Italy National Team soccer tracksuit<\/a><\/p>\nTournament organisers had hoped that four South African teams could travel to Europe for rounds four to six before a final on 19 June but fresh reports from South Africa have indicated that the Bulls, Stormers, Sharks, and Lions are set to withdraw just days before the Rainbow Cup starts.<\/p>\n
There remains no official confirmation of how the competition will play out, but Rowntree said Munster are targetting silverware in the coming months as they aim to end their decade-long trophy drought.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning, winning, winning,\u201d said Rowntree when asked what Munster want to get out of the Rainbow Cup. \u201cWin the competition whatever form it takes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means winning week by week. We\u2019ve got our old mates this weekend to start the competition off so it\u2019s a good opportunity to look at different combinations, but we\u2019re taking it as seriously as we would any other competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean that \u2013 that\u2019s not just small talk from me. We are taking this very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Munster have been boosted by the return to full training of Tadhg Beirne ahead of the Leinster game, while they are also hoping long-term injury absentee RG Snyman will be back in squad training next week.<\/p>\n
The Springboks lock suffered an ACL rupture just minutes into his Munster debut against Leinster last August but is now in the final stages of his rehab.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not got any smaller, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d said Rowntree of Snyman. \u201cHe\u2019s fitting in nicely, he has been in and out doing a few bits of scrummaging, not full eight-on-eight stuff, and contact work with us this week. We\u2019ll progress that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cA lot of this stuff, we have to see how he reacts to every change of level we put him through. He\u2019s getting well managed, looks fit, looks big, looks scary. We\u2019re delighted to have him back in next week, hopefully, for full training.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Rowntree confirmed that he had ruled himself out of being part of Warren Gatland\u2019s Lions coaching team this summer due to family reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been speaking to them and having it confirmed about what it would really look like in terms of no family support [on tour in South Africa]. I can\u2019t do that to my family, I have just moved them over [to Limerick] in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t just escape for two months, go on a Lions tour, it didn\u2019t feel right. It was an easy decision in that regard. The plan all along was to take them with me because they\u2019re special tours, I\u2019m sure everyone has said that. So there we go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MUNSTER ASSISTANT COACH Graham Rowntree says the province will be going all out to win the Rainbow Cup, whatever format it eventually falls into. The new competition is due to kick-off this weekend and Munster open with a visit to the RDS in Dublin to play Leinster on Saturday before inter-provincial clashes against Ulster and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}