Munster Rugby has been hit with a potential crisis just days before the start of the new season, it was reported yesterday.
According to Brendan Fanning of the Sunday Independent, a confidential internal squad review was accidentally emailed to players and and is understood to have included detailed and personalised comments on each player.
The document was updated weekly and includes players' perceived strengths and weaknesses, as well as appraisals that are believed to be of a highly critical nature in places.
Despite these claims from an as-yet unnamed source, Munster Rugby deny that one senior player was described as being "on the gravy train", while another was deemed "mentally weak".
Players learned that their individual profiles were colour-coded based on whether they were first- or second-choice, while one player found out that coaching staff were debating over his place in the squad.
The issue is likely to be the first major one for Foley and his coaching staff of fellow Irishmen Ian Costello, Brian Walsh, Mick O'Driscoll and Jerry Flannery.
The leak did not seem to affect the side during their win against London Irish last Friday night, but it is clearly an uncomfortable issue for the management ahead of the province's Pro12 opener against Edinburgh on Friday.
Foley, who replaced Rob Penney as head coach in June, has addressed the issue directly in a team meeting.
The same unnamed source said:
Anthony spoke to the group and said that it is what it is and it shouldn’t have happened, rather than try to bullshit the players,
It was an attachment to a weekly schedule and it was not supposed to go out,
But it’s not a crisis or anything like it. The senior players met to talk about it, and, yes, it might have been hurtful to one or two players, but we’ve moved on.
We’ve spoken to the players, and the vast majority have accepted it was a mistake and have put it behind us. In no way did it have any negative effect on the way we played (against London Irish on Friday) — maybe the opposite in that they pulled together.
Picture credit: Diarmuid Greene/SPORTSFILE
