We won a game in which we were the less efficient side. Is that bad? No, not necessarily.

Against Glasgow, we turned five visits to the 22 into twenty points and lost. Against the Bulls on Saturday, we scored 2.89 points per entry, which is respectable and inside the elite band, and the Bulls scored 3.17. From a pure efficiency standpoint, on a points-per-entry basis, we should have lost.

We won 26–22.

The difference was territory. We got into their 22 nine times. They got into ours six times, about a third fewer than we allowed on average in the URC last season (9.2). Three extra visits at roughly three points each are worth about nine points. The Bulls’ sharper finishing — their ability to convert on the 5m line, essentially — won back two of those, and a penalty goal from outside the 22 won back another three. That leaves four, and that was the margin.

Put it next to Glasgow, and it’s almost a mirror image. Last week, territory cost us 19 points and finishing won back 13. This week, territory gained us nine and finishing cost us two. The lesson there is clear: how often you get there decides the game, and finishing adjusts the margin.

The rolling line doesn’t look any better for it, as you’ll see below. The five-game efficiency figure has dropped to −0.23. That’s the first time it has been below zero since Ulster at home last season, and it’s mostly because that Ulster game, our best single-game figure of the season at +3.3, has dropped out of the five-game window. The entry differential has improved from −3.6 to −2.6. That’s still joint second-worst across the 26 games I’m looking at across both seasons, but it’s heading the right way.

One win doesn’t reverse a trend, but this is what reversing it looks like.

Early Signs

Two rounds is nothing, and I’ll keep saying it, but, even so, every side in the URC has now played twice and produced some data worth looking at. I ran the 22 numbers for all sixteen, so it’s worth seeing where we sit.

Across the league, teams are getting into the opposition 22 8.8 times a game and coming away with 2.78 points per visit. The second number is interesting, because it’s a fraction below the 2.8–3.0 “elite” band I’ve been using as a benchmark for last season. It could mean the whole league is finishing like a top side in the first fortnight, but I think that’s a reaction to the new maul laws. It’s harder to legally stop mauls now, so they are converting more as a result.

It could mean defences are still finding their shape early in the season, especially with those new maul laws, but even that is interwoven with early season discipline. Scrum penalties and defensive penalties now lead to more mauls that are harder to defend legally, which leads to more penalties and more tries.

Or it could mean the benchmark needs another look once there’s more data. I’ll come back to it in a few weeks.

On finishing, Munster are well above the average. 3.29 points per entry is fourth in the league, behind only the Ospreys, the Lions and Cardiff. Our net efficiency of entries and conversion of +0.64 is sixth.

Getting there is a different story. Seven entries a game is joint 12th of 16, nearly two fewer than the league average. Our entry differential of −1.5 a game is 12th, and we concede 8.5 entries a game, which is 10th. On these numbers, we’re one of the best finishers in the league but currently one of the teams that gets there least, albeit with the context that we’ve played two of the top teams in the league in the first two rounds.

Context-free, however, that combination doesn’t win you many games. I plotted every team with efficiency on one axis and entry differential on the other. The four sides that are positive on both, Cardiff, the Sharks, the Lions and the Bulls, have won seven of their eight games, and the only defeat in that bracket was the Bulls’ loss to us. The corner for teams that finish well but rarely get there is a very different place. The Ospreys, the Scarlets and Connacht are all being out-entered by five or more a game, and they have one win from six between them. The Ospreys top the league at 4.78 points per entry, nearly five points every time they get there. They’re only getting there four and a half times a game, though, and they’ve lost both.

We’re in that corner too, but close to the edge, and that’s actually a pretty good sign. At −1.5 a game, finishing can still make up the difference, as it did on Saturday. At −5 it can’t. In the Glasgow game we were at −6, for example.

The other end of the table has its own lesson. Leinster are getting into the 22 eleven times a game, joint third in the league, and coming away with 1.95 points per visit, the lowest in the URC. That has to be held in the context of missing most of their Ireland stars and being away in South Africa, but they’re also last for net efficiency (I checked that twice), while losing both games.

So the league is telling us what our own rolling lines have been telling us. Finishing is a skill we have, and getting there is the one we’re short of. So far, the sides at the top are the ones doing both.

The Problem With Two Lines

Put the two rolling lines on a five-game average side by side, and the main thing you notice is that they rarely go up together.

Over 22 five-game windows, from last October to Saturday, there have been only five stretches where both efficiency and entry differential were above zero. In none of them was the entry differential higher than +1.2 a game. We’ve never had a five-game run where we got there clearly more often than the opposition and also finished better than them. The last time both lines were even slightly positive was after the Lions game in the spring.

Mostly, those lines have moved in opposite directions. Early last season the entry line peaked at +4.6 a game after the win over the Ospreys in December, and over that same stretch the efficiency line was near its lowest, at −0.92. Late in the season it flipped. From Benetton away to the quarter-final defeat in Pretoria, efficiency climbed from −0.66 to +0.72, its season-high, while the entry differential fell from +2.0 to −1.8. Over five-game windows, the two lines correlate −0.5 points. Overlapping windows exaggerate a figure like that, and game by game, there’s almost no link. But the spells are clear enough. When we got there more often, we tended to finish worse. When we finished better, it was because we were getting there less.

That’s the conversion identity problem from the last piece. This team is at its most efficient when chances are scarce. Get it into the 22 a lot, and the finishing tends to drop off. That’s how it looks on a chart, but on the pitch, it was out set piece problems laid bare. We weren’t converting scrum and maul opportunities in the 22 at a level that would be productive. We were too often repelled, held up on the try line or penalised. We’d get an entry — or two, or three — and come away frustrated more often than not, but a far bigger issue was our inability to force the penalties that would give us those positions in the first place because, as you know, we were one of the worst teams in club rugby worldwide for dominant carries. If you carry dominantly, you have an incrementally greater chance of forcing a defensive penalty out of the opposition: an offside, a ruck penalty, a high tackle under pressure.

Our carrying is improved, so we are more likely to force the penalties that lead to a position where a better set piece and strike plays can bump our efficiency.

Saturday was a small break from the pattern of the last few months in that light. Entries went up, the finishing held at 2.89, which is still in the elite band, and we won. And we forced penalties out of the Bulls.

One game moves a five-game line only so far, which is why it’s at −2.6 rather than anywhere comfortable. But it’s the first time since the tail end of last season that the entry line has gone up.

That’s the line I’ll be watching from here. Efficiency will rise and fall with the opposition and the bounce of the ball. It always has, and always will. Entry differential is the one that has been falling since the spring, and it’s the one that decides games where the finishing isn’t there.

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Two rounds in, one thing is already clear: access to penalties matters more this season than it has for a while.

That changes what a scrum is worth and what discipline itself is worth. A scrum that leaks penalties was always a problem, but in 2025/26 there were other ways to make up the difference. There aren’t many now. Every penalty conceded is a kick to the corner, a lineout in your 22, and a red alert defensive scramble that burns the clock and your energy along with it.

Last season, the scrum was obviously as important, but you could counter that with a messy defensive maul. It was a trade-off. You could soak scrum penalties if your maul defence was messy enough. Now, the balance has completely shifted.

It works the other way too. If your scrum wins penalties, or forces the opposition off the back of it and into phase play, and you can defend that phase play without giving away a penalty, you’ve more or less closed off their route to points.

What’s left is transition and defensive errors: a turnover in midfield, a missed tackle, a kick chase that goes wrong. You can’t remove those completely, but they’re far easier to live with than a scrum that hands the opposition a free trip to your 22 every time it goes down.