Right after Clayton McMillan was announced as Munster’s new head coach, the New Zealand rugby press naturally asked him about the role. The Super Rugby Pacific season was – and is – still ongoing, so there was some curiosity about what McMillan felt he could bring “up north.”
His answer sounded a bit weird.
“Some ambition and some courage to perhaps play with a bit more of the ball.”
Eh? This Munster? Did someone in the interview stage pull a fast one and show him clips from 2004? Munster play with a ton of ambition. Genuinely, sometimes it’s too much ambition. Just look at Ulster’s second try from last Friday night.
Saw what you like about the execution of this play – Ulster were a man down, so we felt there would be space if we all loaded to the openside – but the ambition to go after it? It’s ambitious! It’s ambitious in the same way that quitting your job to be a SoundCloud rapper at 41 years of age with a mortgage and three kids is ambitious, but still.
But then I asked around.
This isn’t what he meant. We hear ambition and think highly expansive, wide-running rugby. While there is a place for that in McMillan’s system, it’s not what he meant by ambition, at least in this context.
What McMillan meant was something we are quite familiar with.
Something we know and love in this province, and maybe something that we’ve let fall by the wayside a little as we try to find a new way to win: good, old-fashioned Blunt Force Trauma.
What McMillan was talking about was having the bravery and ambition to play super direct rugby as part of an on-ball structure that allows your backline to play in space.
Ballers ball, hammers hurt.
The Chiefs do not play off-ball rugby. They don’t play too much counter-transition basic either. Sure, they kick the ball when they need to; they have the second-highest kick-to-exit percentage rate in Super Rugby, just behind Moana Pasifika. But the Chiefs’ identity is that they are ruthless, relentless and brutal with the ball in hand. You want to make 200 tackles in a game? They’ll make every single one of them hurt.
What McMillan is talking about is playing highly drilled, high-tempo power rugby and having the bravery and ambition to back yourself to do it for 10+ phases. Own the ball.
Go back and watch the Chiefs win in Christchurch over the Crusaders last weekend. It was played at test match intensity because the Chiefs drove in with a relentlessly direct style of forward ball carrying that utilised pods of three and four off #9 and #10.
Look at this sequence and see how direct the Chiefs forward work is;
There are very few tip ons here; none at all, actually. You will see the Chiefs play an inside or outside tip occasionally, and a screen pass, but for the most part they play very direct rugby and power this with judicious use of the bench in the second half to keep their power levels up.
Of course, all of the New Zealand Super Rugby teams value forward power to one degree or another, each has a distinct style. The Chiefs under McMillan have carved out a niche as arguably the most collision-focused, power-oriented side of the lot.
You might say, Munster don’t have the horses to play that way anymore… but do we? Look at the Chiefs pack. Sure, there are few guys like Taukei’aho and Sititi who have a very definitive power profile, but there are no 130kg monsters to run guys over. It’s about empowering the side in the core fundamentals of the game as a forward: power, supporting the carrier in numbers, and winning collisions.
Look at this sequence in the Crusaders 22 and tell me the difference you see between it and recent Munster games in the same spot.
Latch and drive, carrying in twos and threes, violent ruck entries and making sure that no jackal could thrive in that ruck.
Look at the two carries and the cleanouts in the build-up to the release sequence here. Dyer gets the shout for a swivel pass and gives it.
Sure, there’s a bit of luck at the end with the offload finding a Chiefs hand but the space was created by direct ball carrying, pre-latching and vicious, violent ruck work. There’s no need for any specific player to be a hero when it comes to carrying, because he knows that support is on his shoulder.
The Chiefs have the second highest close phases in Super Rugby, play the third highest blindside phases and have the third highest rate of short passes, with the third highest average passes per game in Super Rugby.
When you look at the winning Chiefs’ drive at the weekend, you see all of these qualities in 18 brutal tight phases of possession from the Crusaders’ 10m line.
Multiple latches, a hard-hitting midfielder running a tight line to generate momentum and not even a hint of playing a tip on to generate space; the space is through the chest of the man defending you.
All of the Chiefs pack are in picture for most of this tight sequence and the ball never leaves that close range.
Modern defences are great at shutting down outside passing actions. Think of the Nienaber inside blitz, for example, and how it targets the release of the ball from a first receiver into a second layer of runners. It’s based on fast inside folding and keeping defenders on their feet. If they’re going to keep on their feet and fill the field, why not shrink the field? There’s nothing special here; just a very distinct, “what’s old is new again” approach of making sure two or more carriers are always hitting one or two defenders.
This is where McMillan’s on-ball style seems to be working so well in the last few seasons. The Chiefs have the lowest number of tries conceded in Super Rugby Pacific this season because they do such an efficient job of bossing possession, even in a game that is now tilted heavily towards contestable kicking.
The Chiefs still play with huge expansivity when the ball goes through McKenzie and their athletic outside backs, but it’s fuelled by the kind of brutality at the ruck that we know well in Munster. After the game, McMillan told the press;
“We rolled up the sleeves and just went through the front. We were patient enough to wait for the opportunity. I think there was Chiefs rugby at its best. There were lots of pleasing things today, but some still some work ons. We didn’t get everything perfect, when you play the Crusaders, you got to understand that that will be the case. We’re not going to get everything your own way.”
