Stephen Archer

They were there for a long, long time, and even in that period in '23, I was thinking of those guys who were there a long, long time and kind of put their shoulder to the wheel to get that reward and get that trophy.

Stephen Archer at the time, I was thinking, you know, Conor Murray, Peter O'Mahony, Keith Earls, they were guys that I played with my last year or two.

They were only kids when they came into the squad.

Um, so that's why it was, it was just a lovely moment, and it was, it was incredible to see the Munster fans there in Cape Town and all that.

Yeah.

And I just think you sometimes you can undervalue the leadership presence, and there is a lot of big leadership gone in the last number of years.

If you think of Peter, Connor, Keith Earls, Archer, John Ryan, you know, Simon Zebo, um, they're the kind of homegrown ones that, you know, Andrew Conway went as well, and, you know, players who were, you know, very much ingrained in it and very passionate about their performances, um, they, they're gone.

So there was a big kinda leadership foil.

Yeah.

Look, one of my closest buddies, uh, we lived in Cork together when, uh, when we moved from the split center, um, we traveled up and down Stephen Archer, you know, for, we spent eight or 900 kilometers a week together.

Um, you know, would be one of my closest friends, uh, just so happens to be one of the best fellas on the beer you know came through an academy with guys like you know Mike Sherry and David Kilcoyne who trust me you'd never be short of a minute's flack when they're in any room on a mind pub and So I'd probably put those three fellows in, but I could give you a list of 40 or 50 fellows after them.

That would

Hopefully, particularly with Jack Angel coming in there, tight head, like it's a position that Munster have kind of rotated through, like an impressively long list of players.

They are now, they don't find themselves without the stalwarts of John Ryan and Stephen Archer, who like held that position down for so much longer than I think you would have ever expected from those two lads.

So it's a big change now to have to have them gone to have but Jack Anger is an excellent player I know the people from supporters from Connacht were fairly unhappy to see him leave it's a big gap for Munster to get him in they still have Michael Alatoa more than capable of holding down a bench spot and it'll just remain to be seen how long they can keep the front row guys fit and then when needs arise how much the backups can fill in.

Van der Merwe, he's not super familiar with his body of work, but it'll be interesting to see how he goes.