I have a feeling that this game will be marked NSFL in the game folder at the HPC in the coming week.
Not Safe For Leamys.
To be honest, going on Graham Rowntree’s demeanour after the game it might well be NSFW too.
Not Safe For Wig.
But, hey, we played as poorly in spells of this game as we have in other games that we’ve gone on to lose this season so leaving Treviso with a 5-1 point differential isn’t a cure-all, by any means, but let’s put it this way – it makes the review a little easier.
Watching this game back again, I came away with two main thoughts.
The first thought was that Benetton are a really well-coached side with more than decent depth outside of their internationals and that they have really mastered their particular brand of counter-transition rugby.
The second thought was that this was probably the biggest size differential we’ve given up in the pack all season long so getting beyond that to the point where we could win with a bonus point is more proof that we’re stepping in the right direction as a squad.
Whatever about what would have happened last season, in the first few weeks of the season we probably lose this game without so much as a few spoons of sopa coàda so it’s a testament to the squad that we were able to chow down an early 12-0 deficit as well as some really rocky periods all throughout the game without breaking.
***
Taking a little break here because my girlfriend just started getting real contractions after a night of Braxton Hicks. When I heard the term Braxton Hicks for the first time I just couldn’t stop myself from loudly singing HUUUUUUNBREAK MY HEARRRTTTTTT SAYYYYYY YOU’LL LOVE ME AGAAAAAAIIINNNNN in my head while herself explains what it means as I nod earnestly.
I make a mental note to ensure I don’t blindly go searching for Toni Braxton on Spotify later. I open up my ruck spreadsheet and start using that to track the contractions to the minute so I can feel useful as well as buzzing around and fussing like a malfunctioning robot butler.
“Are you OK?”
“Can I get you anything?”
“Are you hungry?”
Turns out she IS hungry, so I drive into Mcdonald’s.
In under a day or so, I’m going to be someone’s dad with the will of god. How mad is that?
***
The first thing that popped up for me in this game was Munster’s defence looking as leaky as it has in weeks if not months. A lot of that comes down to, in my opinion, a bad matchup between the size and dynamism of this Benetton pack mixed with their willingness to offload (and offload accurately). We struggled to get solid stops on Benetton and, as a result, they were able to pick off our front five – Niall Scannell in particular – on multiple sequences.
The first Benetton try was a perfect expression of their strengths as a squad coupled with a few Munster system errors. No surprise to see that the two lads with the least amount of recent on-field rugby under their belt are the lads getting snagged at the end of this.
It’s still a system error though and Benetton were really good at exposing that side of our game here to the point that we lost control of this game early on. Benetton are outstanding at working in a tonne of clever blocks, trips and snags that opened up our inside cover defence with regularity.
That’s good attacking rugby that strikes at the heart of our defensive system and, to be honest, it’s actually really good that this was exposed here, this week, as opposed to deeper in the season. Some of this is down to players making bad reads, some of it is poor kicking mixed with lads struggling to handle recently added size which limits their mobility while they settle into it, and some of it is down to rusty players getting back on field after a long lay-off. But some of it is just good attack targeting some of our heavier, less athletic (relatively speaking) defenders like Niall Scannell on high-tempo sequences. I think you beat this Benetton side – or any iteration of their squad, which is quite deep with size and athleticism if not top-end quality – is by beating them up in the middle of the field on their counter-transition setups, which we weren’t able to do consistently.
To be fair, we managed to get a hold of them in this regard in the second half with better quality stops, better folds and, as a result, we were able to spike into their layers with more menace.
You can see it in this sequence;
So while it wasn’t perfect – and they certainly caught us once or twice – there was much more control than the first half. That meant we were able to hurt them with our counter-transition game, which we did consistently. Our work on counter-transition won us this game, ultimately, and that’s a real sea change from how we would typically approach a game like this last season.
I keep mentioning that change from year to year because it really is quite a radical difference in approach. Here we pushed 1.45 PPC as we looked to stress Benetton’s defensive system on the first phases post-kick transition and then deep into multiphase with radiating options off Carbery, Healy and Antoine Frisch who is stepping up as a consistent and hugely active playmaker as we build through this season.
Some of the tries we scored – and the manner of them – are the kind of counter-attacking tries we didn’t have in our armoury last season. If we can continue to build on the improvement in the lineout and get some of our big hitters in the second row back fit, we have the capacity to build a game that can gun-sling with the best of them while also having the kind of power that can slug it out in the trenches, with the fitness to both simultaneously.
It’s not perfect – like this game – but there are hugely encouraging signs that what we’re seeing scales up and, more importantly, scales down to test window banana peels like this.
Notable Players
The biggest compliment I think you could pay John Hodnett in this game was that he looked like a guy that shouldn’t be there. He looked like a fella that should have been running drills down in Portugal with the Ireland squad. Hodnett shaped this game and broke it open. One assist, one try, one try-scoring cleanout that opened the door for Jean Kleyn to score the bonus point, to constant impact on the defensive side of the ball; Hodnett was everywhere. In attack, he ran the edge with the genuine menace that only legit-breaking threats can. In defence, he was just dug into whoever wandered into his lane.
This was good. This was a game-winning performance from a guy who looks to be scaling up to the level that Coombes reached in 2020/21. Outstanding. ★★★★★
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Josh Wycherley | ★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★ |
| Roman Salanoa | ★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★ |
| Fineen Wycherley | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Sullivan | ★★★ |
| John Hodnett | ★★★★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★★★ |
| Paddy Patterson | ★★★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★★ |
| Liam Coombes | ★★★ |
| Malakai Fekitoa | ★★★★ |
| Antoine Frisch | ★★★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★ |
| Mark Donnelly | ★★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★★ |
| Cian Hurley | ★★★★ |
| Ruadhan Quinn | ★★★ |
| Neil Cronin | N/A |
| Ben Healy | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
