Munster Rugby coach Graham Rowntree admits feeling 'relief' at win over Saints

MUNSTER Rugby head coach Graham Rowntree admitted his overriding emotion was one of 'relief' as his charges secured a nail-biting 27-23 victory over Northampton Saints in their Heineken Champions Cup pool fixture at Thomond Park on Saturday.

Munster held off a second-half surge by the Saints to complete a thrilling Heineken Champions Cup Pool B double over the Gallagher Premiership side, despite losing tryscorer Jack O’Donoghue to a red card at the start of the second quarter.

Afterwards Munster head coach Rowntree said he was relieved to claim the victory, adding that he was also proud of his players' after the hard fought victory.

“Relief. It could have got away from us, that. I said to the lads afterwards, it’s just relief. That could have easily gone away," Graham Rowntree said

“It’s hard enough playing against a team like that with 15, never mind with 14 for 60 minutes. We’ve a lot of moving parts there at the end with injuries and substitutions and we were struggling a bit to relieve pressure from our own half and again, we’ve got to have a look at giving them access through penalties, which eventually they scored two good tries off.

“So, yeah, relief but proud of the lads. Proud of their resolve and that will do us good going forward but again, there will be heaps to get right for next week.”

Rowntree said Munster trained a lot under pressure situations to help them deal with incidents like the loss of a player to a card.

“There are some changes (when you lose a player to a card). You’re missing a guy in the lineout, lineout defence changes. Defensively it challenges us more but luckily we train a lot stressed defensively, we train a lot under pressure to deal with things like tonight.

“It changes things. We had a good plan at half-time, sticking to it we’ll have to look at how we can do that better.”