[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]his game was very much what I expected and, at the same time, completely different. I expected Ulster to win, don’t get me wrong, but I expected Ulster to win more comfortably when they started as well as they did.
This was the first outing since that Clermont game and the parallels were clear early on. Munster were unable to secure our first two restarts, for example, which invited differing levels of early game pressure.
The first botched restart lead directly to a long sequence of Ulster pressure in an area of the field where they are quite dangerous. Munster hung on, forced a lineout but were unable to exit beyond our 22. On that lineout, Wycherley made a good attempt to counter launch in the middle – always a good bet against this Ulster side – but he didn’t get a timely lift to stress the jumper.
Ulster built more pressure off this lineout through McCloskey and Munster conceded a penalty a few phases later. If you’ve watched Ulster for any period of time, you wouldn’t have been surprised to see Burns kicking down the line for a 5m lineout set. I know most teams are dangerous from 5m maul situations but that’s especially true for Ulster and they wanted to maximise the momentum they’d built up in the first five minutes. In the Red Eye, I spoke about how Ulster like to use Marty Moore as a maul drive component in behind a Rea lift pod and that’s exactly what Ulster went for here but Munster defended it well.
The key was the initial body height of the counter-shove. Munster were lower than Ulster on this maul set so the natural progression for the Ulster build was to roll infield.
Munster forced a handling error and exited pretty well from the resulting scrum. Not a bad return from 5 minutes of solid Ulster possession deep in our territory but that was undone on the next lineout when Ulster scored on the first phase.
It was a clever design. Timoney and McCloskey overloaded Scannell and Goggin while Hume angled out on an “L” line behind the screen. Stockdale had an outside line on Coombes from the start of the scheme so Hume’s pass needed to be perfect to unlock the angle.
It was perfect. Stockdale didn’t have to break stride to glide outside of Coombes’ press and that unhinged the Munster side defence. Stockdale found Faddes for the finish.
Munster responded well – Cloete forced a knock-on on the next phase – and earned three points after some good phase pressure from the resulting scrum.
Our next botched restart meant we couldn’t set ourselves into a settled sequence of play – take restart > reset ruck to exit directly > exit cleanly – and that lead to an unmanaged transition situation that we just about managed to recover from when Ulster knocked the ball on.
Our transition defence here wasn’t what it needed to be and that was a direct result of an unmanaged restart. Ulster found a gap on the short-side of our transition reset and they used that wide ruck position to extend across the field. I thought Liam Coombes handled this break really well – he let the play come to him rather than blitzing and leaving an easy decision for the Faddes.
We’ll be extremely frustrated with the next play. We conceded an early engagement free kick on our own put in and we became unbalanced as Ulster tapped and went quickly.
There are some bad folds and poor moments of space management in these few sequences – too much space in centre-field and too narrow in the wider channels. The execution was really nice from Ulster here but we’ll be irritated at how we handled Ulster’s centre-field ruck progressions from a number’s management perspective.
It had the feeling of being one of those nights and we don’t have to go too far back to know what that feels like in the Kingspan Stadium. A rotated Munster side took an early lead against Ulster twelve months ago before getting blown away by five unanswered tries on the way to a comprehensive bonus-point loss. If anything, this was a more rotated side than last year so our response to those two tries would be important in managing our way back into the contest.
Thankfully, Ulster infringed off their next exit and handed us a penalty off the resulting lineout. Personally, I think a kick at goal would have been the play here but that’s Captain Hindsight stuff based on how we managed the Clermont game and the fact that we came away with nothing from this sequence.
The first maul was a shift maul – something I spoke about in the Blood & Thunder podcast as an area where we could get at Ulster – but I felt we took the wrong driving angle after the drop. Our shift maul drove towards the touchline and into traffic rather than infield against isolated forwards but it earned another penalty opportunity. We broke off the next maul but I felt we overextended on the play.
When the ball broke to Daly, he had two options – a carry or a pass to Nash – and Ulster smothered it relatively easily. I’d have liked Liam Coombes running a loop support line to open up a few options but regardless, the opportunity was gone. Ulster extended their lead off the tee before the half-hour mark and that was the last of the scoring for much of the game.
Munster’s set-piece defence improved significantly as the game wore on. Ulster kept shooting for the wide spaces after their initial success there but Munster got to grips with it – even with a few wobbles in the #12 channel.
As the game developed, we got a much better handle on the Ulster lineout as they fell into expected lift patterns from a structural and positional perspective.
Middle space jumper lifted by non-props with the last heavy forward slotting into the drive position. O’Donoghue heavily disrupted three key Ulster lineouts by targeting the same space on every throw.
This, coupled with aggressive breakdown defence, prevented Ulster from adding to their lead as the second half wore on. Even better, from a Munster perspective, was Ulster starting to drop off a little as the second half wore on and they transitioned to their bench. After Munster survived a yellow card sin-bin on Billy Holland, the game became a little nervier than it had any right to be. Ulster had dominated most of the game from a possession and active territory standpoint but as the game ticked into the last 15 minutes, Munster started to put together a few more phases of attack and looked to have a little bit more pop in the carry than earlier in the game.
Guys like Ahern and Salanoa really added to Munster’s ball carrying off the bench.
This series of power carries by O’Sullivan, Salanoa and Ahern should have secured a losing bonus point with five minutes to shoot for the win. It ended up taking another seven minutes thanks to some clock cheesing at the scrum and a pointless yellow card when perhaps a penalty try would have been more appropriate for Munster to finally secure that LBP with 83 minutes on the clock.
There was a lot to like about this performance. Sure, we started poorly and defended quite poorly for stretches of the first quarter but I thought we gradually got a handle on the game, first in defence and then
The coaching team heavily rotated the matchday selection to ensure a fresh loadout for next week’s in-conference game with Connacht so this youthful selection was really up against it given the relative strength of the opposition. Yet, given the last 15 minutes, a losing bonus point was the least they deserved. A bit more accuracy at a few key junctions with the ball in hand – a few botched kicks and one or two lost balls in contact – and Munster could have easily been pressing Ulster looking for a win in the last five minutes rather than hunting for a losing bonus point.
But it was a loss all the same; our first of the season. We’ll be happy to come away with a losing bonus point and the grit we showed to really stress Ulster in the latter half of the game but this defeat has put significant pressure on next week’s game against Connacht. A big win will send us into another big European game in good stead with a double-digit lead at the top of the conference. A loss will bring Connacht to within a win of overtaking us after their top drawer win over a disrupted Leinster.
We’ll know an awful lot more about how the end of this season will look for Munster in the next two weeks but for now, I think this performance was a good expression of the quality of the squad.
Notable Players
This was a pretty decent performance. I’d be hard-pressed to pick out any poor performances from any individuals.
I thought Rory Scannell had a mixed game in that I felt he made a few poor decisions with the ball in hand, had one or two kicking errors and had a little discomfort on some of his set-piece defence but, at the same time, I thought he did well as a primary first receiver and finished out with a decent performance.
Dan Goggin had another strong performance that showed off his physicality and all-round pace. The extra bit of size is standing to him on what I’ve seen this season and while he had one or two flubs with the ball in hand I thought he nailed his role ball in hand and showed up excellently in defence.
Niall Scannell had a few iffy moments on his first start of the season but he finished on the positive side of the ledger with some excellent lineout variation and good work around the collision.
Ben Healy and Craig Casey had their toughest outing of the season to date, I thought. There were a few uncharacteristic flubs from both but neither player was weighed down and ended up with a good experience against tough opposition. Jack Crowley looked very comfortable off the bench for his debut and I thought Nick McCarthy had one the best cameos of his time at the province.
I thought Jack O’Sullivan had a mixed game. His first run out before he shipped a bad cut was pretty forgettable, actually. He had a few nice carries and breakdown streals but a few handling errors and lost collisions on both sides of the ball with them. His work after the cut was really strong. His leg drive in contact dragged Ulster out of position and set up a break for Salanoa and a near try for Ahern. O’Sullivan generally looked much more active in his second period on the field. He’s still young and I feel he needs a little more filling out physically but I think he’s got the goods to be a serious player.
Shane Daly was very strong in the backfield and was rock solid under the highball. I would have liked to see him cut loose with the ball in hand a little more but he never seemed to get the space he needed.
Liam Coombes had a tough start defensively but I thought he recovered really well and grew into the game. As with Daly, I’d have liked to see him get a little more space with the ball in hand but I enjoyed his defensive progression during the game.
Chris Cloete had a very effective game as our primary defensive threat at the breakdown and came out on the positive side of the ledger with two or three great steals.
I liked what I saw from Jack O’Donoghue too, as the senior player in the back row I thought he played really well and showed up excellently at the defensive lineout and maul while being an athletic, pacey threat on ball when given the opportunity. He really has developed into an excellent all-rounder and his focus on becoming a wider ball carrier really suits him when you consider the opposite approach was packing on extra KG that might have made him less effective at the set-piece. Quality.
I was particularly enthused by Thomas Ahern and Roman Salanoa off the bench. Ahern has the ingredients to be an incredible player and he’s already showing unbelievable progress at just 20 years of age. His work in contact and on both sides of the maul show a player who isn’t at all afraid to get stuck into the physical stuff and that he’s thriving in those tight exchanges as a 6’9″ 20-year-old scrummaging on the tighthead side is incredibly encouraging.
Roman Salanoa, equally, is another special athlete. How good can he get at the scrum? On this evidence, he can be a destructive impact player both in the scrum and in open play.
His 15 minutes on the field were incredibly powerful and he’s got the ability to be the kind of impact ball carrier we’ve been looking for in the front row.
You want young lads to come off the bench and change the game – I thought all of them did really well.
The Wally Ratings: Ulster (A)
The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.
Players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Liam O'Connor | ★★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★ |
| Fineen Wycherley | ★★★ |
| Billy Holland | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★★ |
| Chris Cloete | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Sullivan | ★★★ |
| Craig Casey | ★★★ |
| Ben Healy | ★★★ |
| Liam Coombes | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
| Dan Goggin | ★★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★ |
| Rhys Marshall | ★★★ |
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★ |
| Roman Salanoa | ★★★★ |
| Thomas Ahern | ★★★★ |
| Tommy O'Donnell | ★★★ |
| Nick McCarthy | ★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★★ |
| Darren Sweetnam | ★★★ |
