If you’ve ever been short on rent—and I have been, more than I’d like—you soon realise that being €20 short is the same as being €200 short. You don’t have either, so they’re the same thing.
As this URC campaign stands on the brink of unravelling, I can’t help but think of one time in particular when I was trying to explain to my then-landlord, who lived next door, that I would have the rent next week – I wasn’t sure I would, but I needed time – and he told me a parable about how his mother used to own a shop, and she would give people credit and it never worked out for the people who got it and it just made everything worse. I cottoned on to the moral of the parable after two sentences, which made the slow meander to the point all the worse. I still didn’t have any money to give him. If I gave him enough to go away, I wouldn’t have any money for food or diesel and… you see the problem.
I had gotten out of sync with my bills. This is the thing about money; more of it doesn’t matter, timing matters. I was waiting for a creditor to pay me, so I could pay everything else. He was already three weeks late and even though he promised me an extra €500 for the delay, that didn’t matter if I needed the original sum now.
Munster are in the same boat at the moment. The rent is due Friday evening and a lot of the guys we’d need to pay it are test-locked or injured until next week. Most of them will be back for Connacht next week, sure, but the rent is due now, in Scotstoun, away to Glasgow.
The loss to Edinburgh two weeks ago was devastating as far as this season’s URC progress was concerned. Two losing points kept us in fifth, but the three points we missed out on locked us out of the top four.
Looking up isn’t the problem, though. It’s the dangers coming from beneath. A loss here and inevitable results elsewhere could see us out of the top eight by Sunday night with just five games remaining. If you’re keeping count, our “parachute” results this weekend are non-bonus point wins for Benetton, Ospreys and the Stormers along with a draw for Cardiff and the Lions.
Glasgow have the opposite problem.
They think that Leinster are likely to lose both games in South Africa in the next two weeks so that means they know that two bonus point wins in their next two home games could see them just three points off the top before the European knockout games.
So they know what this game is worth. So do we.
Quite simply, given the guys unavailable to us, this will be one of the best wins of the last two seasons if we can pull it off. Glasgow are test-locked too but they have a deeper squad in general and a better injury profile than us right now.
We have to get something from this game. Ideally, we need a win.
The rent is due – what do we have to pay it?
Munster Rugby: 15. Ben O’Connor; 14. Seán O’Brien, 13. Tom Farrell, 12. Alex Nankivell, 11. Andrew Smith; 10. Tony Butler, 9. Paddy Patterson; 1. Jeremy Loughman, 2. Diarmuid Barron (c), 3. Stephen Archer; 4. Fineen Wycherley, 5. Tom Ahern; 6. Alex Kendellen, 7. John Hodnett, 8. Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: 16. Danny Sheahan, 17. Josh Wycherley, 18. John Ryan, 19. Brian Gleeson, 20. Ruadhán Quinn, 21. Ethan Coughlan, 22. Gordon Wood, 23. Rory Scannell.
Glasgow Warriors: 15. Kyle Rowe; 14. Sebastian Cancelliere, 13. Ollie Smith, 12. Stafford McDowall, 11. Kyle Steyn; 10. Adam Hastings, 9. George Horne; 1. Jamie Bhatti, 2 Johnny Matthews, 3 Patrick Schickerling, 4. Jare Oguntibeju; 5. Alex Samuel, 6. Euan Ferrie, 7. Sione Vailanu, 8. Jack Mann
Replacements: 16. Grant Stewart, 17. Nathan McBeth, 18. Sam Talakai, 19. JP du Preez, 20. Gregor Brown, 21. Matt Fagerson, 22. Ben Afshar, 23. Duncan Weir
Scotstoun is a very, very difficult place to go.
The pitch is tight, it’s fast and the 4G surface seems to add to the hostility pouring out of the stands. It holds just under 10k people and they make it a very difficult place to get your business done if you’re an away side. It’s not impossible, though, just very difficult.
Franco Smith has crafted a proper side during his time at the club and they have a lot of the statistical qualities you expect from an elite team in this league; they are in the top two for 22 entries, and they are the most efficient side in the league at converting those entries into tries. On the other side of the ball, they are in the top five for denying 22 entries and in the top four for defensive efficiency. They are first in the league for linebreaks, first in the league for tries scored and have the highest tackle success rate in Europe.
They are missing some of the core drivers of those metrics from this team, but the one they have on the field is dangerous enough to compensate.
Stylistically, Glasgow does a lot of the same stuff with the ball in hand that Connacht do. They are in the bottom two of the URC for kicks made and kick distance, for broadly the same reason. When they kick, they don’t really do so to contest – it’s to pressure territory in the mid-range, exactly like Connacht.
With that in mind, I think there’s only one approach that will work for us in this game and that’s to kick to them at a higher volume than we would normally with short to mid-range contestables. Kicking shorter means that we reduce the risk of getting nabbed on transition but also increases the chances of the scrum coming into play more. I don’t expect the scrum to be as disastrous as the last time out, but Glasgow will see it as a weakness all the same. We have to ensure that we keep the ball on the field as much as possible, however.
Keep prodding that ball down the field to their 10m line and then focus on containing them. Run them through phases, make our stops and then wait for that reset kick.
From there, we can have a crack on transition ourselves. Glasgow’s front five isn’t hugely comfortable covering wide transition spaces so we can exploit that with the right opportunity.
Glasgow’s lack of kicking is, I think, partly related to the pack they’ve built for themselves here. Without Jones and Tuipulotu to, essentially, play like small forwards in defence, we will have a few windows of space to attack. Not every kick we receive has to be a transition, though, or a touch finder. We want to bump the ball in play time here and make sure we get Glasgow carrying more ball than they like around their 10m line and halfway.
They make more mid and long-range passes than any other team in the league despite being middle of the pack for openside plays. What does this mean? That when they feel squeezed, they get air on the ball from the first receiver to their midfield and strike running wingers – if we can contain that, we’re a lot of the way there. We’ve selected a back five to do just this; we’ve got two high-volume defensive action small forwards starting in the back row, with two more backrows on the bench for later. Coombes will move up to lock here and that’s to keep our small forward coverage.
The selection of Hodnett and Kendellen tells me that we intend to kick quite a bit and use that back five to cover ground on the 4G pitch. That doesn’t mean going after the breakdown – except on obvious poach opportunities – because the last thing we need to be doing is giving Glasgow penalties that they will always, always kick to touch and maul from.
Their maul doesn’t have the same sting as last season – so far – but it can cause us a tonne of trouble if we concede back-to-back penalties. So if you’re a Munster player looking at a 50/50 ruck, leave it. You don’t have to win every defensive collision but don’t get trapped by them or get done for dozy not-rolling-away penalties.
If we have a 12+ penalty game, we’re losing and losing hard.
Also – watch out for this shape they’re going to 100% through at Stephen Archer and Fineen Wycherley.
Does this sound a lot like what they did to us in Thomond Park last season? It should. It’s more or less the same approach. We’re better on transition than we were then, and they’re a little worse. If we can kick well, and hold them defensively – as we have done all year with the best 22 Entries Allowed ratio per game in Europe – we can win this.
