The expectation is that Munster will routinely dispatch this Dragons side and pick up five points.
You might think that’s a preamble to “well, it’s not that simple” but no – I fully expect Munster to do just that. Five points is the aim here. Dragons have been depleted by a baffling Wales vs Barbarians game (that isn’t even capped) so, straight out of the gap, they’re without certain starters like Leon Brown, Ben Carter, Elliot Dee, Rio Dyer, Cai Evans, Lloyd Fairbrother, Dan Lydiate and Aaron Wainwright on top of an already lengthy injury list.
Their head coach, Dai Flanagan, was in Mugs Corner this week trying to rationalise the bizarre situation he finds himself in ahead of a trip to the defending champions.
“We need to live in an environment where it’s about the next man up – that’s what this week presents us,” he said.
“To build a squad you’ve got to give people experiences. Ideally, you do it around the best group of players you have available, but sometimes your back is against the wall, you’ve got to come out swinging. That’s the opportunity we have this week. We’ve got a few youngsters on show with points to prove and opportunities they want to take. It’s a huge chance to test ourselves against the champions.”
Talking about the Next Man Up in Round 3 when your union has lifted eight core players out of your team on short notice? I’m getting flashbacks to the Emerging Ireland tour. Oh god. Oh no.
It’s quite weird that the Dragons are in this spot this season. Last season around this time, it was Graham Rowntree who was sitting down trying to explain why the team he’d been building in preseason were lifted on a few weeks’ notice to play the Coca-Cola Danger Baboons, the Windhoek Draught Griquas and the Nestlé Grand Budapest Hoteliers RFC (one of those is a real team) on a hastily arranged Emerging Ireland tour.
That ensuing loss to the Dragons last season was a living, breathing woe engine churning out misery, hot takes, schadenfreude and pressure. It was the kind of loss – to a side that ditched their coach the week before, no less – that can be a poison pill for a coach. It doesn’t get you sacked straight away but, if results stay poor, it’s the kind of defeat that’s brought up when your contract doesn’t get renewed.
Rowntree managed to ride it out – and become the first Munster coach to lift silverware in over a decade – but I’ll never forget his words after that loss last season.
“I was surprised about our inaccuracy, particularly going into their 22′, and our ability to keep the ball in that key area. That really shocked me, I’ll be honest with you. Whoever you play, you’re going to have a challenge — particularly when you play away from home, regardless of what’s happened in the Dragons camp this week. I expected better in terms of the stuff we can do better. It was just so poor. We had eight turnovers in the first half and were ill-disciplined. We lost lineouts, knocked on and we never got a foothold in the game.
We had to address that and be patient. Just before half-time, we sorted that out but in the second half, we fell away in all those areas of the game, especially going into their 22′.
We were just sloppy.”
We don’t owe the Dragons one. That would be beneath a champion side. Our season won’t be defined by how we play against the Dragons in the early rounds of the season. It wasn’t last season when we lost, it won’t be this season.
So looking for revenge here is a little much. We do, however, have to give them a receipt.
Munster Rugby: 15. Shane Daly, 14. Sean O’Brien, 13. Alex Nankivell, 12. Rory Scannell, 11. Calvin Nash, 10. Tony Butler, 9. Craig Casey; 1. Kieran Ryan, 2. Diarmuid Barron, 3. John Ryan, 4. Edwin Edogbo, 5. Thomas Ahern, 6. Jack O’Donoghue (c), 7. Alex Kendellen, 8. Gavin Coombes
Replacements: 16. Scott Buckley, 17. Mark Donnelly, 18. Stephen Archer, 19. Ruadhan Quinn, 20. Brian Gleeson, 21. Paddy Patterson, 22. Jack Crowley, 23. Ben O’Connor
Dragons: 15. Angus O’Brien, 14. Corey Baldwin, 13. Steff Hughes (c), 12. Jack Dixon, 11. Ashton Hewitt, 10. Will Reed, 9. Rhodri Williams; 1. Rhodri Jones, 2. Bradley Roberts, 3. Luke Yendle, 4. Joe Davies, 5. George Nott, 6. Ryan Woodman, 7. James Benjamin, 8. Taine Basham.
Replacements: 16. Brodie Coghlan, 17. Aki Seiuli, 18. Nathan Evans, 19. Barney Langton-Cryer, 20. George Young, 21. Dane Blacker, 22. Aneurin Owen, 23. Ewan Rosser.
The Dragons under Dai Flanagan are a high ball in play time off-ball team.
What do I mean by this?
Well, in the first two games of this URC season, they’ve had an average kick-to-pass ratio of 1:3.3 so, on average, they kick the ball once every three passes which would put them into low counter-transition territory on our sliding scale but their use of possession puts them in the off-ball range, for me. On average, the Dragons have played with a pass-per-carry ratio of 1.09 in their two games so far this season, which is fairly conservative and speaks to their overall use of possession – they are far more likely to hit up for one or two phases max with very little pass action beyond one out carries with their kickers at #9 and #10 constantly looking to move the ball downfield through the boot.
It’s exactly what you’d expect from a weaker team in this league, especially when they’ve had so much injury and national call-up disruption.
The Dragons will kick at a pretty high volume to try to use their kick chase, small forwards (they’ve two in the back row alongside a heavy half-lock, one of the small forwards, James Benjamin, is a hooker who last started in the back row in 2019) and their experienced, small-forward build midfield to punish Munster inaccuracies with the ball in hand at the breakdown.
What does a High Tempo On-Ball team do with a team playing Off Ball rugby? It holds onto the ball relentlessly. If you want to defend, cool, defend for 10 phases every time you kick the ball. See where you’re at after 30 minutes of that.
Whatever happens, they’ll give us a tonne of transition ball to work with because they are so likely to kick at high volumes themselves.
That gives us a few options of our own when it comes to kicking on transition that I think we might well try out.
