Munster 34 Edinburgh 20

A big win in and out of context

This was a game where it felt like Munster were under serious pressure to even win the game at times but the character and grit of the team shone through in the end. A bonus-point win was exactly the end this middle season block needed.

Match Intensity

Match Quality

Match Importance

Quality of Opposition

3.4

This game felt like a lot of our games this season in that it was wildly up and down, dramatic, error-ridden at times but… there’s something else here in this team.

Character.

There was plenty to talk about from an Xs & Os perspective, and we’ll get to that, as we will get to Munster’s lack of tight power which I believe is a key undermining feature in this middle block of games, but watching that game back for the second time the overriding feeling I got was that plenty teams would have ended up drawing or even losing that game in the 70th minute when Munster were defending a seven-point lead after what was essentially 11 straight minutes of close-range defence against a bigger, heavier Edinburgh pack.

After conceding a scrum penalty a few minutes later, the chances of that very thing happening increased incrementally. But Munster didn’t wobble. They might have lost collisions with more frequency as the game went on, they might have made a number of handling errors and poor reads in defence but when the temperature started to go up – metaphorically speaking, it was baltic out – Munster didn’t wilt.

Edinburgh knocked on a pass after their attacking lineout phase fell flat but that still left a dangerous scrum for Munster to launch deep in our own half. After a full penalty on the last one, and with outstanding Jean Kleyn replaced in the second row by Gavin Coombes – himself after a mountain of work at the coalface down the collision mines – a side who was going to bottle the game would have bottled it right here.

But instead, they won a full penalty. From there, Ben Healy launched the ball 30 odd metres down the field to the edge of the Edinburgh 22 before launching this strike off a maul that was designed to create an exploitable blindside.

Munster had been defending for the majority of the second half at this stage but still had the clarity of thought to execute this play in a moment when hearts would have been racing in the context of the scoreboard. Everything from the drive infield and the control to hold Edinburgh’s infield defence to Healy and Zebo’s dart to the blindside, Healy’s stagger step to hold up Pyrgos and Zebo’s lethal finish was straight out of the top drawer.

That’s a fine way to seal a bonus point in any game.

♛ ♛ ♛

I wrote last week about Munster’s relative lack of power and I got a lot of correspondence back from people wondering what I meant by it. Surely, they enquired, size isn’t everything and they’re right – to an extent. Size might not be everything but it’s a lot of this game. Would I be comfortable in saying that Munster’s front row are better scrummagers than the unit they were facing in the second half? Absolutely. Our build to the bonus point came in the aftermath of a scrum penalty.

But look at this from earlier in the half;

We dominated that Edinburgh scrum against the head but what good did it do ultimately? We only took our forwards out of the next phase once Edinburgh got the ball away and they were a hair away from getting an outside break if not for a good tackle from Farrell shutting it down. My point here – as it was during the week – is that good scrummaging is as likely to go unrewarded as it is to get rewarded with the kind of outcome that makes hyper-focusing on it as a defining quality worth it, especially if you’re trading that scrummaging off for power elsewhere.

This isn’t about “why aren’t the young lads playing” because a tonne of our young props have been disrupted this season by the effects of covid, covid isolation, consistent niggling injuries and more that has kept them out of contention at this level of games for one reason or another.

Power in this game is gravity. The more gravity you exert, the more time and space you have to make plays by exerting a tidal force, of sorts, on the defensive line of the opposition. The more gravity you exert on the opposition defensive line, the more space and attacking lanes you generate at the furthest point from the original ruck.

At a basic level, also, 50/22 has tweaked the defensive priorities of the opposition in a way that World Rugby largely expected. It hasn’t lead to a mass drop off of defenders from the primary defensive line but it has softened the edges of opposition blitz patterns and I think it’s actively shortened the primary defensive line, especially for teams who play deep into layers, which is most sides these days.

Here is a rough play structure on the attacking side’s 10m line with tidal force being applied to the defensive line.

The option of the loss of territory to 50/22 or, at the very least, a skidding ball towards the touchline that can lead to a dangerous pick up regardless or a long kick transition sequence which can have unpredictable results. That was always there but the added danger of a 50/22 has created an extra few seconds of space to be utilised.

Tidal force can be applied to the defensive line if you have enough gravity – in this case, size and power – to commit defenders to open up the edge space or space created by defenders racing to fill the edge space. You do this by (a) winning collisions and (b) generating quick ball off the ruck if you don’t get a linebreak by winning the collision over the ball.

You can duplicate this tidal force with accurate forward interplay off #9 linked in with screened and looped runners – a very high skill production with a lot of moving parts – but the desired result is the same. Gainline and, if there’s a ruck, a dominant collision win there to produce the kind of defensive line manipulation that the next phase off #9 or #10 depending on the read can play against a defence that is drawn to the gravity of the previous phase.

The bigger the gravity, the more options you have. On Phase 2, you can work in deeper screen passes, inside balls, and work to the space that presents itself as long as the initial gravity off the last ruck holds.

You don’t always have to play off #9 directly to begin your sequence but the gravity you exert in that close range space still has to produce “tidal force” to make the attack.

Munster have no problem exerting defensive gravity on the opposition. Winning defensive collisions is easier – in context, I mean, because this is all elite, incredibly difficult stuff – than winning offensive collisions. We have a good range of defensive hitters who slow up carries and attack the breakdown with good instincts most of the time. This is a long sequence of defence to look at but you get a great picture of why Munster have such an effective defence, even while giving up size to a side like Edinburgh.

Offensively, Munster fluctuate up and down during games when it comes to exerting gravity, especially when we run with a relatively light on tight power pack build as we did here. We started the game very strongly with sharp collisions, passes out of gravity-induced compressions, incredibly quick passing and it created consistently useable “tidal force” on Edinburgh’s defence, even in desperately poor weather conditions. Craig Casey seemed to pick up a leg injury during the first half that affected his “base” and his usually excellent passing dipped, not helped by worsening weather conditions. You can see the impact of inconsistent collision work here and how our “gravity” started to become inconsistent.

Even then, we turned it around late in the half and executed a close-range opportunity with the efficiency you’d expect of a side who got pelters for blowing those opportunities a few weeks back. The second half was spent defending as we upped our kicking in the conditions – and with the lead – and we seemed to tire quite quickly as the half progressed. Edinburgh mixed up their attack well and struck back on our long kick exits. Our early breakdown success wasn’t duplicated until late in the second half. We started to slip off some defensive collisions we’d usually expect to win and that lead to penalty concessions.

An excellently taken try on a transition gave us breathing room before we conceded seven points after almost 11 straight minutes of close range defence before the end game played out as described.

For me, Munster seem like a team playing with resistance bands on as we struggle in the absence of Snyman, Jenkins and even Thomas Ahern. We finished the game with a back five of players under 6’5″ and 110kg. Now it didn’t matter in the end because, as I’ve said, we’re a good team with good players that are smartly coached but ideally, you’d be finishing with size and power to make things that bit easier. When we can consistently exert gravity on the opposition for 80 minutes – and Jason Jenkins will help us to do that immediately – we will put some awful beatings on teams who just did not think such a thing was possible against this Munster side.

Imagine a heavyweight boxer with heavyweight KO power in close but with middleweight mobility and durability? It’s just a player or two away.

Star Players

It’s no surprise to me that the most consistently strong performances we’ve seen from a Munster pack in the last half of the decade was the one that had Donnacha Ryan and Jean Kleyn in the second row. Kleyn is a core player for this team and this game is a perfect example of that. He won collisions on both side of the ball, he tackled himself into the ground, he battered rucks, he stole lineouts, he drove mauls. He was joined by the industrious, hard-nosed Fineen Wycherley and the gargantuan power and impact of Gavin Coombes but Kleyn was the top performer for me on a day where he showed a little bit of everything in a top-class performance. Outstanding. ★★★★★

Simon Zebo has always scored tries. He’ll be dotting them down in his 50s/60s when he’s clowning on his grandkids, I reckon. He just gets what he needs to do. His try for the bonus point looks simple enough but a decent winger doesn’t always get that – great wingers always do and that’s Zebo. He’s winning collisions in the wide channels, he’s brushing off tacklers who have an angle on him and the idea that he’s lost “a yard of pace” just seems to be lads on their couch indulging in wishful thinking. Zebo is a killer with the ball in his hands and he’ll have a big say in this season yet, I feel. ★★★★★

The Wally Ratings: Edinburgh (H)

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.