Every pre-season, every team is looking for a different way of doing the same thing.
As Clayton McMillan is trying to get his players fit for his season, he also has the added challenge of trying to get to know them.
He's seen all of them play on TV, and he’s even coached against a group of them when he brought the All Blacks XV to Thomond Park last November.
Now as their head coach, he’s been trying to find out more about who they are.
To do it, he’s brought them out of their comfort zone. This pre-season, the Munster squad have been put through their paces in a variety of sports; they’ve tested out their lungs hill-running, they’ve been thrown in – literally – at the deep end, swimming the 50 metre pool at the University of Limerick, while they’ve taken skelps out of each other at St Francis Boxing Club.
It’s given his players a sweat, but it’s also given him a chance to sit back and observe.
"We've been challenging the players mentally and physically in lots of different ways and through that accumulated grind, I think you just get tighter as a rugby team," the new Munster head coach says of his pre-season schedule.
"We won't know if that's actually the case until we really get put under heat, but there's nothing that I've seen that would suggest that we won't jump out of the trenches together."
The New Zealander held his first press conference yesterday since his summer arrival from the Super Rugby Chiefs, where he had been head coach since 2021.
While he couldn't deliver a Super Rugby title to the Waikato side, he did do everything but.
Installed as interim coach while Warren Gatland was with the Lions in 2021, he brought them to the final of Super Rugby Aotearoa where they lost to the Crusaders. He stayed on as head coach after that, with Gatland moving up to a director of rugby role, and McMillan brought the Chiefs back to the Super Rugby Pacific finals in 2023, 2024 and 2025, losing two more finals to the Crusaders, either side of a defeat to the Blues.
His Chiefs weren’t champions, but they were consistently among the best teams in the competition, and that even keel of performance is something Munster have been lacking.
"That’s something I talked about on day one. It’s all good and well, and it almost seems to be ingrained in the Munster psyche, that when our backs are against the wall or when we get into really big games that really matter, we have the ability to go to another level.
"And that’s admirable, but we can’t have those days and then the next week turn up and lose to a team that for all intents and purposes we should beat.
"It's about not necessarily judging ourselves on the days when we're at our best. It's about judging ourselves when we're at our worst."
An example, McMillan says, is the province’s captain Tadhg Beirne (below), who he expects will continue on as skipper this season.
"A world class player. He, when he has a barnstormer, he's playing at a nine point five [out of 10]. When he has a little bit of an off day, it's a seven point five.
"You don't see too much difference, and it's trying to achieve that with a good rugby team, where your best day at the office is a nine point five and a poor one is a seven, not a four or a five.
"If you're at seven, you still give yourself a really good chance of winning that game. It's about getting everybody's level a little bit higher. Raising the floor instead of raising the bar."
His transition has been eased through bringing a couple of his fellow Kiwis with him. Martyn Vercoe has arrived as team manager, having done the same role with McMillan at the Chiefs, while the province’s new head of athletic performance Brad Mayo worked with him at the All Blacks XV.
It also helps that there is some continuity to the coaching ticket, with Mike Prendergast (below) and Denis Leamy still running attack and defence, and McMillan says those coaches will have a voice in how the team is set up.
"I definitely have a preference around some things and I’ve been putting those suggestions forward. We debate and we don’t always agree but at some stage you’ve got to commit and move forward.
"I think we have been doing a great job around that. That to me is a highly-functioning coaching group. Not one that just agrees with everything I say. I want to be challenged.
"I think the other assistants need to be challenged. Out of that, we will look at the game a little bit deeper and what we need to do to be successful.
"The short answer is yeah, I back those guys fully. They’ve been recognised at the international level for the skills that they bring to the table as coaches and as I’ve said it’s just my job to try and smooth out a few of the edges."
Retaining the Munster DNA is part of his plan, and ahead of his move to Limerick he worked through the Rolodex of New Zealanders who have played and coached either at Munster or in Ireland, for an insight into what makes the people tick.
Jason 'Dutchy’ Holland (below), Rua Tipoki and former Munster head coach Rob Penney have all shared their advice, as has Joe Schmidt.
"There's been a number of people that I've been able to just speak to, just to get some guidance more than anything around Irish culture.
"Irish culture, you know, what am I walking into? What am I likely to expect? And just trying to remove some of the unknowns.
"[I’ve been] doing a fair bit of reading, talking to a lot of people. Observing, keeping my ears open. There's, there's lots of little things that I see every day and seem a bit foreign but I'll just let them marinate and then I'll ask a few questions later."
Among the observations, one quirk of the Irish people has caught his attention.
"I asked the players for some feedback at the end of training and the training could have gone really well. If they had that time again, they probably would have said that it went well, but it seems to be the Irish way that they focused on the three or four things that didn't go well in the training.
"When you speak to everyone, they say, ‘Oh, that’s just the Irish, that's just how we are, we're glass-half-empty type people. That's not my words. That's what other people are saying."
With a pre-season friendly against Bath on Friday night in Cork, and their URC season opener against Scarlets just a couple of weeks away, McMillan is feeling like his glass is half-full right now after a pre-season block which has seen no significant injuries, and those previously out long term making their way back to full training.
"I don't think we're the finished product but if the perspiration and mental aspiration is there then we're in pretty good stead.
"We've lost some significant experience but I'm really encouraged that our guys see real opportunity to step forward from the shadows and into the light to showcase the ability that they have.
"There's a lot of encouraging signs. A big part of it is having our best players available and it's been a very positive pre-season, touch wood, that we haven't broken anybody."
