Leinster are a champion side with role depth all the way down through their charts and that, coupled with some heavy leaning on their proven game winners at this level, won them this game.
We are not at that level yet. We knew that, though, and have done since the end of last season but it still stings. Munster lost this game for the same reasons that we always do; senior players making key errors at key times and our front five losing key collisions at key times and then looking at our younger core to pull it around after the damage has been done.
That’s just the reality.
This isn’t anyone’s fault, though. We are what we are until we’re something different and that was laid bare here somewhat starkly. Elite-level rugby is a collision sport and the more elite power athletes you have, the easier it is to play whatever game you want against elite opposition. Our attacking work was much better than it has been in previous games against Leinster without a doubt but when it came down to it, we didn’t have the power to compete with them for the full 80 minutes.
Go back to October and it’s the same story.
This is eminently fixable, of course, but only with regeneration in certain positions and that can’t be done overnight or even fully in one season of contracting. You can see the development that we’ve brought to our attacking framework in the two games we’ve played against Leinster but the physical reality is what it is at the moment and until that changes, almost every single configuration of Leinster beat us.
I wrote during the week about Leinster’s game winners and how their level of respect for you directly correlates to how many they feel they need to beat you. Looking at this game, they had moderate respect for our level of physicality but they held that respect for the full 80 minutes by leaving Porter and Sheehan on. They didn’t feel they could risk playing Milne or McKee for even 30 seconds of this game which is… something, I guess, but ultimately their read of us as being a mid-level physical threat was accurate.
That might feel woe-inducing but it just is what it is at the moment. We’ve always known that we were four or five players away but this game was confirmation of who those players are from a role perspective; a power player in the outside backs and three or four heavy collision-winning front-row forwards.
Until we get those players into the squad consistently, we will continue to get off-balled and sucker punched by physically bigger and stronger sides. Leinster were seemingly heavily influenced by Toulouse’s approach in Thomond Park a few weeks ago to the point where they kept a very low PPC – 0.9 – kicked long on counter-transition and successfully stuffed us off #9 and blitzed hard off C/D. Why? They knew that, even down their depth chart, they have the physical profile in the pack to neutralise us and their near first choice outside back line to cover and track our framework outside.
That’s Leinster’s main strength at the moment when it comes to “strength in depth”. It’s not just having a tonne of good players, which they do, it’s that they have an incredibly settled positional role chart and players who have been growing into that framework for the last seven seasons.
So they have James Ryan, but also role depth in the same mould as James Ryan. They have Caelan Doris, but they also have players who can fill Doris’ primary role strengths. Van Der Flier is the same in two different variants of his role set with Connors and Penny. They don’t necessarily need the same “quality” down the chart to be successful because the system and framework they’re operating in are so settled and consistent. Players can slot in and slot out with little in the way of chop or churning.
They still need core guys to make it work, of course. Some would have you believe that Leinster wouldn’t have needed to feature Porter and Sheehan or Ringrose at all in this game and they’d still have won. I don’t think that’s true because they are one of the few players they don’t have role depth for but even Leinster can’t get role depth for everyone.
Long story short, we don’t have the power to threaten Leinster as of yet, even a selection with Ryan, Furlong, Doris or Van Der Flier in the pack, because they have guys who – defensively at least – are close enough role duplicates for them to make it work. I was asked during the game if Leinster would dare select that pack for a game against La Rochelle or Toulouse and the answer is obvious – no, they wouldn’t. Why? Because La Rochelle and Toulouse have the size and physicality that requires Leinster to use the guys their framework is built around, as opposed to the guys that can make the framework work.
Ulster, for example, have a closer pack build to one that Leinster feel threatened by so they’re more likely to use guys like Ryan/Van Der Flier and Doris against them while not rating their wider attacking framework so they’re likely to rotate out their first choice back three or midfield.
What’s the key for Munster? Keep up our attacking development but – and this is crucial – beef up our front row and add some power in the backline. Until we have those power athletes in the front row, this version of Leinster will not respect us and we wil continue to lose to them.
You could see the difference in these two offensive sequences in the second half.
Barron, Wycherley and Salanoa can’t go the full 80 minutes for us, so we have to use them as 20-minute finishers to get peak production out of them. We know that Kilcoyne, Scannell and Ryan are solid operators who can get us into position to beat most teams but Leinster – even Leinster 1.5 – aren’t most teams, especially when they’re playing off-ball rugby.
***
The losing of this game was firmly in rooted in the 10-minute period after earning a penalty try with a subsequent yellow card for Max Deegan. Instead of forging ahead and stressing Leinster to a point where we put the game out of reach, we bottled it instead. I use that word carefully. We had the means to stay patient and allow the game to come to us but, instead, we started to create a litany of panicked errors, as if the opportunity to actually win the game rattled us.
Make no mistake, these were unforced errors.
We didn’t lose this game because we were slapless, we didn’t lose it because we were soft, we lost it because of a bad spell where we weren’t cute enough or strong enough to keep a young ref looking to even things up after a penalty try and yellow card out of the game for 10 minutes. That’s how soft decisions get given – because you haven’t been cute enough to manage the game to the point where it’s you who’s getting those decisions.
All of this is fixable by squad development. The players highlighted here aren’t going to turn into the massive power freaks that all trophy-winning teams have these days and that’s OK – we shouldn’t expect them to. Developing these players on your own is arduous and takes time and, to be fair, no one had them in 2012/13 when our senior guys were coming through. Signing players with that kind of game-changing power from outside is difficult and expensive, but they are there – we just have to find them and augment them with the young potential we have.
When people talk about the gap we need to close, this is it. It’s power, it’s the right kind of athletes, and it’s getting guys like Ahern, Knox, Edogbo and Snyman on the field consistently so we’re not always playing with a size disadvantage when things get tight.
We’re getting there but when you’re still losing, it’s never fast enough and that’s OK too but the need for areas of the squad to be rehabbed has just been made clear once again and until it’s done, these games will never be the like for like, iron sharpens iron games of old because we’re not big enough or strong enough where it counts to be given that respect.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★ |
| 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 | ★★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★★ |
| Josh Wycherley | ★★★★ |
| Roman Salanoa | ★★★★ |
| Kiran McDonald | ★★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★★ |
| Craig Casey | ★★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
| Pa Campbell | ★★★ |
