Munster Rugby have made the move to a single base of training operations with the opening this week of their new facility at the university of Limerick.
An investment of €9.5 million brings to an end the long standing practice of players training in Limerick and Cork and is expected to yield benefit in terms of team unity and performance.
“The idea of the new High Performance Centre is to get players training together more than twice a week,” said Team Manager Niall O’Donovan.
“Training separately had been working for us to a certain degree but when you are up against the standard of teams that you have nowadays, we have to see where we can make any adjustments to improve on-field performances.”
“I believe it will help the group dynamic further with players spending more time together, the competitive edge will be enhanced and will add to training sessions. The time spent on commuting will be reduced significantly with a more productive workload achievable during those previously factored in travel-times.”
Many of the Provinces Cork based players are reported to have moved to Limerick over the summer.
The commercial department has been actively involved in the move as well with a number of different sponsors being featured in ‘ownership’ of different elements of the new base.
The Kitchen facility will be the Greencore Group Kitchen while the business of analysis will take place in the Compub Video Analysis suite.
Though not related to the move it is perhaps serendipitous that Bank of Ireland, Munsters primary commercial partner, won back the contract to operate the bank at the University of Limerick after a gap of ten years in 2015.
