NEW COACH WORKING ON FIRST TOUCH
He can gain an insight into Munster’s famous DNA
PESSIMISM surrounding Munster’s mid-season handover of the reins cannot disappear simply because we finally got confirmation last Wednesday week that one South African will give way to his fellow countrymen. The winter rugby stakes in Ireland are too high.
Take the December 9 home European game against a Leicester now coached by Matt O’Connor, the former Leinster boss who will surely be bulling to make a point on his first return since his unceremonious IRFU axing.
This match in 50 days’ time will be the proverbial baptism of fire for Johann van Graan, Rassie Erasmus’ Munster successor, and his honeymoon period will certainly be short-lived if things don’t go right on that maiden Saturday night.
A new Munster coach losing his debut European game isn’t unprecedented in the province’s 23 seasons. Two-time boss Declan Kidney in 1997 and 2005, Alan Gaffney in 2002 and Rob Penney a decade later in 2012 all had miserable experiences when initially taking charge. But those losses all happened on the road (Harlequins, Sale, Gloucester and Racing respectively), cushioning the level of pain.
Losing first up at Thomond Park would prompt greater howls of derision, though, hence the feeling that Van Graan has boxed cleverly this week in quickly getting himself to Limerick and shadowing Erasmus during a home game Champions Cup week.
Van Graan — who goes by the nickname ‘Aap’ — could have kicked for touch and opted to instead check things out in the next fortnight during Pro14 matchweeks against Connacht and Dragons before the threeweek break in the season. It would have made for a less intense intro- duction to what he will inherit.
However, his arrival this week leading into the maelstrom of tomorrow’s home European clash with Racing means the element of surprise can’t be a distracting factor when he has to run the show himself in seven weeks’ time when Champions Cup round three comes into view.
In effect, there couldn’t be a better week than this for Van Graan, who has never previously been a head coach anywhere, to gain a true insight into Munster’s DNA, SPORTSFILE as their pressurised European schedule — a six-day turnaround between a match in the south of France and one back home in Limerick — coinciding with the first anniversary of the death of late head coach Anthony Foley.
The South African’s inclination to muck in and gain his vital first impression now during these hectic but poignant few days is a promising sign that he means business, but there can be no guarantee his appointment will be a success when his deal elapses in summer 2020.
Erasmus is a hard act to follow, quitting as coach with a 72 per cent success rate in Europe with Munster (he will sign off on 75 per cent if Racing are beaten), and the supposed merits of Van Graan’s CV will swiftly come in for scrutiny as the province looks to continue its revival by reaching the knockout stages for a second successive season.
The 37-year-old’s background isn’t the professional game norm, his inexperience partly the reason why he joins Munster as only their head coach and not as director of rugby which was the all-encompassing job spec Erasmus had.
Practically all 30-somethings these days who coach professionally do so having retired after playing the sport professionally. Look at Munster’s assistants, Jerry Flannery, 39, and Felix Jones, 30, both former Ireland internationals.
Van Graan, though, never achieved on the pitch, his route to prominence seeing him start out as a Loftus Versfeld ballboy in the Naas Botha era. His father Barend’s role as the Super Rugby Bulls CEO meant he was constantly around the place growing up and it was a punt by Heyneke Meyer, giving him a role as a Bulls statistician in an era when playby-play information wasn’t readily available at the touch of a laptop button, that set him on the journey that now takes him to Thomond Park via the Springboks where his assistant coach role ended this month with a 62 per cent success rate (41 wins and four draws in 69 games, a trophyless era where the nadir was the 2015 World Cup defeat to Japan).
Life on the banks of the Shannon with wife Melissa and their young family will surely be an enjoyable contrast from Pretoria’s hustle and bustle, but how van Graan transitions into being the Munster boss will be crucial as he settles in.
Unlike Erasmus, a largely private individual (for instance, you’d never see him having a coffee in the melting pot that is the university campus sport bar adjacent to the team’s training pitch), Van Graan arrives with a very personable reputation. One of the lads, given how frequently he was a groomsman at players’ weddings in South Africa due to an affable ability to connect as a friend with those he coached as an assistant.
Now set to call the shots for the first time, he can’t afford to be that friendly an operator. Not when the stakes are so high.