[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]he compressed nature of this year’s tournament has added to the urgency of this fixture. Clermont vs Munster doesn’t need any urgency – it never has – so that urgency is coming down to scarcity; it’s only the second round but Munster now only have fifteen points available to them. After this weekend it’ll only be ten points. That might seem obvious but it’s incredibly important in how this year’s expanded pool will play out. Anything north of 14 points will probably see you qualify for the home and away quarter-finals of the Champions Cup this season but to get to that point, you have to win both of your home games (ideally with one of them being a bonus-point win) and pick up points in both of your away games. Winning one of those away games is a must-have. Clermont already have a bonus-point away win in the bag so they know that another win here would put them into the box seat for qualification, especially if Bristol lose away to Connacht.
Munster, on the other hand, know that a losing bonus point is needed here at the very least but they also know that Clermont’s injury issues in the back five allow a rare chance to pick up a win in the Stade Marcel Michelin. If Munster were to pick up a win here, it would make the two games in January infinitely easier to navigate and, if Harlequins lose at home to Racing 92 this weekend, set up a very workable last weekend where Quins’ interest in the tournament will be long over.
Clermont: 15. Kotaro Matsushima, 14. Damian Penaud, 13. Jean-Pascal Barraque, 12. George Moala, 11. Alivereti Raka; 10. Camille Lopez (c), 9. Sébastian Bezy; 1. Peni Ravai, 2. Etienne Fourcase, 3. Rabah Slimani, 4. Paul Jedrasiak, 5. Pecili Yato, 6. Judicaël Cancoriet, 7. Clément Lanen, 8. Fritz Lee
Replacements: 16. Adrien Pélissié, 17. Etienne Falgoux, 18. Sipili Falatea, 19. Thibault Lanen, 20. Edward Annandale, 21. Morgan Parra, 22. Tim Nanai-Williams, 23. Tavite Veredamu
The key to managing Clermont is managing your sequences of play.
What does this mean? Your “sequence of play” is the equation you use to generate your ideal picture of how a game will unfold on both sides of the ball. It’s a bit like this; what is the best way to get at this Clermont side offensively and defensively? For me, I think it’s the lineout – squeezing their possession and being clinical on ours because, to be frank, I don’t think Clermont want a game with too many lineouts.
But just saying “the lineout” isn’t what I mean by managing our sequences of play.
What do Clermont want to do here?
They want to load up their stacked midfield hitters and roll them off their forward screens with Parra/Lopez finding ways to bring scary runners like Raka, Penaud and Matsushima into the line against fragmented, overloaded defences.
But to do that, they need field position. They get field position from penalties, which we have to avoid conceding too many of regardless, but their launch off the lineout is particularly dangerous, given the quality of their midfield runners and the sophistication of their block lines.
Their first try against Bristol came on the second phase of a lineout strike that attacked key joints in the Bear’s defence.
First, Byrne was forced to run a longer line around Pascal Gauzere, which opened up a deep inside line for Naqalevu to attack through.
That stemmed the progression of the Bristol forwards across the field, unbalanced their defensive line and opened up another blocking opportunity on the next phase, which Clermont executed perfectly to set up the finish down the 15m tramline.
How do you stop this? By preventing Clermont from getting a clean launch in the first place. This means throwing up one counter launch (at least) on every throw outside your 22, getting into their airspace and pressurising the throw. Bristol didn’t have a back five that could counter Clermont in the air (who themselves are decimated with injuries to key second row and back row jumpers) so Bristol were unable to fully control the sequencing of the game.
So what do we want?
To use our defensive lineout to prevent or stymie Clermont from getting their strike plays in action. Ideally, we’d force them into a lot of poor maul builds, over-throws, knock-ons or even clean steals to the point where we can actively shrink the radius of Clermont’s lineout i.e. get them throwing short, quick ball to the front to get away from O’Mahony, Beirne, etc.
We also want lineouts and while it’d be great to get them from penalties, I’d settle for the lineouts that Clermont are willing to give us. That means kicking. La Rochelle found a lot of success against Clermont earlier in the season by kicking a lot of possession deep to Clermont, stuffing their transition ball and forcing kicks to touch.
I’d be comfortable with Raka, Penaud and Matsushima exiting a fair bit under chase pressure. We can do this through the contestable box kick – which isn’t without transition ball risk – or through long kickbacks off #10, even if it leads to Clermont taking marks.
My ideal scenario here is Earls/Daly/Haley/Farrell pressuring a long kick through into space and preventing any of Raka/Penaud/Matsushima from getting away in transition, setting a defensive ruck and then watching them kick to touch anywhere inside their 10m line or back to us for a go in transition. Even then, I’d use transition ball as an opportunity to kick deep into touch on this Clermont side.
We want them throwing into their own lineout inside their 10m line.
Failing that, we want them kicking to touch under chase pressure so we can attack through our own lineout.
Bristol were able to attack Clermont quite regularly in the early going of last week’s game off the lineout but they were undone by heavily scripted “expansive” rugby that was the same basic concept every time. Clermont picked off the second one for an early 14-0 lead.
A more direct approach will benefit Munster in this one, I think, but securing the ball off the lineout will be the biggest factor. We can afford to play big here, as I expect Clermont to stay on the floor more often. There’s more value in hitting them closer to 10 directly through Farrell and De Allende and forcing fold decision on them, rather than rolling off the back of De Allende and Farrell as decoy runners – Clermont are set up to defend this type of attack. If we can get a good collision point at #10, there’ll be options for us coming back in the direction of the lineout or as Clermont’s forwards transition across the face of that collision point.
Our sequence of play should be; kick > receipt pressure > phase pressure > opposition kick to touch. We can look to attack the Clermont maul from anywhere on the field but we need to exploit what Clermont don’t want when they’ve got a number of lineout jumpers out through injury – force them into lineouts that we can attack relentlessly.
If we control the game off the boot, we can effectively force Clermont into playing on the back foot for most of the game. Control the sequence, control the game, get the win.
