It’s the season of opportunity.
For Connacht, it’s an opportunity to directly overtake Munster in the Conference. For Munster, it’s an opportunity to definitely stake a claim to the top of the conference with difficult contests to come.
But that’s not the only opportunity that’ll be on show here.
By including Craig Casey, Shane Daly, Calvin Nash, Gavin Coombes, Liam Coombes in the starting XV and Keynan Knox, Diarmuid Barron and Ben Healy on the bench, Johann Van Graan has given eight young players a massive opportunity to announce themselves to a wider audience and change perceptions. This isn’t a bunch of young lads all thrown in together at the deep end, this is young players being paired with established, experienced pros and that gives them the best pathway to performing.
It will not be easy. Connacht are playing quite well at the moment and going to the Sportsground on a December evening is rarely a comfortable experience for visiting teams. Connacht, as you’d expect for a home in-conference game, have gone pretty strong given even with their ongoing injury situation. A lot of coaches have a balancing act to do post-Champions Cup. This has been a more intense block of games than usual – four Tier 1 Champions Cup games in five weeks rather than the four Champions Cup games in eight weeks every other year – so coaches and medical staff will have to manage minutes over the next while, even with the mandated IRFU rest periods.
Then you have your own business to worry about. The natural inclination is for every coach is to put a priority on home wins. You can lose away from home – that number of “acceptable losses” is relative to your status and seasonal expectations – but losses at home start piling pressure on even the most secure of coaches.
That’s why Ulster chose to rotate out for their trip to the RDS – they have two games at home to worry about – and why Connacht have gone strong for this one. Away days make champions, but home games pay the bills regardless of who you are.
Every coach knows that equation intimately.
It would be reductive to say that Connacht have a weakness in the maul.
If you watched Connacht vs Leinster six or so weeks ago, you’d come away thinking that driving up through the middle of the Westerners would an easy way to make quick gains and that could be true, but I doubt it’ll be as straight forward as that.
Leinster had a lot of success on their close-range mauls but the context of the game – Connacht using two inexperienced locks – made it an obvious area for Leinster to target both from close-range and further out.
Since then, Connacht’s maul hasn’t really been a liability outside of the usual vulnerability from close range that almost every side has in the right circumstances. Roux and Dillane are good maul defenders – although they might be a little vulnerable to getting peeled around Roux – but their maul defence tells you a fair bit about where you can get at them. The edges.
Connacht are experts at playing to their strengths and that applies almost as much to defence as it does attack. They’re going to have a size differential against most opponents they face so they know there’s certain moments of the game where they’ve got to pack into the physical confrontations.
And that’s where the absence of Jarrad Butler is something that I think we can go after but the key is in committing Connacht to numbers in the maul; not just from close range but anywhere outside our own 22.
Against Gloucester, Connacht were relatively comfortable on their maul defence but Gloucester rarely committed enough resources to really trouble them there, in my opinion. Connacht did a great job of spiking the Gloucester maul at source, something they didn’t manage against Leinster, and Gloucester were rarely able to draw in Connacht’s cover forwards as a result because they were rarely even able to build a maul.
From what I’ve seen of Connacht this season, they tend to leave four forwards out of the maul if they possibly can, even at relatively close range. This is pretty standard. If the opposition maul starts to come forward, Butler is one of the forwards that they typically leave in the line if they possibly can. As an “openside” type of back row, again that’s pretty standard. He’s the most mobile player out of Connacht’s back five so, once again, it makes sense.
If and when they come under pressure in the maul, they start to bring in their cover players. Their primary maul stoppers in this game will be Roux, Dillane, Masterson and McKeon with Bealham, Heffernan, Boyle and Buckley being their cover guys if their last few games are anything to go by.
If Munster can commit six Connacht players to the maul, we can attack the space outside. Typically this space would be covered by Butler but as of right now, he’s not set to play. If two of Boyle/Heffernan/Buckley are the defenders left over, we have a real crack at attacking the edge spaces where Connacht will be concerned about their vulnerability up the middle of the field.
Conor Fitzgerald has had an excellent start to the season and he’ll be a real threat for Connacht here but if I was to pick out one area where he’s shown a bit of vulnerability, it’s in his one on one tackling. His numbers against Gloucester are pretty good – 8 tackles with 1 missed – but he badly lost a lot of those collisions.
Connacht will look at Munster’s midfield – two big hitters in Goggin and Farrell – and see a real problem in any kind of isolated defensive set i.e. off the maul, lineout or scrum.
Ideally, Munster’s maul picture will look similar to this.
Nash is tucked in by the side of the maul to keep Connacht’s fringe maulers from fully committing to the shove while Daly and Casey provide width for us on the blindside. This could equally work with Liam Coombes but I’m putting Nash here because I think he’s the more agile player. If all goes to plan, we’ll angle this maul infield and start to worry Connacht about the break down the blindside. Connacht will already be concerned with Nash and Casey’s agility and speed here, let alone a break from Stander or Cloete.
I think I’d like Goggin and Farrell quite tight to Hanrahan here.
We want to bring Aki (green #12) in close to Fitzgerald to leave possible isolation on Daly or a kick pass option to Coombes.
What we’re looking for is this – Connacht’s cover forwards hitting the maul coming infield.
A shortened 5 man lineout should set the picture we want, with our forwards committing after the initial maul build to draw in the Connacht forwards guarding the midfield into the maul in a hurry. When we see the fringe maulers fully committing to the maul we want to break on that cue with Nash taking possession, attacking Boyle (or whoever). Whoever it is, they won’t be as agile as Butler is in covering that lateral space.
Goggin (or Farrell) will run a hard inside attack line on Fitzgerald’s defensive track.
If Nash sees space inside the cover forward on Fitzgerald, he can attack it. If he sees Aki covering in on Fitzgerald’s line on the outside we can try a miss pass across the space – which is compressed anyway – to hit Farrell for a possible clean break through the gap between Aki and Daly if Daly doesn’t track across man for man if and when Aki slides in to cover Fitzgerald.
If Nash sees space between the cover forward and Fitzgerald, he can hit Goggin for a possible break with Casey/Daly/Cloete in close support.
If we don’t get the picture we want, there’s always a possible kick option to Coombes if we keep him as the stretch option.
Basically, it’s this play – but in reverse.
If Connacht have seen this on video, and they probably have, we can subvert that by attacking an area they’ll be looking to protect anyway.
That space constriction around Conor Fitzgerald should be there all day on every set piece. Look for Casey and Nash to try to attack Roux/McKeon around the fringes of the ruck with something close to this too.
It’ll be a big hit infield though Stander, Kleyn or Kilcoyne and then a short reverse back against the grain.
