The Champions Cup is just around the corner.
And that means only one thing – Interprovincial match ups. Normally, this weekend features Munster against Leinster in the Aviva but, as is traditional after a World Cup, that game has been bumped to April so it’s Munster vs Ulster in Thomond Park with conference points at stake and a ticking clock running in the background.
That clock ticking can be summed up by Alby Mathewson’s words during the week when he spoke about how Munster’s attacking style might look off the cuff, but it’s been honed over a long pre-season, a pre-season that the returning internationals in this squad – all eight of them – played no part in. With a trip away to the Ospreys lined up for next week and Racing 92 heading to the House of Pain the week after, the need for cohesion in the new attacking structures put in place by Stephen Larkham will be of the utmost importance.
I’m sure the internationals will have been looking at the new plays and schemes over the last few weeks post-Japan and going over the pertinent ones this week in training but there will still be an element of playing catch up to the new demands. And that’s before we even get to Week 2 of Graham Rowntree’s tenure as new forward coach.
It’s not going to be easy. I wouldn’t expect to see it seamlessly slot together but we need to get some Munster rugby back into these guys after the time away.
Tick-tock.
There are a few areas where I think Munster can get at Ulster.
A lot of it depends on the scrum or, as per usual, the referee’s interpretation of the scrum. Generally speaking, John Ryan has stacked up quite well against Jack McGrath on their previous meetings but how Niall Scannell performs here will be key. He’s one of the few players who, in my opinion, came out of the World Cup with positive bobs in the bank and a lot of that came down to the nuts and bolts of his game; scrummaging, lineout, heavy platform carries.
My point is if we can get a dominant scrum platform, we can attack Ulster at the seams; the space between Jordi Murphy, John Cooney and Stuart McCloskey guarded by Angus Curtis and later, Bill Johnston.
Our depth has to be such that we can load up our key strike players in this movement – Liam Coombes and Mike Haley.
The Blue square is the target area featuring the players we want to manipulate with Curtis being the primary target. Ideally, we’ll establish our carriers on him as a threat early in the contest to sell the worry of Stander getting a dominant one on one. Stander will pass to Mathewson on the break from the scrum. This will draw Cooney from the scrum onto Mathewson. Murphy will have already launched off the side at this point. We want him moving towards Curtis.
Loading Farrell and Stander on the #10 channel can stress Stu McCloskey’s tendency to stick a little too close to his #10 on scrum set piece, especially when it comes to his movement after the break. Marshall will have to go with him.
Mathewson passes to Hanrahan with good width from the scrum. Hanrahan should be aligned outside Curtis’s left shoulder. We need Stander coming hard off the scrum angling in towards #10 and Farrell shaping in towards the same space.
All the while we Coombes lurking behind the play. JJ has to take this close to line and angle in towards Curtis – we want to sell the overload. This is Decision Point ONE. If it’s on, or the look isn’t right, bail out either side to Farrell or Stander on the crash and take a first phase.
If it’s on, and we see Marshall and Lyttle encroaching on Scannell and Coombes, we slot this back to Coombes.
Scannell completes his pass line to stall Marshall’s advance and give Coombes a look at a position like this for Decision Point TWO.
Ulster will shoot their winger up in this position and if we can give Coombes – a 6’3″ power winger – a look at taking on Lyttle in space or feeding Haley wide, we’ll be doing well.
By protecting Curtis, Ulster will give us a look at attacking Luke Marshall’s lateral tracking but only if we sell the attack on the #10 channel, which Ulster will be expecting.
If we hit the deck before this, we can bounce into a regular phase structure and see what we see.
Seams and Seams
On phase play, the same kind of seam shows up a lot more than you’d think. I’ve noticed that Ulster can sometimes over-hit on centre-field ruck position and that can leave an unbalanced primary forward line.
Ulster love making big, multi-man forward stops in midfield – every team does – but their primary defensive hitters have a tendency to narrow in around the ruck and overfold in the direct aftermath.
You can see Johnston calling attention to it here;
You can also see a variation of it here when Zebre scored their opening try. Ulster over folded on a wide ruck that was specifically targeted at the seam between Johnston and Marshall – for those two, see Curtis and McCloskey here.
The target was to get the ball to the Ulster flyhalf’s defensive position and Ulster over folded around that point.
When Zebre hit that seam position – in a central position from a wide position – it forced an overfold that the scrumhalf could attack with a targeted line on the pillar defender before passing back inside to a trailing player.
The wide target caused the overload in that central position.
Zebre found this space over and over again and it produced predictable results, namely a forward overload on the side that was hit.
It took two/three passes from the ruck to find the target but when Zebre found it, there were predictable shapes on show.
Marshall calling for support with a workable space between the last forward and the first back. With an unbalanced primary forward line, we can find half-spaces between the seams of the Ulster forward defenders and Angus Curtis/Bill Johnston.
