Munster last night con­firmed that Roger Randle’s con­tro­ver­sial appoint­ment as the club’s new attack coach has been shelved.

The Kiwi, who pre­vi­ously worked along­side head coach Clayton McMil­lan at Waikato Chiefs, was set to join on a two-year deal in the sum­mer but Randle’s appoint­ment was over­shad­owed by a his­tor­ical rape alleg­a­tion which resur­faced online in recent weeks.

The charges were sub­sequently dropped and Randle has always main­tained his innoence.

But the fiasco sur­round­ing his hir­ing, with key fig­ures within the organ­isa­tion resign­ing from their posts, has cul­min­ated in the province ter­min­at­ing the deal by ‘mutual con­sent.’

Last night, in a state­ment released by Mun­ster, Randle said: ‘I am deeply saddened that unfoun­ded alleg­a­tions from nearly 30 years ago — alleg­a­tions I have always denied — have resur­faced and over­shad­owed what was a won­der­ful oppor­tun­ity to con­trib­ute to Mun­ster Rugby.

‘I want to state clearly that these claims are false, and I main­tain my com­plete and unwaver­ing inno­cence, as I always have. It became clear that the renewed pub­lic atten­tion around these alleg­a­tions had cre­ated cir­cum­stances where pro­ceed­ing with the role was no longer the right out­come. My pri­or­ity now is sup­port­ing my fam­ily and mov­ing for­ward, while con­tinu­ing to stand by the truth.’

McMil­lan said he was ‘per­son­ally dis­ap­poin­ted’ that Randle would not be com­ing on board next sea­son.

‘I want to acknow­ledge Roger’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism throughout this pro­cess and the way he has engaged in what have been dif­fi­cult dis­cus­sions for every­one,’ said the Mun­ster head coach.

One step for­ward, two steps back. That’s the way this sea­son has panned out for Mun­ster. Last night’s con­firm­a­tion that the province’s deal with Roger Randle is now dead in the water should come as no sur­prise.

Ever since Mun­ster announced that the New Zeal­ander would be com­ing on board as attack coach, on a two-year deal in the sum­mer, there has been sig­ni­fic­ant blow­back from inside and out­side the cor­ridors of power in Reds HQ.

Espe­cially when a his­tor­ical alleg­a­tion resur­faced online in the wake of the announce­ment. In 1997, Randle, who was play­ing for the Hur­ricanes at the time, was accused of rap­ing a woman in Durban.

Hav­ing been ini­tially charged of the crime, the charges were even­tu­ally dropped although the alleged vic­tim never with­drew the alleg­a­tion. Randle has always main­tained his inno­cence.

Surely Mun­ster’s power brokers were aware of the incom­ing storm when they signed off on this deal?

Whether they believed it would simply blow over or were blind­sided by the back­lash, it doesn’t reflect well on CEO Ian Flanagan and gen­eral man­ager Ian Cos­tello.

The fact that Randle’s appoint­ment was rub­ber-stamped before it was put for­ward to the Pro­fes­sional Game Com­mit­tee (PCG) was another red flag.

Billy Hol­land, Kil­lian Keane, and Mick O’Driscoll, who all rep­res­en­ted the province with dis­tinc­tion as play­ers, sub­sequently walked away from the board, while it also emerged that a num­ber of mem­bers of the Com­mer­cial Advis­ory Group (CAG) resigned in protest. The optics were dread­ful.

It is under­stood that head coach Clayton McMil­lan pushed hard for Randle’s can­did­acy. After all, the pair had worked closely at the Chiefs for a long time.

Mun­ster had seem­ingly weathered this media storm and there has been an upturn in for­tunes of late, with bonus-point wins against Benetton and Ulster put­ting the province in pole pos­i­tion to secure a home URC quarter-final in the com­ing weeks. A wel­come boost after such dis­astrous runs in the Cham­pi­ons Cup and, sub­sequently, the Chal­lenge Cup

Now, Mun­ster — who don’t have a game this week­end — find them­selves back in the spot­light for all the wrong reas­ons. Again.

It’s worth remem­ber­ing that all of this is play­ing out against the back­drop of a vol­un­tary redund­ancy scheme within the organ­isa­tion. Grim stuff.

Gov­ernance, lead­er­ship and vis­ion have been sorely lack­ing in Mun­ster for some time. No doubt, Flanagan and Cos­tello will be feel­ing the heat after this latest shambles. And rightly so.

This all could have played out dif­fer­ently. After’s Gra­ham Rown­tree’s shock and pre­ma­ture depar­ture last sea­son, Mike Pren­der­gast went on the record and pub­licly stated he wanted the top job. The former Mun­ster scrum-half had done all the right things. He went away for a dec­ade and cut his teeth in the Top 14, the gruelling and unfor­giv­ing French league.

There, the Lim­er­ick nat­ive built a for­mid­able coach­ing CV, tak­ing in stints with Gren­oble, Oyon­nax, Stade Fran­cais and Racing 92. He was brought back to Thomond Park — by Rown­tree in 2022 — and had a trans­form­at­ive effect on the squad’s attack. But Mun­ster’s brains trust decided to go for an out­side hire, with McMil­lan recruited from New Zea­l­and.

A decision which led to an uncom­fort­able situ­ation with Pren­der­gast play­ing second fiddle to the former Chiefs boss.

It’s likely that Pren­der­gast felt mar­gin­al­ised while McMil­lan was landed with a back­room team which was not of his choos­ing. .

Something had to give and Pren­der­gast decided to take up an excit­ing offer with Bath. A sequence of events which led to this Randle debacle.

So, Mun­ster have lost Pren­der­gast, their best homegrown coach in a gen­er­a­tion, while McMil­lan must be feel­ing under­mined. How can the Mun­ster boss pos­sibly feel con­fid­ent about build­ing a long-term project at this club?

He now needs to source another attack coach as well as a new for­wards coach, with Alex Cod­ling also mov­ing on. The former police­man is a tough cus­tomer but it would be no sur­prise if McMil­lan decided to vote with his feet, too.

What a mess. The depress­ing thing is that it was all so unavoid­able if Mun­ster had decided to take the logical, easy and pop­u­lar decision to back Pren­der­gast and give him the main gig last sea­son.