This is an easy quarter-final, for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention.
I was sat in Cork Coffee Roasters on Tuesday morning – the one on Bridge Street in case you spot a bald guy with a beard – and heard two lads chewing it up about the game on Saturday. It’s not the first time either. Despite what Soccer Journalist Twitter thinks, regular people actually do talk about rugby in public. I don’t think any of the two went to a private school either.
I know, I know. The horror.
“Edinburgh?”, says one fella, his voice cracking right at the top of “burrah”, such was his indignation. “Sure they’re no good. If Munster can’t be them they’ve no business being anywhere near a final.”
“Edinburgh are fucking useless,” proffered the other fella. “All of the Scottish clubs are fucking useless.”
You’ll have to forgive these filthy casuals for their opinions, dear reader, they were right once upon a time – maybe not about Glasgow since 2012, in fairness – but they are all wrong right now. Edinburgh are a serious threat to Munster this Saturday afternoon and anyone who thinks otherwise is an Olympic sized swimming fool.
Let’s have a look at the teams;
Red Eye Report :: Edinburgh (a)
I’ve decided to change this up slightly. I’ll be assessing specific facets of the opposition’s set piece, defensive structure and other stuff in the Blood & Thunder Podcast – and here – so here I thought it would be cool to show where I rate the opposition (and Munster) as a whole in a European context as first choice units and then, depending on the how far away both Munster and the opposition are from what I would consider “full strength”, how the teams actually taking the field rate against each other.
S – Elite level
A – Top European Level
B – Good Domestic League Level
C – Average Domestic League Level
D – Poor Domestic League Level
E – Minor League Minnow
Heineken Cup Quarter Final: Edinburgh vs Munster
Full Strength Red Eye Rating: Edinburgh (B+) – Munster (A)
Teamsheet Adjusted Red Eye Rating: Edinburgh (B+) – Munster (A)
Current European Cup Form Over Last 5 Games: Edinburgh (WWWWW) – Munster (WWLWW)
Apples and Oranges
A lot of how you rate Edinburgh’s excellent performance over the pool stages of this year’s Heineken Cup comes down to how you rate Toulon, Montpellier and Newcastle against our pool’s difficulty.
Personally, I’d rate both pools like;
Pool 2:
Munster A
Exeter A-
Gloucester B-
Castres B+
Pool 5
Edinburgh B+
Montpellier B-
Toulon C+
Newcastle C-
Edinburgh’s results aren’t to be sniffed at but I think their pool looked tougher pre-season than what it turned out to be in reality. Edinburgh’s two biggest results in their run to the quarter-final were the win in the Mayol and their victory over Montpellier in Murrayfield. Their biggest test of the season so far was, for me, their opening round match against Montpellier, which they came out of with a fair bit of credit despite losing.
In some ways, Montpellier and Toulon were so incoherent over the course of all four games against Edinburgh in Pool 5 that it’s hard to come up with any one thing that either side did on their own that really troubled the Scottish capital club.
Montpellier’s narrow maul build – which Munster just started reusing this past week – caused Edinburgh a fair bit of problems in both games as it took away one of their primary maul defence techniques.
Edinburgh’s maul defence is based on the push and pivot method.
I went over this method ahead of Munster’s PRO14 Quarter Final last season, and it’s still valid almost a year later for a different quarterfinal. Here it is again;
Ben Toolis and Grant Gilchrist are really good at punishing loose setups by getting hands over the top of the maul early.
Edinburgh, as a collective, aren’t the strongest counter-maulers when it comes to power but they are excellent – up there with the best in the league – at getting hands on the ball carrier. They do this in a few ways, but mostly like this;
See what happened there? The shove up one side pushes away the support for the ball carrier which allows the man who initially latched on at the front to peel through onto the ball carrier.
They (1) latch onto the jumper on landing and the (2) push around the side to make it easier for the “latcher” to complete his job on the ball carrier. Edinburgh love to swing around the side of mauls – almost to the point of coming in from the side – as a tactic to make space at the front for Toolis or Gilchrist to come through the front of the maul. When they do this, they give up ground but if their initial set up is right, that momentum helps to loosen the front of the maul and allow them to get hands on the carrier.
This was extremely effective against us in Murrayfield earlier in the season and, to get around it, we need to change how we set up.
Narrow, long mauls are harder for Edinburgh to attack in this way. Their work up the side looks more like obstruction to the ref and it leaves them vulnerable to giving away penalties. If you want to look at most sides maul defence, just look at their attacking maul. Edinburgh have a good pocket maul so it stands to reason that they’d also be quite good at defending setups that look like that because it’s one they’ll be seeing a lot in training.
You can see Edinburgh trying to use the same method against Montpellier, but couldn’t roll players off at the side to allow Toolis/Gilchrist to get access on the ball carrier.
Have a look at the last part of this article here to see how Munster were workshopping a long maul ahead of this game last weekend.
Edinburgh tend to get good defensive momentum when they get a positive infield shove at the maul as highlighted above. Sometimes they run the risk of giving away an “in from the side penalty” as they do in the below GIF against Toulon, but not every ref calls these.
You can see the way that Mata and Nel look to rotate the maul so Toolis and Gilchrist can attack. They were unlucky this time – they had all the momentum taken out of Toulon before Gilchrist changed his bind- but you can see what they were looking to do and how successful Montpellier were relative to Toulon in this instance.
One thing Toulon did expose was the amount of ground that Watson and the Edinburgh #6 have to cover.
Have a look at the build-up to Toulon’s first try here, scored directly off a maul;
The key for Toulon here was attacking the space outside the last forward defender – Watson in this instance – and then using the pace of the recycle to get into Edinburgh’s smaller outside backs.
You can see Watson (#7) and Bradbury (#6) leading the charge around the corner off the break from the maul and it’ll be Barclay in a similar position in this game.
Look at the way Bradbury moves around to the other side of the maul here – almost to the detriment of the initial maul defence itself – to guard the openside break.
Not all that unusual, but it does speak to the issue that Edinburgh have on maul defence and with their defence in general – they are overly reliant on their flankers for mobile defensive cover. Barclay, who joined from the Scarlets last season, is one of the most mobile flankers in the game as well as an excellent lineout jumper.
Edinburgh’s defensive system is based around using Watson and Barclays’s mobility to plug gaps with McInally filling in where possible outside of setpiece.
In this instance, Toulon went for the hinge between Watson and Van Der Walt off the lineout maul. They crabbed infield to create a shortside Edinburgh would have to defend and then launched a heavy runner at Watson’s outside shoulder. Van Der Walt isn’t a defensive liability but he’s not a guy that’s capable of taking too much punishment in that position, and neither are both of the midfielders Edinburgh have picked for this one.
That requires a lot of ground to be covered by their flankers;
Bradbury and Watson are the first guys at the ruck point. Go back up and watch how Bradbury and Watson float around the ruck point as the attack progresses. I am assuming that Barclay will fill a similar role on defensive mauls in this one, as his only game to date for Edinburgh was last Friday against Leinster only managed one attacking maul all game while Edinburgh were down a forward.
Yes, Barclay came across to defend the infield side from a position at the front of the previous lineout.
Watson was defending the main body of the maul – because of the yellow card – with Ford and Shoeman covering the sides. Look for Watson and Ford (McInally here) to swap places in a similar position regardless of maul position tomorrow. Why is this relevant? Because if you know who Edinburgh are moving around to certain areas, you can see what they are trying to hide.
I think that this is mainly down to managing Edinburgh’s front five workload with Bill Mata not far behind when it comes to size and weight, especially as the game develops into the later stages. You can often see Barclay and Watson in and around the same ruck point as the play moves across the field.
Here’s an example from early in the game against Leinster;
Look at Watson and Barclay’s position on the openside of this attack from a centre-field position. This is a common position for both men for Scotland, but for Edinburgh too.
As they move around the pitch, the A and D positions give both flankers a chance to “pinch” the opposition heavy carrying patters and ensure they are never too far away from the ruck point. But that movement causes weaknesses if the opposition drag both men to one half of the field as Leinster did in this instance. Look at how Leinster drew Barclay and Watson to one half of the field on this sequence.
See how that created space on the outside edge when Edinburgh ran out of mobile forwards? Have a look at the last phase;
Watson and Barclay away from the break, tied up in centre-field and busting a lung to get to the break Leinster have underway. I think if this ball hits Jordan Larmour’s hands, rather than McFadden, Leinster get to the 5m line and maybe further.
When the ruck resets at the end who’s there at A & D?
Watson and Barclay.
Munster will need to overload Barclay and Watson to expose Edinburgh’s heavier pack members to the likes of Earls and Conway coming inside or running off the back of a screen. I think we’ll be looking to attack the space left behind on a maul off a Farrell carry into Watson and Van Der Walt – that should expose Shoeman or Gilchrist on the blindside once Watson and Barclay make for the ruck point post-carry.
Watch this break off a lineout. Look for the space on the edges once Barclay and Watson have been pulled infield.
I think Leinster would have run Edinburgh much closer last week if they’d had a functioning set piece. On the carry, Edinburgh weren’t generating an awful lot of quick ball or gain line up the middle of the field and only really gained entry to Leinster’s half of the field and 22 via penalties. Our decision making around the breakdown will have to be much improved and I think negating all but the most obvious jackal opportunities is the right call here. In one regard, I think O’Donoghue has been selected here to be a “hitter” for us in defence instead of the breakdown attacking of Cloete. With Gauzere refereeing, we can’t afford to be too liberal with our jackal attempts – we have to hit Edinburgh and make them kick to us. Van Der Walt and Johnstone are good tactical kickers but the loss of Kinghorn from fullback puts Darcy Graham’s work with the boot into sharp focus. He will be a man worth targeting in positions where he has to kick under pressure.
If Munster can stay strong in the scrum – and I think we’ve dealt with the strongest scrum in the competition in Exeter already – and keep Edinburgh’s hands off our lineout ball, we have the physicality to crack them. If we can stop Edinburgh up the middle of the field, they will kick for territory or send Van Der Merwe after Keith Earls/Andrew Conway in the air. We have four viable lineout options on our ball and three agile counter-jumpers who can really go after Toolis and Gilchrist on their bailout throws and force them to use Barclay in tougher positions than they would like.
If we can do those, we have got a chance to hurt Edinburgh as we angle onto their midfield defence. Isolating Dean and Johnstone for one on one treatment from Scannell, Stander, O’Donoghue and especially Farrell will be key, as will challenging Van Der Merwe’s positioning on certain angled kicks.
It should be a good one.
