Wasps 14 Munster 35

A win for the ages in Coventry

A COVID and quarantine hit Munster side took on an injury-hit Wasps and produced a chaotic, endlessly impressive win for the ages that feels bigger than it might seem.

Match Importance

Match Quality

Match Intensity

Standard of Opposition

3.3

Asterisks will be thrown so hard and in such volume, it’ll look like a blizzard but make no mistake, this was a very special win for a club built on special wins.

A lot was made of Munster’s relative experience compared to the Wasps side that actually kicked the game off – they were hit by COVID on top of a lengthy injury list – but when it came down to it, Wasps had an average of 41 caps per player in their matchday squad, with no players making their debut and 7 players with under 10 caps for the club.

Munster had 42 caps per player in the matchday squad with 12 guys making their first-ever pro appearance and 14 guys with less than 10 caps for the club.

So the bulk of Munster’s experience was concentrated into nine starters whereas Wasps spread their remaining experience out over 13 starters and three replacements. All things being equal, Wasps should still have won given the gap in minutes, experience and pro-seasoning they had on offer, even with their injury trouble but all things weren’t equal.

This is Munster we’re talking about.

I realised an hour before kickoff that if I saw this Wasps team lined up for a preseason friendly, I would expect this Munster team to beat them. Why? Because I know how good these young lads are, in tandem with already knowing how good the likes of Dave Kilcoyne, Peter O’Mahony, Damian De Allende, Chris Farrell, Keith Earls, Andrew Conway, Conor Murray, Joey Carbery and Tadhg Beirne are.

I knew how good Scott Buckley could be. I knew how good Daniel Okeke could be. I knew how good Eoin O’Connor could be. I knew how good Pa Campbell could be. I knew how good John Hodnett IS, right now, with plenty more potential in the tank.

This wasn’t a shock.

It was still a win for the ages, don’t get me wrong, because these guys played the highest pressure game of their young lives so far on their debut game in a European Cup format where an early loss kills you stone dead and played a real part in not only winning but earning a bonus point along the way.

In normal times – whatever that means anymore – most of these lads would have been watching this game at home taking pictures of the TV screen for Instagram. Instead, they were making their debut playing for Munster in the European Cup. Back in November, before all the chaos with Omicron, red lists and quarantines, I saw Scott Buckley, Declan Moore, Daniel Okeke, Eoin O’Connor, Mark Donnelly, Tony Butler and Ethan Coughlan come off the bench for Munster A against the Connacht Eagles. James French was named in the squad the day before but didn’t feature. Exactly one month later, all of these players would be making their senior debut in the European Cup.

So when I talk about this game being both not being a shock and, at the same time, one of the most special days in the history of the club, you can get a good feeling of the juxtaposition of feelings going on here.

Favourites and underdogs. Beating the odds and living up to them. That’s Munster Rugby.

♛ ♛ ♛

Large swathes of this game were unanalysable chaos, on the face of it at least. It would be like trying to put a structure on a minis game. We look for patterns and familiar sequences of movement because these are often what teams drill most often. What we don’t see all that often in games of this level are the kind of traded transitions that we saw in, for example, the build-up to Wasps first try.

Have a look at this – 89 seconds of madness. I haven’t sped up any of it. Just take it all in.

What are your main takeaways from looking at that? Yes, Murray’s kick was a bit long to start – not the first or last time that would happen during the game, to be fair – but look at the space! Look at the off the cuff, play what’s there, end to end style of rugby that is normally the preserve of underage rugby.

This looks unusual at this level because we just don’t see it all that often. A lot of the game fell into this bracket but that’s completely understandable given the relative lack of cohesion on both sides. There were passing errors, turnovers, slips, linebreaks and none of them were unexpected. With the lack of cohesion – on both sides – a lot of open space and deep kickbacks were nearly the easiest thing to predict so, as unpredictable as all this looked, it was the one thing you could actually rely on being there. And I think Munster’s game plan was based on this predictable unpredictability – attacking Wasps uncertainty and cutting down on ours.

Go back and look at that clip again and look for Peter O’Mahony.

O’Mahony was used constantly in the backfield in the first half. But why? Without knowing the tactical plan, I think the benefits to this were two fold. In the first instance, they allowed Patrick Campbell, our rookie fullback, a simplified role in the backfield where he could cover half the space rather than run a full pendulum – where he would move in sync with Conway and Earls. With O’Mahony in the backfield, he would have less decisions to make and more skills to execute – less thinking, more playing.

This also allowed Earls and Conway to play more aggressively in defence on kick chase and phase play. O’Mahony is unique in his high ball ability, his broad skillset and his pace/change of direction means he can keep up with most open space runners that come his way.

The second benefit was the transition ability it gave us to play from deep when it was on. It would be a fair bet that we’d receive some deep kicks from Wasps and the extra forward in the line would link the pitch well to have a crack off what, pre-game, was quite a slow looking Wasps back five.

Our approach changed broadly in the second half in the wake of Brad Shields red card. I thought it was harsh enough on first watch but after the game I’m leaning more towards the ref making a correct decision on the location of Shields’ contact on Kilcoyne’s neck. Whatever about the rights or wrongs of it, the red card radically changed the contest.

Wasps struggled to rebalance themselves afterwards and their attack lost focus. We did a really good job of pressuring Wasps setup and forced them to kick a little more than perhaps they’d have liked.

It was particularly obvious in the second half, especially when assisted by another yellow card reducing Wasps to 13 for the first 10 minutes. We came out with real intent to make hay while the sun shined and boy, did we. Our work on kick transition played a huge part in pulling away from Wasps.

O’Mahony’s involvements in this try were of the highest quality. Fitness, work rate, accurate and aggressive breakdown work – this is what he’s so good and why coach after coach has included him at the highest level. He didn’t even touch the ball on the sequence but none of it happens without him.

That Campbell finished the try off with a gliding, confident finish beyond his years was fitting, because it summed up the day of these younger players. He backed himself and it came off. A common theme.

A bizarre try scored off the back of a Wasps error on a transition of their own and that seemed to put the game beyond them right as their hooker, Frost, came back on the field after his yellow card.

Wasps won a penalty and got a break off the lineout but a big Scott Buckley turnover turned the tide for Munster and, on the next sequence of play, Munster put the game to bed and earned a bonus point with an excellently executed close range lineout strike.

And that was that.

Wasps scored a try back but never looked like chasing down a losing bonus point. The last 10 minutes were a surreal spectacle. If you told me Munster would win this game beforehand, I’d have pictured an endgame close enough that my fingers would be chewed down to bloody nubs – making this article infinitely more difficult from a purely mechanical perspective. But it was nothing like that. Munster defended accurately, won collisions – something we did all day – and saw out the win with the kind of comfort that would make a mockery of the fact that the most experienced man on our fully emptied bench was Roman Salanoa.

The game ended with Mark Donnelly (20) and Conor Moloney (only turned 19 in July) battering a Wasps ball carrier back and forcing a knock-on to the adulation of a cheering crowd. That’s the kind of day this was. Conor Moloney started the game as a guy not even in the academy and finished it with his own Wikipedia page and people wondering who the hell this guy was.

That’s the magic of Munster Rugby.

Well, it was.

And on Sunday it looked like it could be again.

Producing young players isn’t easy. The chains of succession were broken in the middle of the last decade because of a raft of injuries to key prospects at the worst possible times. You had Conor Murray, Simon Zebo, Peter O’Mahony but you also had guys like Mike Sherry, Duncan Casey, Paddy Butler, Dave Foley, Ian Nagle, Johnny Holland and a bunch of others that showed real quality before ill-timed injuries robbed them of key moments.

All any club needs is three poor years of academy recruits and three bad years of injury to be set back so deep it looks like the entire system is broken.

Look at Daniel Okeke on Saturday. Look at the way he electrified the crowd in the second half with the kind of ball carrying that would make anyone stand up and take notice.

This guy is going to be a superstar. He has come on in leaps and bounds since the u20 Six Nations in the summer. He looks like a different player and that’s with a pre-season and full training with the senior squad for a few months. His lineout detail was spot on. He melted guys like Alfie Barbeary in contact and looked like a premier power athlete.

He’s 19.

When Munster went to work pruning and fixing the academy pathways in 2016/17, Daniel Okeke was 15 years of age. Conor Moloney, who came off the bench late in the half and started melting fully grown men, was 14. Moloney, who turned 19 back in July of this year, is the kind of explosive athlete that we’ve been looking for and he’s one of many who are now starting to show up all over the squad. They will need time, yes, but they have already come on in leaps and bounds. Look at the number of players who were contracted out of the academy last year. You’ll see similar numbers this season.

And there’s more to come.

We’re not at a stage where people will talk about a conveyor belt. We’ve got to win trophies and settle business with the other provinces for that, but the talent is there. Put the right senior guys around them, pick the right imports, stay patient, allow for ups and downs off-field (like exams) that you won’t know about and the future looks very, very bright.

The future is now. This game is proof that the spirit in Munster is strong and has the potential to light a fire that refuses to go out.

Top Three Performers

Scott Buckley – With this performance, Scott Buckley might well have inverted the gravity of the hooker depth chart as we know it. I’m not suggesting that he’s going to unseat Niall Scannell – who I think currently tops that chart opposition allowing – today or tomorrow but this performance in the power hooker roleset was exactly what we’ve been looking for. With any young power hooker, you accept that certain aspects of your lineout are going to be ropey. It’s usually the tradeoff, right? With great hookersplosiveness comes, usually, a few wonky lineouts that have to be buffed out over the seasons.

Somebody forgot to tell Scott Buckley that because he rocked up to the Ricoh Arena and found every single jumper during his 70 minutes on the field. He hit the front, found guys at the peak, hit low, flat throws and got premium tail ball without a bother on him. That is impressive. He’s still got work to do on a few things with his carrying but man, the power is right there and he’s got another two or three years of development in him, physically. He’ll face bigger challenges than this but what a start. Outstanding. ★★★★★

John Hodnett – It’s something that when John Hodnett’s name showed up on the teamsheet on Friday, it drew an explosive reaction on the TRK Secret Club. When I wrote his name on the teamsheet 10 minutes before, I felt a little giddy. And yet, John Hodnett is only 22 and had six Munster caps before the start of this game. Yet he didn’t once play like it. Hodnett was going stride for stride with guys like Tadhg Beirne and Peter O’Mahony.

He was winning turnovers, he was firing offloads, he was winning collisions, he was melting guys in the tackle, he was buzzing rucks and making reads well beyond his years.

Sure, there are a few areas of his game to buff out – some of his maul takes as the +1 were a hair away from what they needed to be, for example – but what I saw from Hodnett here was some of the most complete small forward roleset play I’ve seen in some time. And he’s just 22. With some luck with injury, Hodnett will be wearing the green of Ireland before long or, at the very least, frightening the life out of anyone ahead of him in that depth chart. Superb. ★★★★★

Peter O’Mahony – The War God is solidly in the veteran role at Munster right now. I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to captain the side for this game. He was everywhere, doing everything. I saw some guys getting wrapped up in his lack of stats in the aftermath of this performance. O’Mahony brings that stat fever out in people who need to have the game laid out to them in numbers after the game to know who played well. O’Mahony defies stats. The term “unseen work” gets thrown around an awful lot but it’s only “unseen” if you don’t know what you’re looking at. Patrick Campbell’s killer try after the break would not have happened with O’Mahony’s breakdown work and he didn’t touch the ball once.

His try saving tackle in the first three minutes set the tone for the day.

We might have been struck down with COVID and quarantines but Wasps would get nothing easy and O’Mahony told everyone in the stadium that right then and there. He was the most reliable lineout outlet on the field, a constant menace on Wasps throw and prowled every inch of the field with the kind of quality that he’ll only get widespread credit for when he eventually retires. This was something special. ★★★★★

The Wally Ratings: Wasps (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.