Rory O'Connor

The squad is not as strong as it once was.

We're seeing the financial implications.

They're in almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of the strong isn't a squad, the income isn't as good, things get weaker as it goes.

And...

What was one of the strongest brands in Irish sport 20 years ago is being diminished and diminished all the time.

And the team is now in a real battle every year to finish in the top eight of a strengthening competition.

The reason the URC is so much better now, the reason that there is no weekends off is because the South Africans have come in and made it really difficult.

But Ulster, Connacht and Leinster look like they're, even though Connacht are way behind, or not way behind, but behind Munster at the table, they all look in better form.

And Macmillan's job is to pull all this together and take that squad, which has still got a lot of good players in it, even though it's not as strong as it was, and get performances.

And what I think Munster fans will be really frustrated at the moment is, even though I don't think there's a championship winning team in there,

there's still a team that can go to the Sharks and put up a fight that's better than losing 45-0.

There's Scrum.

Look, the Sharks have a great Scrum.

The Scrum struggle that's been struggling all year.

The line-out, they thought they'd fixed it.

I'm sure Codling's absence has fed into...

The line-out performance, I thought the Sharks were really aggressive in their own 22, which I think teams are not expecting right now.

I think it's a tactical innovation that more teams should look at.

But when those two things go against you and you're also losing the physical battle and you're kind of going from side to side, you're going to struggle.

And it's really hard to pull that back together.