[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]W[/su_dropcap]e weren’t sitting in the room when Munster were crafting their strategy for the Dragons but we saw evidence on-field that going after the lateral spacing and coverage of their front five played a role in some of the thinking one way or the other.

We saw this example in the build-up to first try.

But that wasn’t the end of Munster’s strategic targeting of Dragons’ tight five spacing, not by a long way. One of the most reliable ways to attack an opponent with slow lateral spacing in the tight five is to go after their ability to break off the side of mauls or maul feint lineouts.

The principle behind it is relatively simple; compress the main body of the tight five forwards in the maul, extend the space around the fringes to overload the covering forwards off the maul, remove the opposition #9 from the lane you want to target and then use handling deception on the break to send a runner down the side of the maul, just out of range of the forwards you’re targeting.

The maul can’t be too close to the touchline or you won’t be able to successfully pry away the #9 from the lane you’re looking to run and, ideally, any break will come with momentum, so either off a maul moving forward or sideways away from the side you’re targeting or off a heavily compressed, punchy maul feint.

Let’s have a look at Munster’s work in this area against Dragons.

This is a full maul build and I want you to look at a few different things;

1. The infield direction of the maul to create a large blindside.
2. The movement of the Dragons’ #9 as a trigger for Munster’s action.
3. Gavin Coombes compressing the fringe defence of the maul (incorrectly) and Scannell trying to correct him.
4. O’Byrne going for the double pump inside pass on penalty advantage but there’s no runner down the lane.

This one was unsuccessful because Munster were unable to pry away these two flankers from the lane at the side of the maul so the inside pass O’Byrne went looking for wasn’t there.

But there was a penalty advantage so we’d get another shot a few minutes later. I’ll spare you the twenty-four-second long maul stand-off and skip straight to the action. In this instance, we got exactly what we were looking for as Hibbard was isolated on the inside lane with one of the Dragons flankers getting lost in the maul.

O’Byrne went looking for the same inside pass option as soon as Munster tilted their maul position between the main body of the Dragons maul and Hibbard.

I think O’Byrne got his dimensions wrong coming off the back of this maul because Casey is running a line for a flat pass but O’Byrne’s pass is pretty forward. Given we know O’Byrne is more than capable of making that pass, we can write this off to the disorientating effect that breaking off the back of a maul that’s recently changed orientation.

We had much more success with maul feints.

A maul feint is a high-tempo action that fakes a maul before moving the ball away at pace with the hooker, scrumhalf or an attached back running with action to target the fringes of the maul. In this example, I want you to watch the action of Keynan Knox at the tail of the Munster lineout and how he creates space by blocking the progression of Dragons forwards across the field.

Knox’s block on Screech opens up Brok Harris to be attacked by Casey and Sweetnam, who find the space in behind him before offloading to De Allende running an inside line.

Better. The pace of the action with Knox’s block action created workable space in a manner that would have been predictable before the game and we executed this part pretty well.

Now let’s skip to 50 minutes.

What we want to watch out for here is;

1. Knox successfully blocking at the tail to clear the lane.
2. Casey running a cross line with O’Byrne to stick the inside defenders on the blindside.
3. O’Byrne’s outside line with Hodnett tailing him draws the Dragons flankers away from the lane and opens up a line for Nash to run through.

O’Byrne’s reverse pass had two potential targets, I think – Hodnett or Nash – but the concept was something we had worked repeatedly before this point and, with this maul feint combo, we had a formula that we knew would create a picture we wanted.

In this instance, it lead directly to a three-point penalty that was a decisive score in the flow of the second half. Yes, O’Byrne went looking for this action twice before nailing it but that’s because we knew that the space would always be there during the game if we got the ingredients right. His reverse pass was a highlight but it was the product of strategic thinking and repeated pressure on a known opposition weakness.