If you want an indication of how important this game is to Munster’s PRO14 season, all you need to do is look at the teamsheet.
Indeed, look at the teamsheets for “minute minding” over the previous two weekends while you’re at it to see how Johann Van Graan and his team targeted this fixture from a few weeks out. Munster selected an extremely rotated side for the trip to Ulster and came away with a losing bonus point. Munster went practically full strength against Leinster and got the win. This week it’s a mix of both with the likes of Murray, Stander, Kilcoyne and Bleyendaal on the bench coupled with O’Donnell, Botha, Kleyn, Beirne, Carbery, Farrell, Earls, Conway and Peter O’Mahony starting. Those minutes were managed and allocated with this game in mind.
Why? Just look at the table.
Any kind of win for Munster keeps the pressure on Glasgow – just two points clear now – but the real pressure is coming from Connacht in third. Connacht have slowly crept up the ladder in Conference A and find themselves in striking range of second place after a run of form similar to our own.
Connacht might not be at the level they were at when they won the PRO12 three years ago but they are certainly in a much better place than they were last year under Kieran Keane.
The Red Eye Report: Connacht (A)
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.
Set Piece
Offensive Scrummaging – B
Defensive Scrummaging – B
Attacking Lineout – B
Defensive Lineout – B
Offensive Maul – C
Defensive Maul – C
Open Play
Defensive Structure – B
Phase Play Power – C
Attacking Creativity – B
Structured Attack Off Set Piece – A
Structured Defence Off Set Piece – C
Overall Fitness – B
Kicking – B
Back Three Kick Positioning – C
A Unique Challenge
The Sportsground is the archetypical Difficult Place To Go in the PRO14. It’s claustrophobic, it always seems to be subtly mucky regardless of when you play there and Munster just haven’t been very good there over the last few years. If you take out a 16-9 under Rassie Erasmus in 2016/2017, you have to go all the way back to the 19th April 2014 for the last Munster win in Galway. Over the past few years, Munster just haven’t been able to provide a consistent answer for the style of play that Connacht have developed since Pat Lam took over and added to in the intervening years. Even last year, which was far from a vintage year for Connacht, saw the Westerners get a 20-16 win in a tight game after a red card for Andrew Conway after 20 minutes.
Long story short, even with Connacht being without their captain Jarrad Butler and the talismanic Bundee Aki, I don’t expect this game to be anything other than a tight, nervy affair.
Defending against Connacht’s attack is a question of managing space and knowing when they are going to head to the second layer.
They are most dangerous off the lineout, where they have a series of interesting plays that depend on a big initial hit off quick ball and then running deep support lines on the second phase to take advantage of any opportunities garnered in disrupted space.
The biggest way that Connacht like to do this is off the lineout. Quick ball off the front or middle of the lineout is Connacht’s primary avenue attack off the lineout, with other schemes based off maul feints and short driven mauls.
A lot of the time, they look like this;
Bundee Aki compressed the Leinster line on the edge of the maul before popping the ball back to Carty on a shallow loop line and releasing the ball wide to Leader. This move can’t work without Leinster buying the threat of Aki’s carry line coupled with Farrell’s hard decoy/option line.
That gave Connacht – and Carty in particular – a chance to attack Leinster’s exposed centre-field defence and give Leader and Kelleher a look at catching Leinster on the angle and at pace. That was their first try.
When you look at most of Connacht’s best work against Leinster in particular, you’ll see a similar formula.
Quick ball off the top, a heavy line by Aki to bind the inside defenders and Connacht releasing the ball to Leader and Kelleher.
Connacht’s second try against Leinster came from the lineout too. Watch for Aki’s big hit up to set the first phase, and then Connacht attacking the disrupted space with Leader surging on Farrell’s carry line.
Connacht are always looking for the offload here. Aki’s carry pinched in Leinster’s heavy defenders and isolated Byrne and the inexperienced Conor O’Brien for Leader to attack. Farrell’s line with the ball is unlikely to break the line but he’s always waiting for Leader’s support line – that’s the move here and it worked perfectly. They’ll try the same against Munster with Tom Daly running Aki’s lines in all the above instances. They’ll fancy having a cut off Goggin and Farrell’s speed across the pitch but Munster will have to ensure Goggin/O’Donnell on reduced lineouts sticks Daly one on one so we can move our defence slightly wider to seal off the angle on Connacht’s “compress and hit wide” lineout schemes. Earls and Conway’s positioning and pace in tracking will be a vital part of coralling Connacht.
Connacht’s work on turned over lineout ball is very similar in appearance and effectiveness.
Thornbury is an excellent counter-jumper and will likely get hands on any sloppy Munster lineout ball. When they get the ball into disrupted space, Connacht have the hands and support lines to make big gains in transition.
Phase Play
Connacht’s work on their phase play is where you still see a lot of Lam’s influence. You have a lot of second layer runners coupled with passing screens.
In my opinion, a lot of this kind of play is to mitigate their lack of big ball carrying forwards. The likes of Roux, Thornbury, Buckley and Masterson can certainly carry ball in the middle of the field but Connacht don’t really want to get into that kind of contest against Munster. They’ll look to get depth on their phase play whenever possible outside the 22.
Carty is a key part of this structure. He links between pods quite well and can also run and kick through for himself to keep defences focused.
This kind of structure against Ulster – a three-man screen feeding Carty who hits a three-man midfield pod is a really effective scheme for them on their phase play.
The ball carrying of Fainga’a in this kind of space is really worth keeping an eye on.
When Connacht are looking to secure the ball in suboptimal attacking positions, they’ll run traditional three-man pods up the middle of the field.
Note the space between carry pod and backs – Connacht want that space to put pace on their attack when they release the ball from a carrying pod lack this.
Connacht also like to play off the ground on these kinds of plays with Blade being a pacey strike runner capable of hurting lazy pillar defence.
Munster, if they can manage Connacht man for man in these scenarios, and get the likes of Beirne over the ball whenever there’s a bit of separation between the carrier and support players – you saw a few opportunities in the above GIFs where a guy like Beirne could profit.
The other place Munster can attack Connacht is in their wide release plays. This is where we’ll miss Cloete and where a guy like O’Mahony defending in the wider channels will be vital in slowing Connacht’s tempo. When Connacht go wide you expose their wide rucking ability and force them to draw numbers to support the ruck.
That edge ruck can be attacked, as can the resulting phase after it. Look at the gap between the carry and the support on this phase;
The likes of O’Mahony, Beirne or O’Donnell could really attack Connacht’s breakdown in these scenarios. If Munster can slow Connacht’s breakdown on their set up phases, and attack them on their wide release phases, we can get them to play a heavy game with the ball in hand that they won’t want to play for very long.
