Munster’s last two weeks at the offensive breakdown have seen a marked improvement on what came in the previous two weeks. At the same time, it didn’t feel like it, even if the numbers were unequivocal. That’s the thing with this game; vibes play a large part in how everything is perceived.
The Ospreys game was, as you’d expect, an incredibly narrow contest due to the conditions. In the previous week, Munster’s ultra-loose attacking game saw the ball slung all over the pitch, which thinned out our breakdown numbers and gave the ORW scoring an oddly level amount of scoring between forwards and backs.
Such a game was impossible in an orange weather warning so Munster’s game tightened up completely. In practical terms, this means a low Pass Per Carry score and a low Kick to Pass ratio. You carry the ball into contact almost as many times as you pass the ball and you kick the ball every three or four passes.
When we look at the scoring, we see a very typical story; all the forwards maxing out with big numbers.
| Dominant Clean | Guard Action | Attendance | Ineffective | Ruck Work Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Loughman | 2 | 15 | 1 | 1 | 35 |
| 2. Scannell | 2 | 14 | 34 | ||
| 3. Jager | 1 | 5 | 13 | ||
| 4. Kleyn | 1 | 17 | 6 | 43 | |
| 5. Beirne | 24 | 4 | 52 | ||
| 6. O'Mahony | 1 | 2 | |||
| 7. Hodnett | 1 | 14 | 1 | 32 | |
| 8. O'Donoghue | 13 | 1 | 3 | 21 | |
| 9. Casey | 2 | 6 | |||
| 10. Crowley | 10 | 1 | 21 | ||
| 11. McCarthy | 4 | 9 | 30 | ||
| 12. Fitzgerald | 10 | 2 | 22 | ||
| 13. Farrell | 8 | 16 | |||
| 14. Nash | 3 | 6 | |||
| 15. Haley | 1 | 3 | 9 | ||
| 16. Barron | 11 | 1 | 20 | ||
| 17. Ryan | 4 | 8 | |||
| 18. Archer | 2 | 16 | 38 | ||
| 19. Wycherley | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |
| 20. Coombes | 17 | 2 | 36 | ||
| 21. Murray | 0 | ||||
| 22. Butler | 0 | ||||
| 23. Daly | 0 |
The outlier here is the rucking performance of Shay McCarthy, who was incredibly accurate and aggressive at the breakdown all evening in Cork and scored a legit four Dominant Cleans in rotten weather. He’s still quite raw positionally but I’ll tell you this much, when he hits bodies at the ruck, they stay hit.
The wet weather really suited our tight five, who had narrow, static ruck targets to hit all night long and they did so. Kleyn seemed to really relax – in a good way – with the narrow coverage and he was well able to be physical with his shots. Beirne showed up with a huge work rate by the end of the game but did the usual thing of slowly building into the contest. When I mark Beirne’s scores you often see him lagging in the top ten by the end of the first 30 minutes but by 70 minutes, he’s absolutely everywhere on both sides of the ball.
Most of Munster’s ORW scoring was done in the second half of this game where we were playing into the wind and rain. As a result, we scored 449 points on the Collective Ruck Work scale on 90 won rucks. An average score of 4.9 ORW points per ruck.
Against Zebre, we scored an average of 3.6 ORW points per ruck. Against Connacht, the average per ruck was 4.64.
This tells us that while the Ospreys game might not have looked great, it had better efficiency on the offensive side of the ruck than a game played in perfect conditions where we scored five tries. That’s really good. Anything over an average of four points per ruck is generally quite a good performance, regardless of anything else. These scores show breakdown efficiency and work rate, not making the right pass at the right time.
That brings us to Leinster.
On the stats sheet at least – it looked a lot like a win from last season. Let’s have a look at the numbers;
| Dominant Clean | Guard Action | Attendance | Ineffective | Ruck Work Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Loughman | 10 | 20 | |||
| 2. Scannell | 1 | 16 | 35 | ||
| 3. Archer | 17 | 1 | 32 | ||
| 4. Kleyn | 2 | 10 | 1 | 24 | |
| 5. Beirne | 1 | 16 | 1 | 36 | |
| 6. O'Donoghue | 19 | 2 | 1 | 38 | |
| 7. Hodnett | 1 | 14 | 31 | ||
| 8. Coombes | 15 | 1 | 2 | 27 | |
| 9. Casey | 1 | 3 | |||
| 10. Crowley | 5 | 1 | 8 | ||
| 11. O'Brien | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||
| 12. Nankivell | 1 | 11 | 1 | 26 | |
| 13. Farrell | 8 | 2 | 12 | ||
| 14. Nash | 3 | 6 | |||
| 15. Haley | 9 | 18 | |||
| 16. Barron | 0 | ||||
| 17. K. Ryan | 1 | 2 | |||
| 18. J.Ryan | 10 | 1 | 18 | ||
| 19. Ahern | 2 | 4 | |||
| 20. Quinn | 1 | 4 | 11 | ||
| 21. Murray | 0 | ||||
| 22. Butler | 0 | ||||
| 23. McCarthy | 0 |
First thing you notice – much better forward scoring. Loughman’s numbers are a bit down from his usual but he was off with a HIA and had a badly busted face thereafter. A lot of his workload went into the scrum, actually, so it all balanced out. The rest of the front five produced decent to good numbers. Kleyn’s numbers are a little below his level yet, which confirmed the eye test that he wasn’t quite hitting the heights in this game.
O’Donoghue, Hodnett, Coombes and Nankivell stood out out.
We had an average ORW score per ruck of 4.02 which, again, would correlate with a win last season against a team with Leinster’s off-ball style but you can see what caused the loss in the CORW scoring chart.
The first five-minute block started pretty well – right in line with Connacht and the Ospreys – but was killed by the penalty concession inside our half that we conceded a try from. The next two five-minute blocks saw us score six ORW points in total as our lineout collapsed and we couldn’t get our hands on the ball. Without ruck possession, we couldn’t put time between Leinster’s first score and their second, which had us two scores down while some of the lads were still getting up to speed with the game.
Those first three blue blocks on the chart have Munster conceding three tries. We fired back in the 15-20 five-minute block but couldn’t score and a malfunctioning lineout saw our ORW numbers plummet. We conceded our last points right before half-time.
We had good momentum in the second half and at least three clear try-scoring opportunities – to go with the three we coughed up in the first half – and eventually scored one of them.
The frustrating thing is, with even slightly more accuracy we leave with two losing bonus points. With good accuracy, I think we could have nabbed the win.
