So Jack is Back.

I broke down a lot of what I liked about Jack O’Donoghue’s game in January of last year – link here – and he’s a player I’ve been excited to see come back since his nasty knee injury at the tail end of last season. Any kind of knee injury, let alone the one as severe that Jack O’Donoghue suffered, takes a good while to recover from so it was no surprise to see the Waterford man miss five months of this season before making his return off the bench against the Ospreys at the tail end of February. His start against Zebre at the weekend was his first since that game against Leinster back in May so I was really interested to see how he went, especially against an all-international back row in Tuivati, Mbanda and Giammarioli.

He did very well.

First, we’ll have a look at his ball-carrying. Now, as a typical strike zone runner, I’d typically expect to see O’Donoghue carrying the ball in the wider areas off the pitch and that was mostly true against Zebre.

Here’s a map of his ball carrying in last weekend’s game. Click on the image to enlarge.

Keep in mind that O’Donoghue was selected here as a #6 and played a similar role to what we might expect from Peter O’Mahony in the same position. O’Donoghue was used a lot on second phase off the lineout or scrum – as you might expect for a blindside. Six of his eight carries happened inside the two 15m lines, which you might think is a little unusual given what his carrying profile is usually, but most of those carries were “second wave” attacks in the aftermath of a Stander or Loughman carry, who were our primary heavy ball carriers in this game.

Here’s a good example;

He comes onto the ball at pace and makes a good gain around the fringes in the direct aftermath of Rory Scannell’s carry off the lineout. It’s a great use off his size and pace and it sets up a chance to attack the reverse side on the next phase.

Stander and Archer’s initial decoy lines strike into the Zebre blindside cover to create obstacles for the defenders to run around while they come across the line, while also opening up space for Scannell to attack inside against the grain. Mathewson’s support line drifts right into spaces created by Archer and Stander’s line, which gives Scannell an extra few inches without a defender’s hand on him.

O’Donoghue’s powerful carry around the fringe and quick ball presentation were key points in the build-up to the linebreak.

O’Donoghue’s positioning on phase play was quite interesting, especially in the way that himself and Fineen Wycherley interchanged when it came to their positioning in the “strike zone” of the Munster attack on big openside plays. A lot of this comes down to the coaching consistency we’ve had over the last two seasons – you can see Van Graan and his team beginning to find specific players to fill certain roles.

As a coach begins to build a team, they’ll begin to look for multiple players who can fit in specific roles so the team can play more or less the same way week to week without much disruption when the first team guys aren’t there. A good example of this would be Scarlets at their peak from 2016 to 2018 and Leinster last season. You can never match up exactly like for like because players aren’t clones and you’ll always have slightly different skillsets but one area where I think Munster are looking to build towards is a level of interchangeability between loosehead lock and blindside.

The two positions are quite similar in a lot of ways – just think of the number of players who can and have played in both across a number of different clubs – but in Munster’s case, we have a lot of players who fit into that category. Wycherley, Beirne, Holland, O’Callaghan and, to a lesser extent, Gavin Coombes and Sean O’Connor in the Academy are all capable of playing blindside and in the loosehead lock position. Tadhg Beirne is the #1 guy there at the moment but his style of play in that position is a little wider and more athletic than you’d normally expect from a second row. When you’ve got a player like that in the second row – almost like another flanker – it changes the way you construct your front five with regards to division of roles.

The question for Van Graan is; do you play one way when you have Beirne’s qualities in the pack and another way without him? Or do you try to build in elements of his style with the requirements you demand from all players who could reasonably be expected to play there?

One way to get around that is to split certain roles between different players. Against Zebre, Wycherley and O’Donoghue seemed to alternate in the same kind of ball-carrying positions.

Both Wycherley and O’Donoghue touched the ball the same amount of times – only two interactions in the difference between the two – and they often could be found carrying the ball in similar “Beirne-esque” positions as Munster attacked that big openside position.

Look at Wycherley’s work on this GIF – and note he’s in approximately the same position as above;

That kind of flexibility with regards to ball-carrying roles and the expansive centre-field work that comes with it looks to be a core part of what Munster are looking to do going forward. It isn’t all about Tadhg Beirne but it’s interesting to see Munster deploy players in this kind of alternating role.

It might answer the question about whether Wycherley will be a flanker or a lock – in this system, he can be both.

But back to O’Donoghue.

Lineout

The good part about alternating blindsides and locks with similar roles is the defensive lineout boost it gives you.

Wycherley and O’Donoghue switched around with each other as Munster’s chief lineout contester during the game. Wycherley’s work on this front over the last few games has been a standout feature of his and O’Donoghue brought the same eye-catching athleticism that he was showing off pre-knee injury.

He’s got a good wingspan and has a powerful grasp in the air. Couple that with his excellent vertical speed and you’ve got a guy who can slot in that Peter O’Mahony role quite well on opposition ball. His work on attacking lineouts seems to have remained at its previous high level.

Wycherley and O’Donoghue each took four attacking balls and I was seriously impressed with both men’s speed into the air and rock-solid basics when it came to their lateral movement, their launch positioning and really attacking the jump with their lifters. They filled the Beirne/O’Mahony roles perfectly.

I was seriously impressed with the quality of Jack O’Donoghue’s mauling, on both sides of the ball.

Have a look at his work on this try;

There are two key parts in the build-up to this.

First, Wycherley and O’Shea create a “knifepoint” at the front of the maul behind O’Donoghue’s back.

This splits the counter shove into two distinct parts – an infield shove and a touchline shove – and it prevents a unified shove in one direction. It also makes swimming up the side of the maul tough to do without changing your bind visibly. Here are the two sides of the shove illustrated.

Once Munster are in this position, they have to lock up O’Donoghue at the sides. He’s in a massively pressurised situation at this point. He has to keep his balance and, through his footwork, pivot the maul to the weak side of the Zebre shove. But O’Donoghue won’t be able to do anything if his flank isn’t locked up before Zebre can collapse in on the ball.

Cloete has to lock that flank up strong.

Once Cloete has the infield side of the maul locked up, we can build the rest of the maul, knowing that if Zebre want to swing around up the side they’ll have to separate themselves from the rest of the maul and risk a penalty. They do this immediately and give Munster a penalty advantage.

From there, O’Donoghue has to take all the pressure from the drive group and use O’Shea’s bracing position to pivot the maul around the corner where Zebre have less cover. O’Donoghue’s strength, footwork and application of pressure in this situation was very impressive – he was the “pivot” in Munster’s knife maul, and it’ll be interesting to see how we use this shape going forward, especially at the weekend.

The build-up to the third try used the same principles with O’Donoghue in a similar position as the “pivot”.

See how he angles the long maul around him as Loughman drives up ahead in a narrow position? It draws the same penalty reaction from Zebre, splits their defence into two groups and gives an easier peel around the corner for Munster.

If you have a back row that can fill this role – quick into the air and with a solid, powerful pivot brace – you leave your entire tight five to drive head-on. Useful stuff.

On maul defence, O’Donoghue was right back at the form that saw him standout last season. Watch him come right through the middle of this maul from a late entry;

When he gets hands on the carrier, Zebre have to move the ball away. He didn’t have to swim up the side to do it either – he just blasted his way through a weak seam at the front of the maul while Wycherley and Kleyn pinched the infield side of the maul to “pop” him through the gap onto the carrier.

That showed the same core strength and drive that we saw last year;

O’Donoghue seems to have come back right where he left off in almost every facet. If he continues in this vein, he’ll be a vital player for Munster as we head into the business end of the season and going forward into his mid to late twenties.