Munster must win silverware this year to reaffirm the coaching staff and validate their work so far, according to former Ireland captain Brian O'Driscoll.
Stephen Larkham says that the Munster coaching staff is excited to stay with the province moving forward. Larkham and Johann Van Graan have one year remaining on their deals and are yet to win anything noteworthy.
The problem is Leinster.
Former Leinster captain Brian O'Driscoll believes Munster would have won more than one Pro 14 title without Leinster.
"If you take Leinster out of the equation over the last four or five years, would Munster have a couple of Pro14 titles? More than likely," he said.
"But everyone is comparing them to the team of the 2000s, which they're not. That was a once-in-a-generation team.
"That's the standard that has been set for Munster rugby. But ultimately the players haven't matched the caliber of those players back then. They're getting closer and closer but they're falling short. Not by a huge amount, but they're falling short. And that's sport."
O'Driscoll doesn't view Munster as being wholly at fault for their own shortcomings. Instead, Munster just haven't had the right luck in the right moments.
"Sometimes you're going to squeeze by on the really tight ones and sometimes you're going to lose consecutively on tight ones too.
"That doesn't mean you have to reinvent the wheel the following season. It just means you need a little bit of luck or modify things slightly to give yourself a chance of winning that next one. I do feel as though success sometimes you get too much critique in defeat, it's not as simple as that.
Sometimes it's the rub of the green that gets you and that's the difference between success and failure at the top level.”
But since that's the reality of sport, O'Driscoll is also familiar with what this Munster coaching staff needs. They have to win silverware this year or at least prove they're getting closer by midseason.
“This is a really important season for that Munster coaching ticket.
"They're three years together now, they have improved in the first two but the expectation from them as a squad and certainly their supporter base is to deliver silverware this year.
"If I was the Munster CEO I'd probably be holding off until December, January before I pull the trigger on what happens. You want to understand if there's been an improvement again."
By bringing back Simon Zebo and getting a fully healthy RG Snyman, O'Driscoll believes that Munster are now an exciting team.
"When you look at that back three who are you going to leave out when you're playing with a full deck? With the likes of Zebo coming back, Shane Daly with another year of professional rugby under his belt with great talent, Haley is Mr. Solid, Earls, Conway, it's very, very exciting from their perspective.
"But it's one thing being exciting, you've got to then deliver.
"Nothing short of some piece of silverware this year will be acceptable from a Munster perspective. They've taken the stepping stones of being a very disappointing team five or six years ago to really improving the quality of the squad...all of these things are culminating towards giving them a great shot at being in the mix in two competitions.
"I'm intrigued to see how they progress over the course of the season.”
John Cooney awaits MRI for hamstring injury.
You can listen to Brian O'Driscoll on Off The Ball by downloading the OTB App on your phone.
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