So it comes down to this. Munster face Leinster in the RDS with the season on the line.
I suppose we always knew that one way or another, it would come down to this sooner or later. Munster vs Leinster tangling in knock-out rugby. We’ve managed to avoid each other in this type of games for a few seasons now in a variety of sliding doors moments. It looked written in the stars last season in the PRO12 but the Scarlets put paid to that. Same with the Champions Cup but we both failed at the final hurdle before the final. It didn’t happen in the Champions Cup this season – thanks to Bordeaux – but for the first time since 2011, we get to tangle in the knockouts once again.
For Leinster, these are the glory days. They’ve got Champions Cup medals in their back pockets, they’re widely accepted as being the best team in Europe and they’ve got internationals everywhere, even with a selection minus Johnny Sexton, Rob Kearney, Sean O’Brien, Josh Van Der Flier, Robbie Henshaw and Dan Leavy.
Let’s get to the selections;
For Leinster, your eye is immediately drawn to three key players missing – Leavy, Sexton and, almost more importantly, Henshaw. Does that mean that this Leinster selection is any less formidable collectively? No – but the value that those three players bring is hard to replace in any side, even one as star-studded as Leinster’s.
From Munster’s POV, this is about as strong as we can go given the injuries. The game came a little soon for Chris Cloete but I like the look of our pack construction for this one and we’ve some pop to come off the bench from a carrying, energy and scrummaging POV.
Seeing JJ at 10 isn’t a great surprise – he’s been quietly effective since his introduction against Racing 92 in Bordeaux but I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that he’ll need his best game of the season here if Munster are to be successful. The same could be said of most of those selected, though.
The Red Eye Report: Leinster
An “A” would be considered top class by Champions Cup standards, a “B” would be considered good by regular Champions Cup standard, a “C” would be considered decent by PRO14 level, a “D” would be considered below par by PRO14 standards and an “E” would be something I’d consider an exploitable weakness.
The report here is on this particular Leinster selection, not on their “full” side if such a thing can even be said about Leinster these days.
Set Piece
Offensive Scrummaging – A
Defensive Scrummaging – A
Attacking Lineout – A
Defensive Lineout – B
Offensive Maul – B
Defensive Maul – B
Open Play
Defensive Structure – A
Phase Play Power – B
Attacking Creativity – A
Structured Attack Off Set Piece – A
Structured Defence Off Set Piece – B
Overall Fitness – A
Kicking – B
Back Three Kick Positioning – B
Soooo… no real weaknesses.
But you’d expect that. It’s Leinster in the RDS and, even with a rotated side, they’ve got Much like Doctor Strange in Infinity War, when I run through the possible scenarios on how this game plays out, I see mostly Leinster wins. What does a Munster win look like?
Well, to get an idea, we have to go back and look at Munster’s defeat to Leinster in Thomond Park back in December. A lot of the squad Leinster named that day are playing here but, almost more importantly, the opening 20 minutes of that game essentially won the game for Leinster through a combination of Munster indiscipline, kicking errors, going a man down while conceding a penalty try and blowing a series of chances to strike back. Bar the yellow card, it sounds like Bordeaux doesn’t it?
There’s no point in taking the terrible start out of the equation from that game because that set the tone for how Leinster would manage the rest of the 80 minutes. When you’re 25-5 down after 25 minutes, you’re giving yourself a mountain to climb while handing the opposition a lead that most sides never give up.
But how did we concede those tries? Compounding defensive errors and ceding momentum at key junctures.
How will that play in this game?
In how Leinster work the breaks that they build their field position on and, as a result, how they score their tries. I would expect that the forward exchanges will come up mostly equal in this game as far as phase play is concerned bar something unexpected in the power department.
They were mostly equal in Thomond Park with broadly similar pack make-ups across both sides, so I’d expect that to follow here.
There’s similar physical pressure here –
– as there is here (warning, big GIF) and it produces the same desired outcome; a Leinster kick away. The difference was that Leinster retained possession in this instance and continued their attack, Racing did not.
Munster will, obviously, have to win defensive collisions and slow down Leinster’s attacking recycle at the ruck while ideally forcing them to play in these areas of the pitch.
Nothing groundbreaking there, of course, but Leinster tend to kick away possession more when they are penned into these blue areas when Robbie Henshaw isn’t playing. If Munster can stop Leinster here (and avoid giving them centre field ruck position where they are always dangerous) we’ll go a long way to earning the kick aways that Racing enjoyed in Bilbao. Our work on kick transition will be vital.
Leinster do have some gimmicks to spring out from these areas and this kind of action between Conan and Lowe is something that Leinster might well decide to go back to;
This is a nothing play – Munster should be all over this but a defensive error gives Conan a pass option out of the tackle and the ground Lowe makes leads to a penalty being conceded and, from that position, Leinster would score their opening try.
That little chance to strike was all the space that Leinster needed to create some workable territory and, as a cherry on top, a penalty advantage that they could strike from off the set piece – I’ll get to that later.
The second Leinster try – and Munster yellow card – came from a bad gate close from Conway and a little too much over-blitzing from Arnold.
We were in between defensive systems at this point, so it’s no surprise to see a malfunction like this but you’d expect that kind of miscommunication (a hard shoot followed by your cover and gate closer getting isolated) to be cleaned up for this game.
The third try was pure kick transition.
Three moments, three tries and, essentially, game over. We compounded errors, we ceded momentum to Leinster repeatedly and gave ourselves too much to do from 25 minutes on. Even removing these self-inflicted wounds from our game would go a long way to tightening the margins.
We’ll have to watch out for this exact play too – they’ll be planning this exact move on phase 3/4 if they’re carrying around the middle of the field near half way.
Attacking Sequence
Normally, Munster are happy to box-kick a lot of possession and they certainly did that against Leinster in Thomond Park. I don’t think we’ll be doing that a lot in this game. Why?
- John Ryan’s back injury.
- The risk of kick transition with Larmour, Lowe, Carbery and Ringrose.
What does John Ryan’s back injury have to do with our box kicking? Well, if Ryan isn’t 100% after his back injury, the last thing we want is a lot of scrum scenarios, especially if Leinster can swing an advantage there early. Niall Scannell will really help as Furlong and Cronin swap with Treacy and Porter but if Ryan is in trouble early, the last thing we’ll want to do is cough up a lot of scrum situations for Leinster. That could give Leinster a percentage advantage in defensive box kicking scenarios because of the chance of scrum dominance because a Leinster knock-on and scrappy retain is a good thing if they have a 55-60% chance of earning a penalty against the head.
The other part is the danger of getting caught by Leinster back three and Ringrose. We’ll box kick here – of course – but only in very positive circumstances. The expected weakness under the high ball for Lowe and Larmour wasn’t there in Thomond Park so I wouldn’t expect it in the RDS either. Targeting Carbery up the middle of the pitch is a possibility but risks a split field transition if we can’t retain.
That will probably mean that you’ll see more ball in hand from Munster in this game and a lot of tactical kicking from 10/12 with Hanrahan and Scannell taking on a lot of responsibility to target right and left side respectively.
Larmour and Lowe are good under the high ball – we’ve seen that – but Lowe is vulnerable to getting kicked over and turned – if we can do that to their back backfield defence and pressure them on the regather, there’s real potential for generating good attacking positions.
If we aren’t accurate in this facet of the game, we run the risk of ending up on another Larmour highlight video. You’ve seen that try in Thomond Park enough times to know what loose, tired kicking does.
The Lineout
Racing did a pretty good job of limiting the scope of Leinster’s lineout in the actual line itself but they were let down by their midfield defence at key times.
Leinster, in general, like to build attacking situations outside the 22 through tap downs from the front and middle. They are really dangerous when they go to the tail – and Toner is especially good in those scenarios where his speed into the air isn’t as much of a factor – but they are more than capable of getting the kind of attacking scenario they want from the front and middle.
As I said, Racing did a good job of handling them for most of the Champions Cup final when it came to tracking their schemes off the top, stuffing their maul and worrying their throw.
Nakawara was used at the front of the lineout in a manner similar to the way that Munster will use Peter O’Mahony. That’s a pretty effective tactic, most of the time. Leinster are very capable of attacking in the midfield off traditionally “slow” positions in the lineout but they’ll be less likely to do that in this game with the loss of Henshaw. Nacewa is a willing replacement, but I think they’ll be more likely to try and draw Munster out on lineout attacks to exploit Arnold’s defensive pace by getting Ringrose a one on one with him like this;
Expect them to use Lowe as a narrowing presence from the blindside as they get the ball to Ringrose, Carbery and Larmour in the wider areas.
If Leinster are under pressure in the lineout, they’ve tended to use Ryan as their go-to guy in the last few months. Against Racing, he negated some of Nakawara’s disruptive presence by using a lot of lateral movement between 2 and 4.
That step-back was pretty effective and I’d imagine you’ll see him try this again here. Leinster try to disguise the play with Fardy’s short line at the start of the GIF but if you see Ryan at the front in this game, he’s likely to pause and then step back to take the throw. The Fardy short option is one they’ll definitely try once in this game (it’ll be Ruddock or Murphy initially) to throw Munster off the step back.
If Peter O’Mahony can track Ryan here, he has the ability to beat him into the air and pressure Cronin’s throw in a way that can be useful. If we can disrupt Leinster here, force them to straight to Toner (who we can definitely attack in the air) or try deception to access the tail, we’ll be in a good position.
The other lineout option to watch for is their decoy jumper at the front. They put an unlikely jump option at the front of the lineout, throw a simple two ball to them with no movement and then attack around the corner.
Look at the similarities;
Munster handled this better than Racing did but there is one crucial difference – Munster didn’t have Ringrose’s wide-narrow line to worry about. If Leinster use this scheme against Munster, they may switch up the positioning – Murphy/Ruddock would take the ball at the front with Conan acting in the Henshaw role to get Ringrose into the same spot we saw against Racing. We’d probably have Stander defending this in midfield as an x-factor in this play but that will be an interesting scenario, should it play out like this.
If we can squeeze Leinster’s lineout, we can force them into going to their main backline weapon off the lineout – Ringrose.
They’ll try to disguise it but they won’t want Nacewa racking up too many carries at 12 off lineout possession What does that mean? Reverse balls to Lowe and, more often than not, narrow screen moves to Ringrose.
This move was designed to hit Kearney on the angle so he could release Larmour for a one on one. Chavancy read the play perfectly and got a beautiful tackle on Ringrose that dislodged the ball. Leinster have shown a little vulnerability off this kind of screen move when Sexton hasn’t been involved so there’s an opportunity for the likes of Scannell and Arnold to really have a cut off that passing lane for hits like the above or, to a lesser extent, intercepts as long as O’Donoghue can close the door on the 10 channel from the back of the lineout with regularity.
Attacking
From a Munster POV, Leinster are slightly vulnerable in a few areas but getting at those areas is easier said than done.
They are slightly vulnerable to big openside plays, especially if you can get Larmour and Lowe making decisions to “close the door” on the edge of the defence. Lowe’s defensive frailties are a little overstated in my opinion, but he does leave himself with a lot to do on occasion. He’s a little narrow to O’Loughlin on this phase and then gets stood up on the pass.
A kick over the top here would have given Sweetnam a great shot at taking Lowe on with the try line staring at both of them.
It’s the same story here for Conway’s try;
Having Nacewa at 12 makes the likelihood of a successful big openside attack increase by a fair amount because he’s an elite decision maker outside the #13. When you watch back the Champions Cup final, you see excellent defensive decisions and positioning from Nacewa on every phase. Leinster won’t have this quality decision making out there for this one. That gives Munster a slight edge.
Munster will have also seen this;
Racing exploited the space between Henshaw and Ringrose with a 12-10 slip off the lineout with Lauret acting as a screen. Hanrahan is just the man to play Lambie’s role to the “T” here, and Nacewa’s pace at 12 in this scenario might well make this gap a little more tempting. He’s also a guy that we might consider running forward lines on – set up to smash Byrne, draw Nacewa in and then take force him to take contact at a weak angle – but he’s shown time and again that he’s a man for the big hits on both sides of the ball.
Another area where we can get at Leinster is the lateral movement speed of their forward defenders in midfield.
They have a very powerful pack but I see their ability to get laterally across the pitch on phase 2/3 to be something worth looking at, especially with the pack they have out in the aftermath of last weekend.
Look at the line integrity on phase 3 here while Munster come back across the pitch;
It shows up game after game and should be more pronounced without the Sexton/Henshaw seam defence that allows them to stay connected in the forwards. If you can get their forwards spaced out on openside plays, you will find space.
Overall, I expect Leinster to win but Munster, if they can kick accurately and avoid the start that plagued the Racing 92 semi-final and the Thomond Park game in December, this game should stay in the balance for the long haul.
I don’t expect Leinster to be tired. I don’t expect them to be distracted. I don’t expect them to be satisfied with themselves. You shouldn’t either.
This is Munster coming to the RDS. Leinster will be “on” for this and only Munster can shake them out of that. If we bring the kind of intensity that we have shown in parts this season, we can win this game but only if it’s followed by accuracy from our back division on kick turnover and in our decision making.
