It's taken a while but Darren Sweetnam looks like he may have finally established himself with Munster. The winger made his debut in February of 2015 and went on to make 9 appearances for Munster last season.
So far this season, he has started all three of Munster's PRO12 games.
Sweetnam appears to have won the respect of Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus. The South African, speaking to the Evening Echo, described the Corkman as one of the province's 'go-to' players.
With a guy like Darren Sweetnam, suddenly he is really one of the go-to men.
I came in and saw him – I’m now here 14, 15, 16 weeks – and he was just one of the stand-out guys with that sort of ability.
At the weekend, Sweetnam was involved in the best move of the game as Munster beat Dragons. It very nearly went wrong for the player when he dropped the ball with a try beckoning, luckily Cian Bohane was on hand to save his blushes. Erasmus was glad to see how Sweetnam dealt mentally with the mistake.
Sweetnam is now 23. Erasmus believes it has taken time for the former Cork hurler to establish himself simply because he hasn't played a whole lot of rugby.
I think the jury was always out as to why he hadn’t made it, and the answer is that he hadn’t had that long a training age or playing age in rugby union and I guess he’s just catching up now.
I know he’s been playing for a while but he’s handling it physically, he’s got bigger than last year and I think mentally he’s in a very good place.
He could have been very easily not been in as good a place mentally on Saturday when that try wasn’t scored, when he knocked it backwards.
But for sure he is standing up to the challenge and I think we’ve really got a guy who has got some X factor going for us.
Photo by Ben Evans/Sportsfile
