Battle-hardened Munster believe they can topple Stormers

Battle-hardened Munster will arrive in Cape Town with a strong belief they can topple the Stormers in their own backyard in next Saturday’s United Rugby Championship (URC) final, coach Graham Rowntree says.

After toppling favourites Leinster in a thrilling semifinal in Dublin, Munster are ready to fight fire with fire in front of a capacity crowd of 50,000 Stormers fans at the Cape Town Stadium.

The Stormers nailed down their second consecutive URC final berth when they overcame Irish side Connacht in Cape Town on Saturday.

“Not perfect, not perfect,” was Rowntree’s assessment of his team’s win over Leinster. “We’ve got to be more clinical. We spoke about it at halftime, we needed to be more clinical near the opposition try line.

“This is a very good Leinster team, regardless of whoever they have out on the field. A very good team. So, we weren’t perfect, but I’m delighted with the fight and the spirit.

“We’re in a final, lads. I said to the group in the week, 25 days ago, we were paranoid about European qualification. Now we are in a semi, now we are in a final.

“We go down to Cape Town with belief. This group doesn’t give in and we have come through some fires in the last few weeks.

“We go to Cape Town and it will be our sixth away game on the bounce, and that’s when we are finding out about people.

“We are tough, battle-hardened, so I was never hopeless. I have seen tangible improvements in our game. I saw that when results weren’t going our way back in the autumn.

“I had full belief in what I had seen being done in training and the connection the lads had with the coaches.”

Leinster coach Leo Cullen said his team lacked cohesion after they made another seven changes from the quarterfinal win over the Sharks.

“Yeah, it didn’t quite go our way. We were very close to it, very close to closing out the game.

“It’s disappointing we weren’t quite able to do that but again you have to give credit to Munster.

“There’s two teams fighting right to the very end, they nail their opportunity at the death and we don’t get another chance. We were very close to winning a semifinal. Unfortunately, not this time.

“Munster look strong but we fight our way back in and repel and repel them on numerous occasions so the fight among the lads is great.

“When you’re in semifinals and finals you need to be able to nail your opportunities and we weren’t quite good enough.”