It’s pretty simple from here.
If we win and do better than Saracens’ result against Castres, we will top the pool and earn a home round of 16 and, if successful, a home quarter-final. Any flavour of loss likely sees us on the road in the Round of 16. There is a remote chance that a draw between Saracens and Castres and a loss without a bonus point will see us hit the Challenge Cup, but it is remote.
What matters is that our destiny is in our own hands, purely just because we’ve won both our home games. In 2022/23 and 2023/24, we lost once at home in each pool series. Toulouse in the fog, Northampton in the rain; both those games cost us a chance to get a home knockout game.
So, by any measure, this has been the best European campaign that we’ve had in the post-COVID era whatever happens this weekend, which is damning in one way, but encouraging in another. Either way, we have to make that count for something tangible.
As often happens in Europe over the last few seasons, we’ve been put together with Northampton so often that we’ve grown sick of the sight of each other. We know them, they know us and while that means we can travel to Franklins Gardens for the third season in a row with no fear, they won’t be too afraid of us rocking up there either.
Familiarity breeds contempt, after all.
Northampton have had a weird season. Last year they were something of a juggernaut, powered by the remarkable Courtney Lawes. They frightened the life out of Leinster in Croke Park and edged out Bath to become Premiership champions and deservedly so. Not only that, they dominated a tonne of key metrics Europe-wide for the majority of last season.
They had the second-best lineout in Europe from a completion POV, only Glasgow – eventual URC champions – had a better tackle success rate and they were top six when it came to executing 22 entries into tries, just behind Leinster and ahead of Toulouse.
This season has brought with it a tonne of change as they deal with the pressures of being defending champions domestically. We know what that’s like. Saints sit in eighth place in the Gallagher Premiership as it stands, eight points off the playoff spots with three games to come against Quins, Leicester and Sale that could well define their entire domestic season. Their main issue has been playing away from home, where they’ve lost four games in a row with just one bonus point to show for it. They are only eighth in the table – and not lower – because of their excellent home form where they’ve played six times, losing once. Only Exeter have more home games at this stage of the Premiership.
This doesn’t mean that Northampton will be secretly focusing on the Premiership in this game. The opposite. Europe has been a welcome change of scenery for them, where they have a lot of good work in the tank albeit against fairly patchy opposition in context. Castres sent a shadow team to Franklins Gardens and while any win over the Bulls in Pretoria is a good one, the South African’s interest in European rugby beyond merely fulfilling fixtures this season is debatable.
They lost to Stade Francais last week with something of a shadow side of their own and now find themselves in a bit of a dogfight. Another loss here could see them drop into the away slots in the knockouts. Their home form has been their saving grace this season but they are far from invincible at Franklins Gardens.
We’ll see if we’ve got the firepower to test that soon enough.
Munster: 15. Mike Haley; 14. Calvin Nash, 13. Tom Farrell, 12. Rory Scannell, 11. Diarmuid Kilgallen; 10. Jack Crowley, 9. Conor Murray; 1. Dian Bleuler, 2. Diarmuid Barron, 3. Oli Jager, 4. Fineen Wycherley, 5. Tadhg Beirne (c); 6. Peter O’Mahony, 7. Alex Kendellen, 8. Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: 16. Niall Scannell, 17. John Ryan, 18. Stephen Archer, 19. Tom Ahern, 20. Jack O’Donoghue, 21. Paddy Patterson, 22. Tony Butler, 23. Brian Gleeson.
Northampton Saints: 15. James Ramm; 14. Tommy Freeman, 13. Fraser Dingwall (c), 12. Rory Hutchinson, 11. Tom Seabrook; 10. Fin Smith, 9. Alex Mitchell; 1. Tarek Haffar, 2. Curtis Langdon, 3. Trevor Davison; 4. Alex Coles, 5. Tom Lockett; 6. Josh Kemeny, 7. Tom Pearson, 8. Juarno Augustus.
Replacements: 16. Henry Walker, 17. Tom West, 18. Luke Green, 19. Callum Hunter-Hill, 20. Angus Scott-Young, 21. Henry Pollock, 22. Tom James, 23. Tom Litchfield
For me, our approach in this game comes down to how Munster rates Northampton’s kick transition game as it stands in 2025.
Last season, Northampton were top four in Europe for tries scored on kick transitions – it was one of the big strengths of their game and manipulated opposing teams’ approach against them. Leinster, for example, found it very difficult to hold out Northampton in Croke Park precisely because their long kicking game played into a key strength of Saints’ game which, coupled with a rock-solid lineout, meant that Leinster spent long stretches of the second half defending huge amounts of vertical space.
This year, however, things are different.
The tries scores from kick returns have reduced by 7% season on season and their lineout has fallen below the 90.4% success rate it enjoyed last season. This is natural, of course. You would expect their set piece to function a little less efficiently without Lawes and Ludlow – two outstanding players – and it does change the equations on how best to handle Northampton, as do their current injuries.
Without George Furbank, George Hendy, Burger Odendaal and Ollie Sleightholme, Saints’ work on transition isn’t quite as effective or as poisonous as it was last season. That doesn’t mean they can’t hurt us if we’re sloppy but it does provide a possible outlet.
Saints are really good at the multi-phase post-transition score.
Here’s a good example from their recent win over Bath – we join the action on phase three of a long kick exit;
That deep pullback pass on transition is the key move for me and, sure, the ball over the top – that 12m pass is about as long as you’ll see from Northampton – gets scragged, but the concept is the same. They were getting that width to offload back inside. Northampton’s offload success rate – as it pertains to offloads that assist a linebreak – has dropped dramatically from last season but they are still dangerous when it comes to executing these offloads in that flow space at the edges.
On phase play, Northampton will have spotted how sluggish Munster were behind the primary defensive line in phase play and set piece last week so look for Smith to bring this aspect of his game – a nasty short chip over the top – into play regularly.
But for me, the biggest area to attack Saints is when they kick to us, almost to the point that it’s worth kicking long and rolling the dice on transition. If they are reduced in efficiency on these phases – and without Furbank, Hendy and Sleightholme I think they are – then the rewards slightly outweigh the risks. I think a longer kicking game, off Murray and Crowley, is the way to go as a means to off-ball Northampton. We’ll have to be so, so careful because while their kick transition and offload numbers are down, their conversions of turnover ball into tries have increased.
That, to me, leave one option; kick long, stuff them on transition and wait for the kick return from them to strike.
Look for a kick pass on the first phase of kick transition to Diarmuid Kilgallen as a primary weapon for Munster to use, especially as they shoot up on the edge of longer exits from their own 22.
