The back to back series provides a unique chance to right the wrongs of the previous week against the same opposition.

Normally, you prepare for one opposition only to toss most of that bespoke prep out the window for the next week as the grind of professional rugby rolls on. The back to backs are a different beast. Everything you do in game one can be sharpened for the week after. Everything that gets done to you can be tweaked and reversed. It’s a coaches dream, in one way. Two weeks, two games, one opponent, one do-over.

Let’s have a look at the teams;

Mirror Game

From a Castres perspective, anything they do in Stade Pierre-Faber will be an improvement on last Sunday’s performance. From an attacking analysis standpoint, they did very, very little in Thomond Park on Saturday.

The biggest factor for Castres last weekend – the scrum – seems to have been addressed by wholesale changes in the frontrow. Last Sunday’s replacement front row starts en-masse, while Jenneker and Kotze appear to have been dropped completely, for the time being at least.

The addition of Clerc to the starting line up alongside Caballero should make things a little easier for Munster at lineout time, as he was the primary lifter on the majority of Castres lineouts while he was on the pitch and I’d expect the same here.

Watch him get on his bike from the front all the way to the tail on this lift. I’d expect that characteristic to remain here. They like to use Fa’anunu as a ball carrier on phase play so they limit his lifts to conserve energy given he’s likely to be under a fair bit of pressure from Ryan and Scannell in the scrum. That means following Clerc (#3) is a fair bet to see where the ball is going at lineout time.

When it comes to their maul builds, I thought JP Doyle let Castres away with an awful lot once Fa’anunu, Clerc and Caballero were on the field. At least two of the mauls they used to generate opportunities late in the game were a little ropey when it comes to what was awarded and what wasn’t.

This, for example, is a good steal from Peter O’Mahony.

He joins from the front, never changes his bind, and gets right in between the back lifter and the flank mauler. Kilcoyne actually drives him like a nail into the heart of the maul and he lifts the ball clean from the ball having done everything right, in my opinion.

Even JP Doyle thought it was fine.

Until it wasn’t two seconds later.

That tendency for Munster to get in past the initial maul wall of Castres was a big feature as the game wore on. Look at the way Beirne sliced through Clerc as the lifter here;

I’d expect that to still be there for this one. Castres have a big maul once they get going but if you can attack them while they build – and try to build without Fa’anunu – they can be got at before they get going.

Even here, when Doyle didn’t let Botha put his boot on, Castres still had a full six seconds of non-movement to crack the Munster counter-shove, with one of the defending Munster forwards down a boot.

Look at the way O’Mahony attacked the transfer again – the maul set up was so lackadaisical from Caballero that he left that entire touchline front exposed. Can they fix that in a week? They’ll have been trying – I assume – so we’ll see how they go.

Attack

We didn’t see a whole lot from Castres until relatively late in the second half. So what do we have to look out for? One of their preferred phase play styles is to attack the B defender as he comes across in a drift.

I expect Castres to have a lot more possession in this game so look for this kind of action of their big #8 to the likes of Babillot or one of the midfielders.

Off the lineout, they like to get off the top ball to Vaipulu on a 5/6 man lineout and that will go double as they’ll fancy a size disadvantage in midfield if they can switch off Stander to expose Scannell or Arnold. Neither of those two guys are soft in the tackle, but Castres will go for them anyway. It’ll look a lot like this.

Castres do tend to leave a bit of separation between the launch pod and the forward carry though. On the above example, you can see the spacing.

That’s exactly the type of space that Chris Cloete likes to operate in. If Castres play a lot of ball off the top on reduced lineouts – and I expect them to because they don’t have the midfield or wing ball carriers to do it off a full lineout – then there could be a lot of poaching opportunities like this one.

If we tag that inside runner on their preferred phase play, there’ll be plenty of poaching opportunities for Beirne, Cloete and O’Mahony to have a go at.

Break Them Down

I had the misfortune to listen to Eddie O’Sullivan’s “analysis” of Munster’s performance in this game during the week (just hold the mic for Murray, Eddie. Seriously) and he seemed to think that Munster had “issues” in breaking down Castres. That line of thinking completely disregards the conditions in the first half, in particular, and the three tries scored in the second against a side that didn’t expose themselves to many transition events. They didn’t want the ball because they knew how dangerous it was against Munster and, besides, Castres didn’t have to play any rugby because they weren’t expected to in Thomond Park. They saw the weather pre-game and decided to park the bus. That isn’t to say that Munster shouldn’t have scored tries in the first half – we should have and, might well score from the same opportunities this time around – but we played with a little too much hurriedness when trying to get at Castres lateral weakness.

As for Castres, they rarely went any higher than 5 phases with the ball in hand and that limited the amount of turnover ball we could work with. You won’t turn over every attacking sequence but all you need is one or two to flow right.

This one should have been a try but the initial pass from Cloete was pretty average, and that killed the momentum.

If we’re more accurate with the pass from turnover to space then there’ll be opportunities in Castres.

From a defensive perspective, Castres defended with a cut off blitz for most of the game on Sunday. That can be exploited – and Munster did that for Stander’s and Hanrahan’s tries – but it’ll look a little like for the most part on multiphase sets.

Did you see the lateral space appear on the second phase of this GIF? That’ll be there in this game too.

Castres defended our set piece attack quite well but a lot of that depended on the reading ability of their midfield.

Without Farrell, our attack has to compress a little bit to give us space to use our pace advantage in the outside backs but Castres were able to read our plays to the second layer quite well. Carbery coming back in at #10 immediately changes up our options here because his pace and stepping ability will change up how Combezou and Vialelle have to defend these plays. Hanrahan is a good stepper and has decent pace but Carbery is a different animal in these small spaces.

On phase play, I expect Vaipulu to do a lot of defending at C/D on big openside plays. He’s a decent defender but he can get caught on an angle at pace.

If we can get decent ball to the Strike Zone area to the likes of Earls, Haley, Carbery (of Scannell at first receiver) or Conway, then we can get at them. Carbery in the second layer will be particularly interesting;

Look at this opportunity with Hanrahan standing off Scannell; a real chance to attack a compressed defensive line with pace to burn outside. We didn’t need it here because we used the other way to attack Castres on openside plays – attacking inside the blitz.

If they blitz like they did last Sunday, there will be opportunities for offloads beyond the contact if we step in against the blitzing defender.

That’s a massive hole for Arnold to play into post tackle, and Scannell is great around the corner. Munster will be looking for this very thing in this game as one of the “video extras” from last Sunday.

Munster can win this game and the selection from Castres hints at their eyes being elsewhere but it’s hard to see this game being anything other than a slog. It’s likely to be wet in Castres for the game but it won’t be very windy. That’ll give Munster a chance to play the kind of game we’re capable of with ball in hand, if given the opportunity.

The scrum probably won’t be as effective, at least initially, but I think we’ve got something in store for Castres off the maul in particular. Kicking for territory and attacking Caballero as their likely primary jumper will be a good way to disrupt their early flow in this game and build on from there. Castres have to come out to play here and, while that will make it more difficult, it will present opportunities that we didn’t see in Thomond Park.