There was real value in this win.
Sure, the four points will do nicely – actually a lot more than nicely – because these European pools are so wonky now that you can more or less tell who’s qualifying for the top 8 of both by looking at the table today.
Munster currently sit sixth in Pool B on 5 points. Sure, the Ospreys’ win over Montpellier is something of a fly in the ointment there but that will only affect the Challenge Cup spots and each other, given they will play again in January. Everyone else has already got their wins and losses over each other settled in this half of the fixtures so now, if you’re sitting on 2 points or fewer, there’s a real temptation to pie off the rest of the pool, rotate your top guys out and focus fully on domestic affairs. That will have a further impact on the January results as teams start to get more and more practical about their resources over the nightmare Christmas/New Year/Six Nations run-in. Essentially, where you are today will quite likely be where you are in two games’ time unless there are some real outlier results.
So, for Munster, even another 5/6 points would be enough to book sixth at least, with the possibility of bouncing a little higher. depending on those outlier results elsewhere.
But, outside of those mathematical equations, I think the nature of this win in Northampton will stand to this group longest of all. It was far from perfect, it was a little scuffed at times but the way Munster held out for this win despite playing less than 15 minutes of the second half with a full complement of players was really, really satisfying.
Defensively, Munster have rarely looked better or more destructive and I say that in the context of Munster’s defence being close to the best in Europe over the last few seasons under JP Ferreira. Leamy’s system has really bedded in and you can see the results against South Africa, against Toulouse and now here.
Elements of what we’re doing could be described as a narrow blitz with a two-man stop/counter-ruck focus against quick ball sides but that doesn’t fully cover it either. We seem to be competing at the breakdown less when it comes to straight-up poach attempts but it’s not like we don’t attack there either – we won two or three really important breakdown steals at key moments – so it’s not one thing or the other. The one constant seems to be suffocating line speed to shoot in, with a demand for the fold to cover across.
Look at the press on this lineout scheme, for example;
Frisch and Crowley bump up and jockey on the screen, Earls shoots in on the passer to pressure that transfer and Frisch – in particular – along with Crowley busts their ass getting across to make the tackle. Look at Haley too; he has a licence to attack that breakdown because it’s wide, it’s a “flow” ruck and it makes sense in context to slow Saints down here. He gets the reward.
We will back our wingers to shoot up into the screen with real aggression because we want to stress their pass action. Just how good is your passing under pressure? How accurate are you? Because we back Frisch, in particular, to cover a lot of ground on the outside edge to shut down whatever pass you get away.
This is the thing with Munster’s defence; it doesn’t rely on just one thing to be effective. Last season, it felt like Munster needed a tonne of big breakdown penalties – which the referee has to decide to give you most of the time – to lift sieges by physically bigger teams. Here, we seemed much more focused on line speed and two-man stops, even at the risk of offside penalties, which referees tend to give less often. In this regard, Antoine Frisch was particularly impressive as he blitzed hard, made impactful shots and then reloaded really well. This system gives up a lot of missed tackles as a byproduct of the number of tackles we’re making. We want speed, we want impact, we want to slow the runner. Not all missed tackles are killers – we all know the ones that are – but if you’re pressurising a passer, we’ve got the pace in the back five and midfield to cover a shooter.
In the middle of the field, you’ll see us shoot up and look for half a choke tackle. Look at Coombes here closing the door on the screen with his double shot. When Kleyn sees Northampton lose their entire pod to the collision, he goes hard on a counter-ruck – look at how Ribbans jumps right back on Kleyn’s entry.
Northampton go to a fairly aimless chip and chase that they luck out on with a penalty because Joey Carbery hasn’t mastered the art of becoming a 2D shape.
That’s an illustration of the pressure that we put teams under but we’re a side that seems to be learning from our errors too.
Remember a few weeks ago when Rory Scannell didn’t back his inside defender on a sequence and gave up a huge outside gap? He learned. He follows the pass target and backs Frisch to make a high-energy tackle with Hodnett finishing the job and then adding the poach action afterwards.
That is heartbreaking defence. I spoke before the game of needing to keep Northampton below 95% completion at the breakdown and we did just that – 94%. That all plays a part in earning this win.
From a play perspective, we stuck to the 1.3 PPC intent we’ve brought for the entire season once again and all of our pack build changes in the back five worked. Before the game, I theorised that to de-weaponise Northampton’s maul, we’d need to pull their lineout below 85% and we did that too.
They ran at 83% in this game, despite Munster not fully committing to the level of counter-jumping I expected. When Munster did counter-launch we caused them trouble almost every single time so their maul, as heavy and as dangerous as it is, played no real factor in this game. We rolled the dice on the 5m line and hurt them repeatedly. It’s as good and as clinical a defensive lineout performance as you’ll ever see against a side that ran at 100% against La Rochelle last week. Jack O’Donoghue’s selection was a really good bit of work because his lineout work – as a counter-lifter and defensive mauler alone – was of the highest quality while he absolutely dug into Northampton defensively. He landed 19 tackles and missed none on a day when he also spent 10 minutes in the sin bin. That’s impressive but it was a collective performance of players producing really tough, aggressive rugby against a Saints side that were anything but.
Last season, this Munster side would have tucked up and gone home after that scuffle around the 55th minute but we did the opposite this season. The conditions worsened, the blood went up but we still kept making big plays in defence and breaking a bit of Northampton’s resolve with every close-range entry repelled.
We can’t afford similar territorial disadvantages next week against Leinster but we won’t be able to afford three yellow cards in one half either. They are a different beast but this Munster side is too. I think this game shows some of the roads we’ve still got to travel with what we need to add to this squad to push us onto the next level but you can see what we’re trying to do and the clarity that is now there. We can build on that and while there’s some tough squad building to come, even a clearing of our rehab list puts us in a good spot for what’s to come in 2023.
This game won’t make many highlight reels and I’m sure there’ll be more ups and downs to come, but I feel this game was an important stage post for what we want to do this season and over the next three seasons.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★★★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★ |
| Antoine Frisch | ★★★★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★★ |
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★ |
| Roman Salanoa | N/A |
| John Hodnett | ★★★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | N/A |
| Craig Casey | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | N/A |
