agree but at some stage you\u2019ve got to commit and move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of good stuff being done here,\u201d he added. \u201cBut one of the reasons why people brought me in is to be a little bit of a disrupter; to bring a different set of eyes and look at things a little bit differently and to challenge the way things are being done.<\/p>\n

\"MunsterMunster head coach Clayton McMillan during the warm-up before last week’s friendly against Gloucester. Photograph: Billy Stickland\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that we have to change. It just means that we may have to think about the opportunities that we may be missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMillan recalled that after guiding an All Blacks XV to a 38-24 win over Munster in November 2024, he presumed that would be the last time he\u2019d ever see the Castletroy Hotel. \u201cNow I live probably 500 metres up the road. But the world moves in mysterious ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was \u201cpretty happy\u201d at the Chiefs before being offered \u201can opportunity to come here to grow myself as a coach, to give an experience to my family\u201d, he said, adding that he decided to take the plunge after consulting Rua Tipoki, Rob Penney and Joe Schmidt among others.<\/p>\n

McMillan and his wife Natalia, son Ari (16) and daughter Peata (14) have had \u201ca smooth transition\u201d, he said, adding the structure is \u201cvery similar\u201d to working with the Chiefs\u2019 All Blacks players, although adapting to international breaks will be challenging.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged the loss of Peter O\u2019Mahony and Conor Murray, but countered: \u201cSometimes, when you have an absence of leaders who have been here for a long time, others emerge that you maybe didn\u2019t think were leaders,\u201d citing John Hodnett as an example.<\/p>\n

McMillan also confirmed Tadhg Beirne will retain the captaincy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the ongoing Rugby Championship testifies, Munster and the other provinces have a pretty good strike rate when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11896,61,60,11897,112],"class_list":["post-11914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-clayton-mcmillan","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-munster-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}