Signing Contracts And Joined-up Thinking

Ivan Dineen’s blistering performance when allowed off the bench against the Scarlets was an enjoyable feature of a mistake-ridden game and hugely encouraging for fans of the player. To describe Dineen as a peripheral figure over the last two seasons is to do injustice to those peripheral figures in the Munster squad … in truth, with just one start in his Munster career [and that coming a full eighteen months ago] he had more or less slipped off the radar entirely. Continue reading

Soft Middle

Dan Tuohy (26) takes on Simon Zebo (21) in an emblematic image that shows the differing age profile between the two teams.

The Mole has written before about how the failings of the Munster Academy in the second Declan Kidney era are now affecting the fortunes of the province. While Kidney handed over a hard-nosed championship team to Tony McGahan in June 2008, things weren’t quite so rosy under the surface. Continue reading

Frontrow Timebomb

Two thirds of Munster's front-row. Guess the odd one out.

Tony McGahan leaves Munster at the end of the season. Over the last couple of years he has seen the province through a particularly tricky rebuilding phase, and while it’s not yet complete, The Mole thinks that the body of the work has been done.  Continue reading

Dumper Dumps/Dumped – Part The First

Tight-lipped, ashen-faced supremo Ron Knee, 59,* is to leave Munster at the end of the season

Has Dumper become the dumpee? Or has the poker-faced Aussie dumped an expectant Munster at the altar? Regardless of the circumstances, we’ll plow on with the obituaries and speculation; after all, this is the internet. What do you want, sources? I’m afraid you’ll be a long time finding them. Try Fergburger. Or don’t.  Continue reading