Clayton McMillan is well aware of Munster’s history of early-season struggles, and insists he isn’t expecting to need a bedding-in process in his first campaign as head coach.

The New Zealander made a small signal of intent by announcing his team for the first day of the season one day ahead of schedule, with Craig Casey captaining the province in Saturday’s URC opener away to the Scarlets.

While Munster have started each of the last two seasons with wins, they have been slow to get up to speed in the first block of games; in Graham Rowntree’s first season in charge they won just two of their first seven, the following year they won three out of six, while last season they started with two wins and four defeats.

Those slow starts have left the province needing to go on late-season runs to salvage their campaign, and while none of that was under McMillan’s watch, the new man in charge is keen to avoid a repeat scenario.

“We worked hard to make sure we’re physically, technically, tactically ready to enter the season in the best possible position,” the former Chiefs coach said on Thursday.

There has been a real changing of the guard in the off-season, with Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray, Dave Kilcoyne and Stephen Archer retiring, while Rory Scannell also left the province.

Between them, the quintet account for 1128 Munster appearances, and 300 Ireland caps.

But McMillan (above) dismissed the idea that his team would need a “bedding-in” process under his coaching.

“I’m not giving myself or the team any outs around, ‘we’ve lost some experience’ or ‘we haven’t had long enough in the pre-season’,” he added.

“I think we’ve had enough time and we’ve shown enough in our pre-season games to show that we’re ready and as ready as we can be.

“We’re not the finished product. Every team’s going to grow and learn each week and you want to be playing your best rugby at the back end of the season, not at the front end, but you want your starting point to be higher than where you were the previous season.

“Again, that’s the expectation, what we’re aspiring to do and we’ll be able to answer that on Monday morning.”

The 51-year-old’s main emphasis has been on “consistency of performance” in pre-season, something he says has been lacking in Munster’s game in recent times.

“If the team has been guilty of anything over the last couple of years it’s being able to perform on the big stage when backs are against the wall and then seemingly having a really poor performance the next week.

“I think if we want to be the team that we aspire to be, just having the consistency of performance is a great starting point.

“I just think the game is pretty simple and sometime made complicated by coaches so set-piece, winning the territorial battle, valuing your possession, converting pressure into points. Those things, no matter where you are, hold a team in pretty good stead and that’s what we’ll be looking to do on the weekend.”

Five of the province’s matchday 23 featured for Ireland on the summer tour of Georgia and Portugal, with Casey (above) and Alex Kendellen starting, with Tom Ahern, Gavin Coombes and Jack Crowley on the bench.

“Given that the internationals came in a little bit later, we’ve largely rewarded performance through the pre-season to those who have been here for the balance of pre-season, knowing that having that international experience and x-factor coming off the bench is really a luxurious position to be in.

“We hope they will come on and be in a position to finish the job for us.

“There are a few caveats around that; John Hodnett, who is injured, means we’ve gone with a specialist seven in Alex Kendellen, and obviously Craig Casey is the captain. In those two instances, that theory hasn’t quite played out, but it was certainly our intention to do that.”

Meanwhile, Munster have also confirmed that Alex Codling has linked up with the squad this week, to begin his full-time position of forwards coach.

Codling worked with the province on a part-time basis last season following the departure of Andi Kyriacou, but will now work solely with Munster having finished his contract with the Ireland women’s team.

Sean Cronin has also been announced as a full-time member of the caching staff. The former Ireland and Leinster hooker has been confirmed as scrum coach.

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