‘No excuse, but Munster were better in conditions’ — SA A coach Stick

The South African A team was undone by the conditions at a wet and windy Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork on Thursday night, as Munster played them to perfection to emerge as deserved 28-14 winners in their end-of-year-tour match.

SA A head coach Mzwandile Stick was very impressed with the home side’s performance, and admitted that many of his players would have learnt a lot from a difficult game in tough conditions in front of a passionate full house on the night.

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“They played the conditions very well and you can see they were used to them. Not to use that as an excuse. But I have to compliment Munster on how they used the conditions,” explained Stick.

“They had a plan and we knew if we gave them soft entries into our half that they would probably capitalise. The stats told us that they are very good when it comes to their lineout attack, so we have to give credit to them.

“But I must say that my boys kept on fighting to the end. If one or two moments didn’t go against us, like Suleiman (Hartzenberg) coming close to scoring a try but he just went into touch, that could have maybe changed the game.

“Also the driving mauls that we had just before halftime. I think that was a big moment in the game that gave them (Munster) energy. If we had converted that opportunity into seven points it could have been a different game in the second half.”

Superb defensive effort

It was a superb defensive effort from Munster on their line in the dying moments of the first half that saw them head into the break with a 21-7 lead, which turned out to be too big a gap for the SA A team to chase down in the second half.

Asked whether his team could have had a bit more of a ball in hand approach, with Munster able to repel most of their forward dominated play, Stick admitted that they had tried that but the conditions wouldn’t allow them to in the end.

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“I think that we started by looking for opportunities first and we tried to play (with ball in hand). But if you look at the errors that we made a number of our players have a lot to learn about playing the conditions in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Stick.

“Munster kicked well. In the first half they applied pressure by putting in the kicks behind us, and then we couldn’t really attack from deep. So it’s not like we didn’t try.

“The main thing for our game drivers, which are our nines and 10s, was for them to put us in the right areas, but we didn’t execute that plan very well, especially in the first half.

“We gave them soft penalties which gave them 22m entries and then they capitalised on them. I think that was the difference in the end. We had our chances, but we didn’t take them like Munster did.”