Van Graan lauds Casey’s ‘massive heart’ after No 9 shines on first start
JOHANN van Graan hailed the performance of Craig Casey after the rookie scrum-half impressed on his first senior start for the province.
The 20-year-old has been tipped for a big future at Munster and the former Ardscoil Rís student got through a promising 64-minute shift at the Sportsgrounds as Van Graan’s under-strength side stormed to a 19-14 win.
Casey is one of the smallest backs in the country, but Van Graan was impressed with the youngster’s contribution in Galway.
‘He’s a small man with a massive heart,’ said the Munster head coach.
‘He prepared well. He’s been waiting for the start for quite a while and he knew that after this European block he was going to get his shot.
‘Some of the things that people don’t see – like managing the forwards, I think he did that pretty well. The way he attacked and defended off scrums was very good.
‘I’m really thrilled for him.’ Munster went into this interprovincial derby shorn of 18 players due to international call-ups and injury, but the province ground out an impressive victory over Connacht thanks to their brute force of the pack, suffocating defence and the metronomic goal-kicking of JJ Hanrahan.
Last night’s win sees Munster increase their lead at the top of Conference B to four points ahead of next Saturday’s clash with Leinster in Limerick.
‘We’ve got 18 guys not available for selection tonight, for various different reasons,’ added Van Graan. ‘We, as a group, said that
you have to back your performances up after Europe.
‘We had two massive weeks against Saracens, two big battles and the team know how good Connacht are here.
‘They haven’t lost here for a very long time and even some of the top European teams have come second here, so we knew that we needed to play well and we prepared really well from our side.
‘All credit to the playing group. I thought our play went pretty well. We put them under pressure. I thought we put a lot of pressure on their lineout.
‘We did one or two things different defensively which I thought put them under pressure.
‘The one we spoke about this week was using our opportunities –we literally got one a few yards away from the try-line and we got seven from it and the scoreline was 19-14 and we won by five points so it was a massive moment in the game.
‘Some of the younger lads did really well.
‘Some of the plays off lineouts, like that break from Shane Daly – we are improving even in these conditions but I think the most important thing was the composure shown by the leadership group at the back end of the game,’ he added.
Meanwhile Connacht head coach Andy Friend could not hide his frustration with his side’s performance.
The hosts made a flurry of line breaks, but unforced errors cost them dearly. In the end, the hosts had to settle for a losing bonus point thanks to replacement Jack Carty’s late try.
‘The way we played, I’m delighted we got something out of it,’ he admitted.
‘We just said it down there in the sheds: we were poor. We made too many errors, again, so to sneak a point out of that is probably pleasing at the end.’