A look ahead to a busy weekend of sport
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Owen Sheehan from Off The Ball joins us here in studio now to look at all the big sporting action this weekend. Lovely to see you as always, Owen. Good to see you, Ciara. I think we should start with what's happened at Munster and this sort of final decision now by Roger Randall not to move to Munster as an attack coach. They say the contract has been cancelled by mutual consent.
Yeah, so this has been at the back of a huge fallout to his appointment, which was announced two weeks ago. So as you can imagine, loads of backlash to this because Roger Randall was accused of rape back in 1997 in South Africa when he was playing with his New Zealand team.
What recent controversy surrounded Munster Rugby's coaching decision?
in Durban. Now, he has always denied these charges. However, with that allegation comes a lot of backlash, as I say, towards the province and towards Clayton Macmillan, the head coach who would have worked with Roger Randall in the past. Now, Clayton Macmillan had previously been on the record standing over this, vouching for Roger Randall as an individual and as a human being. But behind the scenes, not everybody was happy at Munster. You had the Professional Games Committee losing three of their members over this. Billy Holland, Cillian Keane and Mick O'Driscoll resigned from their positions. And then you also had the Commercial Advisory Group, which is a voluntary body. You had resignations from that as well over the past couple of weeks.
How did Roger Randall's past allegations impact his appointment?
So... There was massive fallout to this that we can point to. People might question, where do Munster now go to find a new attack coach? I think the more important question is how Munster managed to find themselves in this position in the first place. The optics of this were always terrible and Munster was in a pretty... pretty bad position off the pitch anyway going into this story given the redundancies news that we've seen in the last month. The on-field matters have not helped things to be quite honest either and there are real questions now towards the hierarchy and those are the very top of Munster Rugby regarding their decision making process.
And it's interesting to look at the statement that has come from the head coach, Clayton McMillan, who obviously worked with Randall at the Chiefs in New Zealand. He said he's personally disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to work together. I know Roger well, he's an outstanding person and coach, and I believe he would have brought a real quality to the programme. So there's not a huge fulsome apology coming from those quarters just yet either. I mean, a lot of writers are treating this as much bigger than Munster, that this is really a stress test for Irish rugby governance.
Do you agree it is? Well, so when this story first broke, we were in touch with the IRFU on this and their response, and I believe this is the same to all journalists working on this story, was that this was a question for Munster Rugby. Now, we don't know what has happened in the last two weeks. We don't know how involved the IRFU has been in cancelling this project, but you'd have to think that somebody in the top brass looked at what was happening in one of their provinces and and maybe said, listen, I'm not sure if this is a great look. I don't know that, but I wouldn't be particularly surprised if they are, if you have been involved here. Now, Munster should have smelled the roses here a little bit as well when they see the likes of Billy Holland, Cillian Keane and Mick O'Driscoll depart their roles when you have, like,
good Munster people leaving their jobs in the middle of all of this that's a bit of a red flag that something might not have gone down too well so we don't know exactly what's happened here but the lack of an apology from the head coach is certainly notable I'd say Clayton McMillan is he definitely would have stood over this appointment and I would suggest he would have been central to the appointment in the first place so I'm not quite sure what he is thinking since the appointment has been called off
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:48
2
What recent controversy surrounded Munster Rugby's coaching decision?
0:48–1:27
3
How did Roger Randall's past allegations impact his appointment?
1:27–7:58
4
What are the implications of Munster Rugby's management decisions?
7:58–11:36