This has been a month of a week.
Sunday’s win over Wasps coupled with Tuesday’s announcement of Johann Van Graan’s departure and all the Succession tier drama that came with it AND THEN Leinster’s late COVID drama with Montpellier have dragged this week out longer than a bad Zoom quiz.
When you throw in the active question of whether or not the games would even go ahead this weekend – which still isn’t clear – and it became even more difficult. All the information I have as of now, writing this intro at 13:05 on Friday afternoon says that the games are on but I know that could change by the time I get down to the actual analysis part. That’s where we are at the moment, and not just in rugby either, so I’ll take this minute by minute, word by word, and hope the Whatsapp blizzard of notifications stays clear until I hit publish.
From a Munster POV, this week has the feel of being a game in Bonus Time. Nobody knew how last week’s game was going to go. There was confidence, yes, but with the number of guys making their professional debut – never mind their debut in European competition – it was impossible to make any kind of read before the game as to how things would actually play out in Coventry.
As it turned out, Munster would put away a weakened Wasps side that was further weakened on the day of the game by late COVID withdrawals and do so without that much fuss when it came down to it.
What looked like Mission Improbable ten days prior became Mission Actually This Is Very Doable a few minutes before kickoff. The eventual bonus-point victory was comprehensive enough to allow me to write my on-the-whistle ratings for the Irish Examiner in the last 10 minutes, something I didn’t really plan for in my Likely Scenarios Notebook – which is real, by the way. The performance of the team as a collective was a massive plus but it was how well Hodnett, Buckley, French, O’Connor, Okeke and Campbell did for the bulk of the game that really stood out. I would have, grudgingly, taken a losing bonus point off you beforehand so to get the exact opposite with an inexperienced, heavily disrupted selection is what I mean by being in Bonus Time this week.
Another win here, perhaps even a bonus-point win, would put us on 10 points, which was enough for a guaranteed home knock out game last season when the last two pool rounds were cancelled in January. Something like that happening again this season isn’t outside the realms of possibility, let’s be honest, so If that rule holds out again this time i.e. teams who won both their matches and were not awarded points due to COVID cancellations would be guaranteed home advantage, it means this game against Castres is actually outsized in its importance.
That isn’t to say that Munster would be taking it handy here regardless. This is Castres. The last time we played each other back in 2018/19, it ended up being pretty spicy, let’s put it that way. You probably remember this one, right?
But this has always been the way between these two clubs for literal decades now. We’ve played each other 16 times in the 26 seasons of this competition, meaning 61% of all European Cup seasons have featured this fixture at one point or another. That’s pretty remarkable.
The last time we played Castres was one of the most bad-tempered, nasty, niggly games I can remember down in the Stade Pierre-Fabre on December 15th 2018. Chris Cloete ended up getting an impromptu eye-exam at the bottom of a ruck from noted pantomime villain Rory Kockott, there were off-the-ball antics to beat the band and Munster came away rueing a few tight penalty misses and some other missed opportunities on the way to a 13-12 defeat. We really should have won that game and, while I doubt it played much of a role in the buildup to this game from an internal narrative perspective, I for one wouldn’t mind a few scores settled in the aftermath. I’m cursed with a long memory and that one sticks out to me.
Castres are in a weird space at the moment. They currently sit 7th in the Top14 and lost a narrow opening-round game to Harlequins last weekend. Like a lot of French sides, their domestic performance sits very much in the “win at home, lose virtually everything on the road” so it’s hard to read too much into that. Is this a weakened Castres team? It’s hard to get a read on that too.
I spoke to noted French rugby enjoyer James Harrington about this earlier and he reckoned that Castres are a team in the middle of a rapid transition under Broncan, Worsley and Darricarrère. Looking at their selection here this is a very mixed selection of young talent, veterans they’re in the middle of moving on from (Urdapilleta among them, even though he recently signed a deal to the end of 2023, likely as a bulwark against the ever-increasing stress on the Talented Young Flyhalf market) and TOP14 regulars. This is, at once, not even as strong as they were last week against Quins but still a side you could easily see playing for them in the Top14.
The idea of French teams not travelling well is such a long-established idea that it’s practically a meme. We’ll see if that applies to Castres here but, given the historic levels of spite between the two sides, Munster will have to force them into Not Travelling Well through force of will.
Let’s have a look at the teams.
Castres Olympique: 15. Thomas Larregain, 14. Bastien Guillemin, 13. Pierre Aguillon, 12. Thomas Combezou, 11. Filipo Nakosi, 10. Benjamin Urdapilleta, 9. Santiago Arata, 1. Wayan De Benedittis , 2. Paul Ngauamo, 3. Wilfred Hounkpatin, 4. Löic Jacquet, 5. Théo Hannoyer, 6. Nick de Crespigny, 7. Simon Meka, 8. Kevin Kornath.
Replacements: 16. Brice Humbert, 17. Julius Nostadt, 18. Antoine Guillamon, 19. Jack Whetton, 20. Mateaki Kafatolu, 21. Rory Kockott, 22. Louis Le Brun, 23. Antoine Zeghdar
Castres play a “big” style of rugby.
If you wonder why Castres are often able to compete at the top end of the TOP14 despite lacking the kind of big names you see at Racing, Toulouse, Toulon, Bordeaux or La Rochelle, you can trace it back to their style of play, especially if they can get into a knockout format. Castres play a fairly standard version of Kick Pressure but they do so to a very high level. Everyone on their team is recruited and developed to fit that style and they are adept at executing it.
If you look through their pack you’ll see a mix between youth and veterans, yes, but they are all big, heavy runners. If you watch Castres for an extended period of time – especially with Urdapilleta running at #10 – any phase play they go through is incredibly direct, almost to the point of having clear points of separation between backs and forwards. You’ll see the odd pod tip on but you won’t usually see much in the way of pullback screen ball to Urdapilleta in the pocket. That’s not really how Castres usually move up the field.
It’s almost too high risk for them. They are certainly capable of scoring tries from range – especially when you kick deep to Filipo Nakosi as Quins found out to their cost last weekend – but in some ways, they remind me of a more dialled in Exeter Chiefs. By that I mean, Castres play how I feel Exeter should. Castres have no notions of “expanding their game”, at least from what I’ve seen. They aren’t afraid to slow things down, secure the ruck and boot the ball downfield to exert pressure on the receipt or on the first phase after the kick.
They are big, they know exactly what they are and they aren’t one bit shy about going back to what works for them. Here’s a look at their general kick pressure game and how a smart transition team can attack gaps on certain longer kicks.
Castres are most effective when they are mauling off the lineout and they are really good at doubling up a strong kick chase with penalty winning pressure at the breakdown. You’ll often see Castres turning a big box kick from the 22 off one of your kicks into a penalty around their 10m line that they then kick downfield and let their heavy maul go to work. Their 10/12/13 combination doesn’t have any explosive ball carriers – although they’ll use Nakosi as a power winger on certain scrum and lineout schemes – but they are good at setting a decent central position, allowing the forwards to set a tight compression on the next two phases before giving Urdapilleta a chance to find a skip pass to the wings.
It’s important for Munster to match Castres off #9 when they go to guys like de Crespigny, Paul Ngauamo, Kornath, Jacquet and Hounkpatin. We’ve got to be heavy in contact and make life difficult for them on the ruck recycle. If we can do that, we’ll force a lot of deep kicks from them in our own half or slow attacking sequences that we can handle. If we don’t, Castres will double down on any collision wins and look to exploit number mismatches with Nakosi being particularly dangerous if he gets possession on the angle.
For Munster, the key will be maintaining phase pressure with more ball off #10 than we might do otherwise. We have to increase the gap between rucks on multiphase sequences to increase the lateral distance that Castres forwards have to traverse.
Off the set-piece, in particular, this Castres side will be vulnerable to their #10/#12 getting isolated if you can engage their fringe defence off the lineout.
Castres have great size but imagine their pack as Exeter without Simmonds or Cowan-Dickie. Massive straight-line power but the potential to get caught on lateral spaces, especially with ground to make up.
