Clayton McMillan has warned Munster\u2019s rollercoaster season cannot afford another tail-off in form, because another punch on the nose to Ulster on Saturday \u201cis probably a knockout\u201d for the province\u2019s URC play-off hopes.<\/p>\n
Munster climbed back into the all-important top half of the URC standings with three rounds of the regular season to go when they defeated Benetton in a 45-15 bonus-point victory in Treviso last Saturday. They now sit in sixth place, a point behind Ulster and just two adrift of a top-four finish which would guarantee a home draw for the play-off quarter-finals on the final weekend in May.<\/p>\n
Yet after failing to put together any consistent run of performances since winning their first five games under the incoming head coach, Munster could also fall out of the play-off race completely. They sit just two points from Connacht in ninth place and finishing outside the top eight would mean no knockout rugby and a first season without Champions Cup participation in the elite competition\u2019s 31-year history.<\/p>\n
Injury-hit Ulster visit Limerick looking to score a league double over their interpro rivals having delivered what McMillan described as one of the most painful defeats of his short tenure, a 28-3 loss in Belfast on January 2.<\/p>\n
Asked if that hurt could fuel his players in search of payback on Saturday, McMillan on Thursday said: \u201cYeah, well, if we get another punch on the nose it’s probably a knockout, isn’t it? We can’t afford that, so we don’t have a choice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to front up, and if revenge or any of those type of emotions come into it for individuals, then whatever it takes to get the job done.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me personally, as a coaching group, it was one of those performances you look back on and just get disappointed because you fell a long, long, long way short of what we know we’re capable of.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve lost plenty of other games this year where we\u2019ve actually shown a bit of fight. That was one where we fell well short, and those are the ones that linger in the memory longest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clayton McMillan has warned Munster\u2019s rollercoaster season cannot afford another tail-off in form, because another punch on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,11897,112],"class_list":["post-415189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-munster-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415189","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=415189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}