I was looking at the OWR rating this week and I realised that I was actually underrating the value of Ineffective Actions. Previously, I’d rate these as a -1 score but that was only the equivalent of losing a score earned for an Attendance, which is usually a passive activity for the most part. If an Ineffective Action at the breakdown loses the ball or slows down the attack, this is actually a deeply damaging action to the overall attacking framework so only rating it as -1 undersold the damage done so, after a bit of thinking, I decided to upgrade the damage done to a player’s OWR score by an Ineffective Action to -2 to properly reflect the cost to the system that poor breakdown work incurs.
We’ve seen over the past few weeks just how costly poor breakdown work can be, especially in the high tempo, high possession, high option attacking system that Munster are trying to implement.
MUNSTER’S OFFENSIVE RUCK WORK SCORE VS ZEBRE
- A Dominant Clean is an action that decisively secures possession when the ball carrier takes contact. A Dominant Clean does not have to be the first arrival at the breakdown but it is rewarded in the context of effectiveness. We will assign this action 3 points.
- A Guard Action is where a player plays a role in helping to retain possession after we have “re-won” the ball on the floor. Sometimes this can happen on a carry/ruck point where there is no active contention by the opposition. Let’s assign this action 2 points.
- An Attendance can be anything from standing as a “kick shield” on a ruck to adding a bit of bulk to ward against a counter-ruck. I’m marking this down as being worth 1 point.
- An Ineffective Action is a blown cleanout, a lean, a breakdown penalty or an action that I couldn’t see any direct benefit for. This will be worth -2 points.
| Dominant Clean | Guard Action | Attendance | Ineffective | Ruck Work Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kilcoyne | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| N. Scannell | 2 | 3 | 3 | 6 | |
| Knox | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 18 |
| Beirne | 5 | 10 | 4 | 39 | |
| F. Wycherley | 2 | 8 | 1 | 5 | 13 |
| O'Donoghue | 3 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 28 |
| O'Mahony | 3 | 11 | 2 | 27 | |
| O'Sullivan | 8 | 3 | 10 | ||
| Casey | 1 | 2 | |||
| Healy | 1 | 2 | -2 | ||
| Campbell | 2 | 1 | 8 | ||
| Goggin | 4 | 2 | 16 | ||
| Fekitoa | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 | |
| Phillips | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |
| Haley | 3 | 5 | 19 | ||
| Buckley | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 | |
| Loughman | 1 | 3 | 1 | 7 | |
| Archer | 3 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 13 |
| Edogbo | 4 | 3 | 18 | ||
| Quinn | 1 | 2 | |||
| Murray | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||
| Carbery | 0 | ||||
| R. Scannell | 2 | 6 |
TOP FIVE ORW SCORERS VS ZEBRE
- Tadhg Beirne – 39 points
- Jack O’Donoghue – 28 points
- Peter O’Mahony – 27 points
- Mike Haley – 19 points
- Keynan Knox – 18 points
Edwin Edogbo – 18 points
Munster’s Ineffective Actions were way down on last week’s high of 42 but the overall score there was still far too high with 27. Fineen Wycherley really struggled to get traction at the breakdown this week in a continuation of his poor output last week against the Dragons. I think role flux is the biggest issue in this slump, as is the loss of Kleyn alongside him if he is to be selected as a second row.
Tadhg Beirne’s score of 39 was enough to bump him up to a ★★★ in this week’s Wally Ratings. In the same vein, I felt that O’Donoghue’s score of 28 was just about enough to bump him up to a ★★ performance but he was still a little too Guard Action happy and passive at times. Jack O’Sullivan had one of those games where everything just seemed to drift away from him and was badly hurt by three really poor clearouts in particular.
Dave Kilcoyne and Niall Scannell had quite a low output – both were hurt by some ineffective cleanouts – but they were mostly used as carriers during their 50 minutes on the field so it balances out, to a certain extent.
Mike Haley made his way into the top five off the back of a strong second-half performance that saw him add 14 points after halftime. That reflects Munster maxing out possession and really trying to stretch Zebre because the wider we play, the more Haley is involved at the breakdown in this system.
Dan Goggin continued his decent work at the breakdown – four dominant cleans – and the balance between himself and Fekitoa looked better.
The two standouts for me were Keynan Knox and Edwin Edogbo. Knox managed a very healthy OWR score while also being a primary ball carrier in the first 50 minutes. Edogbo’s scoring off the bench was incredibly effective. 18 points in just 22 minutes, with the joint highest number of effective cleanouts, is really top-class work and it showed a young player who “gets it”.
If Edogbo keeps developing at this rate we’ll have some player on our hands by even December.
