A few years ago, I had an interview with the then-Munster player, Alex Wootton. He said something on that phone call that always stuck with me. In it, I asked him what it was like playing in Thomond Park on a big day and I expected the typical answer. I got that, as you’d expect, but he also said that Thomond Park can (and often does) crush you regardless of who you’re playing with, Munster or the opposition.
The energy that can rain down from the stands on a big day in Thomond Park can make you or it can break you.
How often have we seen both of those things? That mix of expectation, hope, anger, frustration and joy. On the biggest days, the crowd becomes a force all of its own almost, and when Munster teams can harness that energy very few teams can stand in the way of it.
Munster were never going to lose that game against Glasgow.
It was just not going to happen.
I’ve been in the crowd for moments like that and I can’t really explain it. It’s like being in the Borg, but everyone’s wearing puffer jackets and woolly hats. You just lose yourself in whatever the crowd is doing. Mom’s spu-getti. I was in the East Terrace for this moment with my brother and, even though I couldn’t really see what was going on (we were nearer the Ballynanty End) but it didn’t matter. It was like a mass out-of-body experience.
The hive mind had me right by the action on the Munster 5m line where Munster turned the Northampton scrum against the head with just seven forwards.
That sequence from the scrum to the pick up by De Villiers, to the eventual exit was like very few moments I’ve experienced in that it felt like what everyone in the stadium was doing was actually influencing the game right in front of us. Goosebumps, even now.
But I’ve seen the other side of it too where a disinterested, unfocused crowd groans and mutters their way through a game, actively helping the opposition. That crowd waits to be sparked into life, rather than sparking the team into life from the jump.
I saw it this season against Bayonne, last season against Glasgow, I saw it a few years ago against Castres and then back along the years to the likes of Leicester in 2015/16, Connacht the same season, and even Montebaun way back when. This issue never manifests itself away from home because the Munster support at those games understands their role perfectly. At home games, that isn’t always the case. Bad weather doesn’t help, neither do early kickoffs or teams the crowd doesn’t know.
None of that is the case here.
And it brings me to Northampton who, for the first time since that era, are coming to Thomond Park with something close to the aura they had towards the end of the 2000s and beginning of the 2010s. An English club flying high in Europe and domestically coming to Thomond Park with big ideas.
Sounds familiar.
So if you’re going, go as if you’re playing because all going well, you can affect the game as if you were.
Every team thinks they can handle a fully focused Thomond Park. And they’re almost all wrong.
Munster: 15. Simon Zebo; 14. Calvin Nash, 13. Antoine Frisch, 12. Alex Nankivell, 11. Shane Daly; 10. Jack Crowley, 9. Craig Casey; 1. Jeremy Loughman, 2. Niall Scannell, 3. Oli Jager; 4. Tom Ahern, 5. Tadhg Beirne (c); 6. Peter O’Mahony, 7. John Hodnett, 8. Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: 16. Eoghan Clarke, 17. Josh Wycherley, 18. John Ryan, 19. Brian Gleeson, 20. Alex Kendellen, 21. Conor Murray, 22. Joey Carbery, 23. Seán O’Brien.
Northampton Saints: 15. George Furbank (c); 14. Tommy Freeman, 13. Fraser Dingwall, 12. Rory Hutchinson, 11. Ollie Sleightholme; 10. Fin Smith, 9. Alex Mitchell; 1. Alex Waller, 2. Curtis Langdon, 3. Trevor Davison, 4. Temo Mayanavanua, 5. Alex Coles, 6. Courtney Lawes, 7. Tom Pearson, 8. Juarno Augustus
Replacements: 16. Robbie Smith, 17. Emmanuel Iyogun, 18. Elliot Millar Mills, 19. Alex Moon, 20. Sam Graham, 21. Tom James, 22. Burger Odendaal, 23. Charlie Savala.
Saints’ are better this season than they were when we just about beat them twice home and away last season.
So what have they changed since then?
Quite a bit, in some ways, but a lot of the elements they feel they need to beat us are still present. They’ll feel that those two losses last year could easily have gone the other way – and they’re right – so a lot of what worked for them, especially in Thomond Park, is still present in their pack build.
But the truth is that Northampton plays much more of a counter-transition style game this season compared to last year. A lot of their success this season has been based on kicking a little bit more, beefing up their defensive transition work – through Pearson in particular – and using Smith, Mitchell and their electric and well-drilled backline to pick out gaps on transition and off the set piece.
They kick often, they kick long and they’ll move the ball to kick it if that makes sense. Ultimately, like all counter-transition teams, what Saints want is for you to be running at the middle of the pitch against guys like Lawes and Pearson under pressure from Freeman and Sleighthome so they can get bodies over the ball for big penalty wins. Or they want you to kick back to them so they can have a crack off you on transition directly or setting up you by coming back inside so they can pin tacklers into the ruck for penalties they can kick deep and maul.
On transition, they are good at stitching plays together off loose box kicks.
There’s a bit of luck involved in this play with that nice bounce off the kick but they earned that luck with the space they created. Their backline is cohesive, pacey and very well-balanced. They don’t really use a heavy-hitting role type in their backline – although I suppose you could call Freeman something of a power winger – so a lot of the heavy lifting is done by their 3-3-X pack structure on phase play.
It’s pretty unique for a counter-transition team to use an on-ball phase structure like this but it’s possible because of how uniform their backline is in combination with two outstanding tight-breaking threats in Mitchell and Smith.
On this transition sequence, you can see how they utilise all of those qualities to stress Toulon’s defence.
The key to playing any counter-transition team is to ensure they don’t suck you into their long kicking game where they slowly unbalance you or, worse again, they pick you off when you panic on the run back. We will have to be brutal at the transition breakdown. If we were, and we can retain the ball, we can begin to make their possession expensive with our long on-ball sequences. Essentially, if we can get a good early lead and retain the ball, we can make them over-chase at the breakdown and try riskier transition plays that can bring our own transition game into play.
There are tries out there for us but only if we can get a handle on their attacking structures.
