The margins between a linebreak that leads to a try and a phase that ends in a ruck reset are smaller than you’d think.
All it takes is one slow pass, one blown line, one bad alignment and one bad decision to let the defence back into the equation.
As an attack, I think your greatest asset is the ability the dictate the use of time and space. The very best attacks in the game almost seem like they’re a second ahead of the defence when it comes to finishing off a sequence of phases. What you’re seeing is the end result of dozens of good micro-decisions made in sequence with excellent execution of skills.
This is the goal of all good rugby attacks. Having good skills is one thing but knowing where, when and which skills to use is the end game of an elite attack. It isn’t enough to have the skill, you must know when to use the appropriate skill as it pertains to the moment. In essence, this is attacking instinct and despite what you might think, instinct can be coached. Experience, in a lot of ways, is the best instinct coach you could have but only if you’re learning the right things from that experience. This is where a player’s Game IQ comes into play.
Can you learn from your mistakes in a practical way? That isn’t just realising that you made an error but noticing all the things that built up to that moment and then not doing it again when a similar situation arises. If you know why you made a mistake but keep making that mistake, you’ve hit a wall.
On the other hand, that “aha!” moment, after you realise how and why you made an on-field mistake, is a powerful tool for any player or group of players.
First-Five: “This attack didn’t work because I was too deep at first receiver.”
Second-Five: “And then I was too close to you for the next pass so my options were either carrying into their blitz from a weak position or throwing a high-risk pass over the defenders.”
The first-five knows that his depth from the gain line made second-five’s job harder. The second-five realised that his positioning in relation to the first-five narrowed his options down to a high-risk pass option and getting battered behind the gain line.
Those moments lead to a relationship building between players that leads to a better overall attacking unit and more importantly, instinct being built.
When I look at Munster’s attack this season, I see that “instinct” as being the last missing piece, especially in games where Munster have had a lot of possession but failed to convert that stat into tries as fulsomely as they could have. Munster’s attack has certainly developed since last season – in regards to alignments and intent on certain plays – but the kind of development people are looking for doesn’t take a few games or even a full season – you build the neural networks of attack over multiple seasons and Felix Jones is certainly doing that.
If there was one sequence of phases that summed up what I’ve spoken about here so far, it was Munster’s 20 phase attack that started in the 61st minute of their game against Ulster at the weekend.
This sequence began when Stephen Fitzgerald ran back a loose 22 drop out from Ulster. Fitzgerald’s return was really sharp and his running line essentially turned the drop out into a mini kick transition event. Let’s have a look at how it played out;
The move falls down at the very end when Arnold offloads to Hart – who had run an excellent 45-degree support line from the initial pass – and the ball doesn’t go to hand.
When Fitzgerald ran the ball back initially, Munster had a good few options to attack with.
Ulster are very compacted in the direct aftermath of Fitzgerald’s return and that leaves attackable space on both sides of the pitch. Munster went for the short side attack in this instance and it was the right call, especially when you spot that Ulster lost three defenders from this narrow area of the pitch on one big carry from Kleyn – #17 is on the floor after tacking O’Donoghue and #4 missed a tackle on Kleyn.
That leaves an exploitable short side for Munster to target and it almost comes off.
Arnold’s decision making and execution when taking out the two edge defenders is spot on and, while I love Hart’s line, he left himself with zero wiggle room on the offload and this opportunity evaporated.
You can imagine Hart gathering this and then popping the ball to Fitzgerald – who’s on an excellent support line himself – for an easy finish under the posts but it wasn’t to be.
From there, Munster had to reset offensively and the initial picture was really good.
Munster had narrow carrying options, Hanrahan tucked behind the screen, a further carrying option in Kleyn and a “bridge” across the field to attack Ulster where they’re giving up space – on the opposite edge.
Let’s see how it played out;
Munster’s work to get this ball to Hanrahan in the middle of the pitch was really, really good. O’Callaghan’s pass to Kleyn – and then Kleyn’s pass to JJ – was nicely executed and put Hanrahan in the kind of space that any creative back will love.
This was the picture that JJ was faced had when he took the ball from Kleyn. There’s a huge space on the outside edge with Goggin, Marshall and Nash looking at a 20m defensive edge. Hanrahan went for O’Donoghue on this carry and it was the safe option – I don’t have an issue with it. That said, the miss passes we would be throwing a few phases later would have been perfect here given the way that Gilroy was turning in and Marshall was sitting down on O’Donoghue’s line.
I get Hanrahan’s choice here though. O’Donoghue was in Hanrahan’s eyeline so a medium range miss pass to Marshall (the optimal choice here) would have had an element of risk to it, especially when he would have been watching video of Ulster player’s intercepting passes like these all week in the build-up. Hanrahan hit O’Donoghue on the carry, Goggin helped with the clean out and the attack was on.
O’Callaghan worked incredibly hard to get across the pitch in support after his initial pass to Kleyn and he ended up as a receiver once O’Donoghue’s carry was recycled. When the ball came back, the space on the edge was still there and, ideally, we’d be looking to get the ball into Nash’s hands for a one on one with Ludik.
You can see that Gilroy was already shooting onto Rhys Marshall – the danger man on this phase – because he realised that if the Munster hooker took this ball and popped it to Nash, then the young Munster winger would be away onto Ludik.
Instead, the ball went to O’Callaghan and, after great hustle to get into position, took the suboptimal option in possession.
Gilroy was stepping backwards with his shoulder’s faced in and, faced with Best and Ross, a pass to Marshall (or Nash ideally) would have opened up a massive opportunity but O’Callaghan went for the carry instead.
When we came back across the pitch a few phases later, our play started to break down. Here’s a good example;
Sweetnam’s excellent footwork on the edge of this play added value to the phase but other than that, there was a lot of drifting lines and a miss pass that helped Ulster get across to cover the space at the edge.
I’d have liked to see this go through the hands here. Fitzgerald’s line drifted towards Goggin at the last second which probably convinced Goggin to go long, but simple passing with Fitzgerald attacking Marshall’s outside shoulder would have preserved Munster’s numbers here, rather than giving Ulster a bailout.
The ball is in the air for an entire second and that allows Ulster to close the gap that Sweetnam saw when he called for the ball. That tendency to throw a long pass to get the ball to the man in space “quicker” is a counterproductive tendency that I’ve seen in Munster’s play a fair bit this season. When it comes off – like Zebo to Wootton against Zebre – then it’s good, when it doesn’t it can give the defence time, which is something we don’t want. I’ll get to that later.
Let’s roll onto the next phase;
As you can see – the space on the edge is still there from the previous phase because Ulster are defending with a man down. In this scenario, the ball has to beat Ulster’s defensive push across the field.
There’s an overlap there but only if we can freeze Ulster’s last defender – Craig Gilroy. We have a few different options to get at this space. We can pass it to the screen players – Cronin, Kleyn and O’Callaghan – or we can hit Nash who’s standing behind them with Marshall as a wide support option.
The pass to Kleyn is the best option for JJ and he hits him with good accuracy – basically, the pass is of sufficient pace to hold Gilroy in place. From there, Kleyn has one job; attack Gilroy’s line and get the ball away to a support player.
He tries to do this but O’Callaghan steps all over his line;
There’s a brief second where Kleyn can get this away before Ross gets hands on him but O’Callaghan is too close to him – this steps on Kleyn’s line and takes away the pass option to Nash. It can easily happen to forwards in the wide channel who are looking to make an impact but in this case, I’d have liked to see O’Callaghan separate his running line from Kleyn once it became clear he wasn’t taking the ball.
That would allow O’Callaghan to float into overlap space to be an offload or pass option for Kleyn or a heavy support option for Nash if he can angle in on Kleyn’s carry. It’s another blown opportunity and a few phases later, we’re attacking the other side of the field.
This is very high risk for me and Goggin has to be praised for the quality of his late arrival clean out on Rory Best of all people. Ideally, I’d have liked Goggin to be a little further forward on this phase to act as a decoy option and give himself a little more time on the cleanout.
Archer is incredibly isolated on this carry and while we want to lose as few players as possible to bridging rucks like this, it slowed down our transfer across the pitch, gave Ulster time to number up and then catch us behind the gain line.
What was clear in this twenty phase movement that we were capable of generating space and retaining the ball at the ruck, even while under pressure from Ulster. We managed to get back in position after this phase and, once again, there was space on the outside edge to target.
Here is where our instincts began to let us down;
At this stage, Ulster are beginning to flag in defence and we have enough numbers here to take advantage. Hanrahan has decent depth and releases the ball in decent time, but not perfectly.
He’s applying this theory;
The yellow line in this instance is the hindmost foot of the attacking ruck. I felt JJ could have released this ball a heartbeat later, and that would have improved the picture for Goggin who should have passed to Nash rather than skip to O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan was still the end product of this movement but if Nash was the one to put him away – rather than a miss-pass from Goggin – than this probably ends in a big linebreak.
Essentially, when you’re faced with a blitz like this you have to draw them out to fix the overlap. Passing in front of the blitz just shows the blitz where to go but if you release the ball closer to the gain line, you can freeze the overlap in place in a way that a miss-pass can’t.
The miss-pass gets the ball to O’Callaghan quicker in theory but in reality, it bails out Ulster;
We’d work away for a few other phases – even kicking on the phase after this one – but the twenty phase sequence would end a few minutes later in familiar circumstances. Basically, some really decent work to get to the edge but then a sub-optimal choice once we get there.
This isn’t all on Goggin going for the 10m miss-pass to Nash – I think O’Callaghan could have stayed alive as an option rather than narrowing in on the centre’s line – but it illustrates how hasty we were as the sequences piled up.
The space was there, as were the numbers, but we didn’t execute accurately – sound familiar? It isn’t about bad passes because there was nothing technically wrong with any of the long passes here. My issue is with the pass selection. These choices come with experience and the likes of Goggin will learn from the choices he took here. This isn’t glaring stuff, just the small percentage improvements that players need when they’re developing and I think Goggin has the potential to be a serious player for Munster rugby in the next two seasons. He’s got the size, he’s got the pace, he’s got the skills – all he needs is the finishing touch of elite instincts and that only comes with time. The same goes for everyone.
