This game went pretty much to the script I had in mind before kickoff.

It’s almost impossible to catch up with nearly four months of training and playing in a new attacking structure in a week. Actually, it IS impossible. You won’t have the cohesion, you won’t have the timing, and you’re likely to revert back to the shapes and structures that you know. So if you thought that Munster looked disjointed and, well, like half the side were running on slightly different timing and positioning, you were right.

But with the Champions Cup coming up on the horizon, the coaching staff had very little choice. You have to get your top players into the system and the quickest way to speed up that process is in the accelerated environment of match day. In some ways, I think the review from this game will be the most valuable part of it, outside of the four match points.

That isn’t to say that Munster won’t be pleased with their attack here. In some ways, a lot of what they planned will have gone exactly as they visualised it, especially in the build to the winning try. But before we talk about that moment, let’s have a look at the build-up – and I’m not talking in the phases before the moment, I’m talking about in the first half.

We spoke before the game about a particular quirk that Ulster have when they fold around a ruck targeted at their flyhalf near the edge of the primary defensive line.

When Zebre – and others – worked a pass to the edge to target a collision on the Ulster flyhalf, they were able to consistently produce workable fold points to exploit.

We tried to do the same.

The blue dot in the Ulster line is Angus Curtis. Munster are going to target his channel to try to force a workable Ulster defensive fold point i.e. can we get Ulster to move around that ruck in a way that leaves us space to attack?

You can see, right at the end, that we did create that space.

I think the scheme here was to run an offload 1-2 between Kleyn and Mathewson but, as Ulster managed to scrag the ball before the pass, we’ll never know what might have been.

We went after this position a few times.

Remember the pattern, one pass from first receiver to a carrier aimed at the flyhalf at the edge of the primary line that produces a distorted shape around the resulting ruck.

Here’s the example from the Zebre game last week.

Remember the pattern.

Let’s skip to 64 minutes.

Angus Curtis is marked in blue.

If the theory holds up, we should see a distorted Ulster shape around the next ruck.

Holland gets a wide pass from Farrell to carry straight into Curtis. O’Mahony snags Murphy out of the ruck and pins him to the floor for the next phase.

Murray finds Bleyendaal, who passes back inside to Conway so he can attack the disrupted space around the original ruck point. Conway has so much work to do here, but the space was created by an action that Munster knew would be there with the right ingredients.

At full pace, you can get a full appreciation for Conway’s world-class finish once he hit the gap.

One clean break, three defenders beaten, one match won. That’s as elite as it gets from Andrew Conway.

Our set-piece work went after the hinges around Curtis too, as expected. We mixed up our targeting off maul feints to try to find an edge.

On the first instance here, we went for Farrell on the crash into Curtis on his inside shoulder. The second movement looks exactly the same but with a twist.

Everything about this looks the same – look at Farrell’s line – but instead went outside to catch the players trying to protect Curtis as they came across the gap.

We also managed a linebreak off a maul break based on the same principles we discussed in the Red Eye.

Scannell took the ball at first receiver, Farrell ran a hard inside line to bind McCloskey to Curtis and the pass out the back to Hanrahan attacked Mashall’s resultant positioning to great effect.

The break happening so far back hurt our ability to finish this clean but it was good stuff nonetheless. We should have scored a try off the same principle in the second half but just couldn’t find the last pass.

Haley should have caught this but, to be fully fair, the pass was in a difficult “3/4 position” over his right shoulder.

I think the final score was a fair enough reflection of the game. It says something that, as clanky as Munster were overall – combined with a lopsided penalty count that hinged on Frank Murphy’s interpretation of Moore and Cronin’s scrum battle – I still feel that we left a much more emphatic win on the field.

That isn’t to say that Ulster didn’t deserve their losing bonus point. Their attack wasn’t what it needs to be just yet, but I thought their third quarter was strong enough to win them the game and they defended right on the edge all night.

Munster’s review of this game will be a key part of our build into the next few weeks of Champions Cup rugby. We don’t have full cohesion right now, but we’ll need it if we’re to deliver on this season’s potential.

The Wally Ratings: Ulster (H)

The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.  

Players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating.

Names	Rating
James Cronin	★★★
Niall Scannell	★★★
John Ryan	★★★
Jean Kleyn	★★★
Billy Holland	★★★
Peter O'Mahony	★★★★
Chris Cloete	★★★
CJ Stander	★★★★
Alby Mathewson	★★
JJ Hanrahan	★★★
Liam Coombes	★★★
Rory Scannell	★★★★★
Chris Farrell	★★★
Andrew Conway	★★★★★
Mike Haley	★★★
Kevin O'Byrne	N/A
Jeremy Loughman	★★★
Stephen Archer	★★★
Fineen Wycherley	★★★
Jack O'Donoghue	★★★
Conor Murray	★★★
Tyler Bleyendaal	★★
Arno Botha	★★★

Notable Players

I thought Peter O’Mahony and CJ Stander had strong outings here. Neither looked fully bedded into what we’re trying to do – how could they? – but they showed their individual qualities at different points. O’Mahony had a big day at the lineout, on both sides of the throw, and CJ Stander showed his close-quarters power relentlessly.

He’s a tough guy to stop once in a carry, never mind twice.

Rory Scannell had a very strong game here. He finished off an excellent move with real authority and stepped up decisively during Munster’s exits and at first receiver on phase play and off set-piece. This is the kind of performance that we want from this guy – constant big involvements. There were none bigger than this vital tackle on Stuart McCloskey in the 78th minute that saved the game for Munster.

If Scannell doesn’t make this tackle, Ulster would have almost certainly scored under the posts and won the game. A big moment in a big game for Rory Scannell. ★★★★★

Andrew Conway only touched the ball eight times in this game but almost all of those touches were of the highest quality. You’ve seen his outrageously good finish for the decisive try, but he consistently made the right decisions when he got possession.

Defensively, his positioning and work rate on offensive and defensive transitions was another stand out feature. He’s the perfect example of a guy that realised what he needed to do to become a top player and put the hard work in on the less sexy parts of the game to become that top player, which he unquestionably is at this point in his career.

This game was a key showcase of what he can do and I’ve got the feeling that he’s just getting started. ★★★★★

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