We’ve… uh, got to win this one.
That’s all there is to it. I know some poindexter will point out that we need to win every game, so I say this in return. Shut up.
Munster have won once in Thomond Park in the last two European campaigns, a narrow win over Northampton in January 2023. Last year we drew at home to Bayonne – parallels with that game this weekend – and lost to 14-man Northampton Saints in January 2024 to round out a dour European run under Rowntree.
My initial intro when I was drawing up this preview article back in October centred around Graham Rowntree having to find answers from somewhere this December but, as it turns out, it’ll be those left behind and leading the ship in a new direction that will be looking for those answers. The change in coaching hasn’t given anyone in the organisation any leeway for this game. Expectations haven’t dipped. There’ll be no rhetorical mulligans if Munster don’t win this game because the pressure hasn’t gone anyway.
Munster’s great run in the URC over the last seasons – Champions in 2022/23 and beaten semi-finalists last season – has done a decent job of masking what have been catastrophic European campaigns under Rowntree. Out at the Round of 16 two years running and that’s essentially the same as getting blown out of the first real round of the competition. Everyone makes the Round of 16 these days. We made it last season with one win, one draw and two bonus point losses.
Getting down to brass tacks, it hasn’t been good enough. Of course, the context of Munster’s injury list specifically getting bigger and longer in for these exact two-month periods two seasons in a row doesn’t help, but I’m sick of talking about it, so are you, and so is Munster.
Stade Français make the trip to Thomond Park this weekend and, as is tradition, they are greeted by a red weather alert for wind and rain. It’s like the Atlantic Ocean knows it’s time for European rugby in Limerick and tries to help by sending all the rotten weather it can.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t help Munster these days but the Atlantic Ocean isn’t answering my Whatsapps.
As with Bayonne last year, Stade have gone with a rotated side but that shouldn’t sum up their interest levels in this game. Sure, they are doing badly in the TOP14, as Bayonne were last season, but that doesn’t mean they won’t care about this game. The opposite is true, I think. This game, this European campaign is a break from the pressure of the TOP14 and I’d expect them to play like it. They will have seen Bayonne’s performance last year and felt that, far from a distraction, a big away day in Thomond Park could be just the lift their season needs.
Munster will have to remove Stade’s interest from this game to get the disinterested French away day performance we’re looking for. And that’s easier said than done.
Munster: 15. Shane Daly; 14. Calvin Nash, 13. Tom Farrell, 12. Alex Nankivell, 11. Thaakir Abrahams; 10. Jack Crowley, 9. Craig Casey; 1. Dian Bleuler, 2. Diarmuid Barron (c), 3. John Ryan; 4. Evan O’Connell, 5. Fineen Wycherley; 6. Peter O’Mahony, 7. Alex Kendellen, 8. Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: 16. Niall Scannell, 17. Kieran Ryan, 18. Stephen Archer, 19. Tadhg Beirne, 20. John Hodnett, 21. Paddy Patterson, 22. Billy Burns, 23. Jack O’Donoghue.
Stade Français: 15. Joe Jonas; 14. Charles Laloi, 13. Joe Marchant, 12. Jeremy Ward (c), 11. Samuel Ezeala; 10. Zack Henry, 9. Thibaut Motassi; 1. Clement Castets, 2. Lucas Peyresblanques, 3. Francisco Gomez Kodela; 4. Pierre-Henri Azagoh, 5. Baptiste Pesenti; 6. Pierre Huguet, 7. Ryan Chapuis, 8. Yoan Tanga
Replacements: 16. Luka Petriashvili, 17. Moses Alo-Emile, 18. Paul Alo-Emile, 19. Setareki Turagacoke, 20. Andy Timo, 21. Juan Martin Scelzo, 22. Louis Foursans-Bourdette, 23. Pierre Boudehent
Trying to analyze Stade Français this season has been difficult.
Why are they so low in the TOP14 log?
It’s their away form, mainly. They’ve played six games on the road this season, lost all six, collected zero bonus points and ended up with a points differential of -113. That’s an average losing margin of roughly 18 points per game.
But that doesn’t tell you the whole story, either. I watched them play away to Bayonne last weekend, for example, and they were only two points down at one point in the second half heading into the last quarter. They aren’t playing well this season but they have good players and it feels like they don’t quite know how to take advantage of their big strengths, which is their work on transition.
Ian Costello mentioned it this week on the presser and he was, as you’d expect, totally accurate. In the TOP14 this year, Stade are top of the log when it comes to % of tries scored off turnover with 26.1%. Bayonne are the next best on 18.3%. They are also only just behind Racing 92 when it comes to scoring tries on kick returns; 18.4% of their tries are scored on this particular transition type. To ground you with what this means, Toulouse have only scored 14.7% of their tries on turnover ball, and just 7.2% on kick return.
Stade are a transition team – the transition team, you might say. But we saw how to deal with them last week against the Lions who are dangerous in almost exactly the same way.
Stade have size in their pack – as all French teams do – but it’s nothing that we haven’t faced in the last few rounds of the URC. If anything, they are a little lighter than they could be. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous, but it does even up what should be a fairly messy game looking at the pitch conditions we’re likely to be playing in. It’s December, it’s Thomond Park, there’s a weather alert – you know the drill at this stage.
The biggest area where we can attack this Stade side is with their defensive alignment and structure. Look at this ruck from the second half of the game against Bayonne last week, and see how long it takes them to close that gap on the near side of the ruck.
They’re gappy. They often lose 2+ defenders to collision points in an attempt to make a big hit. They love to poach because they score a lot of tries off forced turnovers. If we are accurate at the breakdown, we will create gaps beyond their third defender.
Watch how many spaces they give up in the middle space of this defensive set.
There’s not a whole lot of joined up thinking here. A long pass from the ruck ran through a screen created a huge gap for the screen runner and the isolated defender just blitzed up into the gap to try and kill the movement. This looks like a great matchup for Casey, Crowley, Nankivell and Farrell to exploit, even with a greasy ball on a heavy pitch.
They give up massive space on the edge too, which means there is workable space for Thaakir Abrahams to work in if we can spread the ball there.
Here’s a really good example of how Stade’s overcommitment to the hit leaves them vulnerable in those middle spaces;
Once the ball hits the #10 here, Stade’s middle line defence starts to look awful slow and gappy. If we can get width off Casey’s passing, we can attack this middle space with our forward three-pod all night long.
They leave this type of spacing quite regularly.
And we don’t need gainline to do it. They will really fancy their chances of smashing our pack on our set-ups – and they are probably correct – but all we need to do is clear them from the ruck on those 2+ man shots and we have the players to hurt them, even in the wet.
