When you look at a team’s breakdown output, you can get a good idea of what’s working and what isn’t. At the start of the season, you could track Munster’s poor performances week to week as they got to grips with the new attacking system, the new ruck positioning that game with it, and the tempo that they needed to play at.
When Munster lost those games to Cardiff and Dragons at the start of the season, it was clearly visible at the breakdown. The closest reference to this game – the first half in particular – are those first two games of the season.
Check out the ORW scoring from just the first 40 minutes;
MUNSTER’S OFFENSIVE RUCK WORK SCORE VS GLASGOW WARRIORS IN THE FIRST HALF
- 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 -1 point
| Dominant Clean | Guard Action | Attendance | Ineffective | Ruck Work Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kilcoyne | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Barron | 9 | 2 | 14 | ||
| Salanoa | 4 | 5 | 1 | 20 | |
| Wycherley | 2 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 7 |
| Kleyn | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 12 |
| O'Donoghue | 4 | 1 | 3 | 3 | |
| Hodnett | 1 | 7 | 1 | 1 | 16 |
| Coombes | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 9 |
| Patterson | 0 | ||||
| Carbery | 2 | 4 | |||
| Daly | 4 | 1 | 6 | ||
| Crowley | 4 | 8 | |||
| Fekitoa | 5 | 10 | |||
| Nash | 2 | 2 | 10 | ||
| Haley | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
The first thing that stuck out to me was the high involvement and low efficiency of Fineen Wycherley and Jack O’Donoghue who, at the start of the season, seemed to be a real role clash. The same was true here. It feels sometimes that Wycherley and O’Donoghue – two very similar players with a similar physical and role build – end up having bad days at the breakdown for the same reason in that they’re a little slow to adjust to a moving target and chop their feet a little too much which saps the energy transfer. In their attempts to be accurate at the breakdown, they end up with soft, slow entries that leave the tackler there just long enough to slow the recycle of the ball.
Here’s a good example of Fineen looking to get rid of Scott Cummings. He’s working very, very hard here to clean out a bigger, heavier, longer lock forward for a net negative scenario gain.
I’d just like him to strike Cummings out of the way here, instead of taking himself out to remove a guy who was a minor blockage as the maul was gone to the ground. This is a net win for Glasgow.
Ultimately I think this comes down to Wycherley operating as an undersized lock in a land of giants. He’s game as a goat – and he improved a lot in the second half – but his scoring was back to the lows of the early rounds of the season on the whole. That first half in tandem with O’Donoghue was almost a carbon copy of their game against the Dragons in Round 2.
Another feature of Munster’s poor start to the season was weak, ineffective cleaning out in the front row and that was repeated here in both halves. Josh Wycherley had a middling game at the breakdown in the second half – he played the full 40 minutes – but even middling was better than Dave Kilcoyne’s first half, which is the lowest ORW score I have for any tight forward that played more than 20 minutes in the history of these articles. Josh Wycherley’s issue, for me, was a few soft entries as he readjusted to a changing contact point. A bit like Fineen, he lacks a little explosivity when he’s making entries on the move and it’s a key work on for him because, like Fineen, his ball carrying has really improved.
MUNSTER’S OFFENSIVE RUCK WORK SCORE VS GLASGOW WARRIORS FOR THE FULL GAME
| Dominant Clean | Guard Action | Attendance | Ineffective | Ruck Work Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kilcoyne | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Barron | 12 | 2 | 20 | ||
| Salanoa | 5 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 30 |
| Wycherley | 2 | 14 | 3 | 7 | 23 |
| Kleyn | 4 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 32 |
| O'Donoghue | 2 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 14 |
| Hodnett | 4 | 18 | 2 | 2 | 46 |
| Coombes | 7 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 44 |
| Patterson | 0 | ||||
| Carbery | 3 | 6 | |||
| Daly | 8 | 1 | 14 | ||
| Crowley | 1 | 7 | 1 | 15 | |
| Fekitoa | 10 | 20 | |||
| Nash | 2 | 6 | 18 | ||
| Haley | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | |
| Buckley | 1 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 20 |
| Wycherley | 13 | 5 | 16 | ||
| Archer | 6 | 3 | 24 | ||
| Snyman | 5 | 3 | 21 | ||
| Kendellen | 2 | 6 | 18 | ||
| Casey | 2 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Scannell | 2 | 3 | 12 | ||
| Zebo | 3 | 1 | 7 |
You can see the scale of the improvement from half to half. Hodnett and Coombes really got their arses in gear but they were helped by really strong performances off the bench by Snyman and Archer. Archer was super impressive and followed up on a solid performance by Salanoa. Stephen Archer might not be the most explosive player anymore but he’s not shy about pushing every single trick in the book to open up lanes, pin defenders and create gaps in the defensive line by hook or by crook.
TOP FIVE ORW SCORERS VS GLASGOW WARRIORS
- John Hodnett – 46 points
- Gavin Coombes – 44 points
- Jean Kleyn – 32 points
- Roman Salanoa – 30 points
- Stephen Archer – 24 points
RG Snyman was a real bonus on a deep watch back. He strikes guys off the ball, pins and dominates other tight five-forwards with real menace and consistently blew tacklers and jacklers off the contact point.
With some massive games on the way, Snyman’s impact was a real bright spot on a dark night in Thomond Park.
