Teams like to tell each other things during a game.

With every won collision, scrum, maul and kicking battle you tell the opposition that there’s nothing for them in this game until they believe you. Or until you believe them. Either way, the team that speaks loudest in this regard usually ends up winning the game.

I’ll get into Munster’s excellent lineout and attacking work in this game later in the week but I wanted to highlight an important bit of the initial exchanges that set the tone for Munster’s physical dominance in this game as well as the work of new defence coach, JP Ferreira.

As I wrote in the Wally Ratings, Munster slammed the door shut on Castres’ forward carriers in this game. On a wet, slippery pitch with wet, slippery jerseys that becomes a big statement. When you stop a team’s forwards, you choke their ability to move the ball with any dynamism and began the job of breaking their spirit.

Castres had 39 combined forward carries for a combined total of 31 metres in this game.

That’s less than a metre per carry. When your forwards are getting stuffed on the gain line like that, it makes the game of rugby a very difficult one.

Munster kicked a lot in the early exchanges of this game but didn’t get the immediate ball reward they would have been looking for. This meant that we had to do a fair bit of defending to do inside the first 10 minutes and that’s normally the most dangerous time to take on a French side in defensive sets. When they’re fresh, they can really hurt you – as Munster found in Paris.

Instead, we hurt them.

Here’s a good example inside the first 20 seconds.

This box kick off the restart became a kick transition. The kick went a little too far, for sure, but it’s a superb take from the Castres fullback, who does even better by spinning away from Conway and into a great ruck position.

This put us into an unbalanced defensive situation.

This isn’t an overlap – not yet, anyway – but it is a natural risk that comes with giving up a kick transition off the restart. The bulk of our guys will be on one side of the pitch and the bulk of theirs will be on the other.

If Castres can get this ball back to their 10, then they can access the space on the outside but that’s far from certain in these conditions and, in fairness, this early into the game.

If this is Scarlets – or Leinster – I think they probably have a cut off this picture that Munster gave them but the conditions probably limited Castres ambitions here. Dumora (Castres #10) is giving the kind of body language signals that tell the Munster wide defence (Marshall, O’Mahony and Farrell) that this ball probably isn’t going beyond that pod of three forwards in this instance.

The first tackle here is important.

Marshall and O’Mahony get a good scrag first up and after that, Munster make a good decision in the context of this play. We could have attacked this first ruck but the sensible thing would be to reload that openside.

Holland, Stander, Kleyn (and Marshall) fold around the corner to reload the vulnerable openside of this ruck. We don’t see a wide angle picture on the footage but this action from Munster shut the door on the numbers advantage that Castres had on the previous ruck.

We can see what happens when the ball leaves Kockott’s hands.

Munster pounce on Kockott and Dumora’s poor interplay and get a good narrow squeeze up the side of the ruck. Dumora does well to run a corner line off the referee – that saves him getting stuffed by Stander – but Castres are already in big trouble on this phase.

Dumora gets hit by Kleyn at 00:33. When the ball is ready to move out, Munster have already re-aligned.

That’s some excellent target ID and alignment.

Castres are already falling a little deep behind the gain line and the next pass is to the slow side of the ruck where there’ll have to be some real magic to make something happen. The key here is the depth.

When Castres are already falling this deep, they allow Munster plenty of time to pick targets, blitz hard at the first receiver and then drift slightly for the pass action.

O’Mahony blitzes on Ebersohn with Holland inside. Farrell keeps a shallow angle alongside O’Mahony’s narrow blitz to track the pop pass option to Combezou. Earls does the same and that allows Farrell to make the hit while Earls guards the offload.

Earls had identified Jaminent before the ball left the ruck and that means that he doesn’t have to watch him here. Earls watches the ball to guard against a possible offload until he knows the touchline won’t allow it. By watching the ball in this context – while being aware of the outside man – he’s in a position to react and at an angle where he stays alive in defence. When the ball hits the deck, Earls and Farrell do an excellent job of spoiling the wide ruck, giving Munster time to align again for the big openside blitz. The ball hits the deck at 00:42 but Castres don’t get it out until 00:46. That four-second delay on a wide ruck three or four phases into a sequence is massive.

That time allowed Munster to blitz the first receiver (a lock) and punish him behind the gain line.

One phase later, Castres would kick the ball away, having lost field position from the initial ruck.

That’s an excellent opening set from a weak initial position. The technical tackling was good, the fold speed was really good, the blitzing was organised and the alignment around the ruck was excellent. Look at Castres getting driven back phase on phase.

Phase Defence Post Maul

Another element that impressed me in the first half – and showed the growing influence of JP Ferreira – was our work on a defensive set post-maul.

These can be tough to defend at times because they can take out as many forwards as a scrum and sometimes with a built-in overlap. After all, we’ve seen that four or five forwards can bind six or seven opposition forwards into the maul if they have enough momentum. In the example I’m about to show, Munster actually won the defensive maul set and forced Castres to attack from a disadvantageous position.

Even then, Munster had to react intelligently.

Look at Scannell, Farrell and Conway push up into the potential play line of Dumora while Keatley hangs back and seals off the inside ball.

That action gives Scannell a bailout option on his press, which he ends up needing. Keatley makes a good stop as the inside man to set up the next phase of defence.

Two things are important here. First, and obviously, Stander’s attempted fetch over the top of the ball is exactly the type of slow down work that we want in this situation. Post maul, Castres forwards are going to be out of position and CJ will back himself over the ball against most backs. He almost steals the ball cleanly.

The second thing is Billy Holland’s subtle stifle line after the maul. Timing is everything on first phase defence like this – Holland knows this, so he does everything he can to legally stifle Castres path to the ruck. He shoves Kockott;

Holland knows that will shave a few half seconds off Kockott’s path to the ruck and he knows they add up in scenarios like this.

Billy then runs a subtle curving block line to stifle any forwards coming to the ruck post-maul and give the defenders outside a chance to work.

That line keeps Bias from generating any pace on his clean out and it almost works – Stander got the ball but had it ripped back. That curved running line shaves time off the cleanout but couldn’t be blown up for obstruction – that’s experience. Bonus points go to Jean Kleyn getting around the openside ruck corner after his maul defence efforts from a few seconds earlier.

When the maul sets, Archer gets a good counter ruck in to stall Kockott again;

All that work buys Munster time to set, pick their targets and set up Castres for some punishing defensive action and you can see Scannell take advantage of that with a crunching hit on Combezou. Pay attention to what Scannell and Holland do after the contact though – they get in and under Combezou to force Castres to burn men cleaning them out. This is why Munster line-up narrow on phases like this – to force this kind of scenario or back our scramble if they play it wide.

Look at Munster’s set after this ruck;

It’s manky slow ball, Castres lost SIX men to clean out two Munster defenders and we’ve reset cleanly on both sides with backfield cover.

From there, it’s just pure hurt locker stuff;

All of those hits have the same thing in common – Munster spiking two men into the narrow Castres carry, punishing them, driving them and forcing a clean out.

When a mistake happens on the next phase, Munster give up half a linebreak but you can see the system click into place to recover;

This is what overlapping cover looks like. Scannell has stepped out with O’Mahony on the wide blitz but they’re taken out by the step of Ebersohn. No panic. Cloete and Murray just ease in behind the blitzing pair to get hands on the carrier.

Ebersohn doesn’t go a metre before Cloete has hands on him and look at Murray stuffing the right-hand offload line.

Stander’s work over the ball burns more Castres cleaners but look at the Munster reset.

Everyone just filed back into their positions without any panic, without any ball crowding, and in under 5 seconds from the break to the ruck. Castres have been forced into narrow carrying patterns and would be forced to kick the ball away a phase later. Well done Munster and well done JP Ferreira.

There’ll be bigger tests to come, but this was a great signpost to where we’re going.

This kind of punishment and organisation really helps to convince a team that there’s nothing for them. The Big Red Wall rides again.