One of the more fascinating sub-plots of this season will be to see how Munster deal with such a seismic leadership shift.
Only 17 players are part of Munster's '200 Club’, with Niall Scannell the latest to hit a double-century of appearances for the province in Saturday’s opening URC win against Scarlets.
Of the 16 others who reached that feat, a quarter of them departed the Munster dressing room this summer, when Stephen Archer, Conor Murray and Dave Kilcoyne retired, while Rory Scannell also moved on.
There was also the retirement of Peter O’Mahony, who came just of the 200 mark with 197 Munster appearances.
Losing more than 1,100 appearances, not to mention nearly 300 international caps, is a challenge for any team to deal with.
Tadhg Beirne remains as captain for this season, but it was notable to see Craig Casey skippering the side last week in Llanelli.
Clayton McMillan could have gone with more experienced options if he wished.
Jack O’Donoghue has done the job several times before, and Niall Scannell is was another vastly experienced forward.
It was Casey’s (above) first time captaining his province, and it came off the back of leading Ireland’s young squad on their summer tour of Georgia and Portugal.
"Craig will never change. He is what he is. He’s an energizer bunny. He’s the life and soul of the group," Munster’s skills coach Mossy Lawler said.
The province’s assistant attack coach is well placed to assess Casey’s character. He’s also the scrum-half's uncle.
And he believes his nephew is one of those players who is taking ownership of the team following the summer upheaval.
"A massive honour for him during the summer but something he would have ran anyway," he said.
"Obviously with a lot of experience leaving the building over the summer and some people you can never replace, there’s a lot of guys that have taken that opportunity and seen it as an opportunity and Craig is probably one of those guys stepped up and is leading us forward."
While Casey had a summer promotion, so too did Lawler (below).
With Clayton McMillan coming in and Mike Prendergast assuming more responsibilities as senior coach, Lawler’s footprint on the gameplan has got bigger.
"My role has grown this year," he said.
"Obviously last year I was a skills coach with the responsibility of making sure I am delivering what Mike [Prendergast] and Leams [Denis Leamy] want from both sides of the ball.
"This year I have taken over exits and our kicking game, and our scrum strikes from an attack point of view.
"Working both sides of the ball, it’s really, really interesting from the exit point of view, in relation to how they set up defensively.
"For me, that will make me a better attack coach but I’m really enjoying the role, really enjoying the different aspects that I have been asked to focus on.
"I’ve a really, really enjoyable pre-season under Clayton and really looking forward to the rest of the season."
A former winger with Munster, the Shannon clubman spent eight years coaching up the ranks at Connacht, before returning to his home province in 2023.
"I think as a young coach and an ambitious coach you are always looking for that next step," he added.
"Thankfully Clayton came in and saw something in me from listening to people that I work with on a daily basis and in fairness he just gave me that promotion to step up into a bigger remit.
"I am just glad I got it and embracing it and making sure I am doing a good job for the new man."
With Lawler, Prendergast and Leamy already part of the coaching ticket, it doesn't look like McMillan will make sweeping changes to how the province play, but there has been a lot of scrutiny over the squad’s injury profile during the Graham Rowntree years.
For three years running, the province endured had to deal with a crippling injury list, and it led to the appointment of Brad Mayo as their new head of athletic performance.
"He [McMillan] knows exactly what he wants as a head coach, and he knows how to go about it," Lawler added.
"The biggest example of that is how he ran our pre-season and the shape that our players are in.
"Obviously, it had been an aspect that we wanted to get fitter and stronger and I think we achieved that during pre-season.
"You could even see it in our players’ stature at the weekend. From the start of the game, we were physical on both sides of the ball. It just highlights just how important pre-season was and the changes he made to pre-season. And how he got that out of the players.
"Look, something had to change with our injury profiles last year. I mean we you can’t run a ship when you have consistently 15 to 20 players out, so I’m not going to go into that too far.
"I’ll focus on pre-season which was to make sure we have a healthy shop, a healthy deck that we can put our best foot forward and I do believe that if we have our full team to select from, we will be a powerful source this year."
