Munster’s developing work behind the set-piece is something that I’ll track on TRK Premium for the remainder of the season but one thing that has certainly improved beyond my expectations has been our work with the ball in hand on open-phase.
As with yesterday’s article, I’ll use the Kings’ game at the weekend to highlight some of the trends I’ve seen over the past few months and then use this article as a builder to a bigger piece coming ahead of the Champions Cup semi-final.
First things first – some thoughts on the role of the 10 in phase play.
The Importance of 10
Jonathan Sexton is, for me, the best flyhalf currently playing when it comes to tactically arranging an attacking sequence over multiple phases. Where other flyhalves excel with their physical gifts – pace, a step, etc – Sexton’s positioning, alignment and the efficiency of his execution mean that Ireland and Leinster usually plant their phases in the exact place that will cause the most amount of stress for the opposition.
The “efficiency of execution” part is especially important, in that you rarely see Sexton leeching time away from an attack or taking a shortcut on an attacking play where he plays a central role.
Look at this bit here;
To make this work, Sexton has to release this ball to Earls at exactly the right time and position to make the gap for him.
If he releases the ball a heartbeat before, the gap isn’t there and Earls gets smashed. If he waits too long to release, he gets smashed by Hill.
Look at his multiple involvements at first receiver in this sequence of phases;
Not one wasted step or “fat” line. Sexton’s every movement is pared down to the bare minimum it needs to move the pieces into play – this is what I love about his game. He plays in the area that leaves very little margin for error and even then, every pass hits the mark. The ball isn’t slightly behind the player so he has to adjust his run and lose momentum, it’s not slightly too far in front of him so he loses his running line – exactly where it needs to be. He retains his depth as he drifts from ruck point to ruck point without retreating from the gain line or playing so flat that he becomes useless as a creative outlet.
Sexton is the gold standard for all-around flyhalf play at the moment, in my opinion.
That isn’t to say that he’s the perfect player – far from it – but his ability to consistently make quality decisions with the ball and manage his own positioning while manipulating his own teammates and the opposition put him in an exclusive bracket.
I mention Sexton in the preamble to this because of his ability to stitch multiple phases together from first receiver, even when he’s not standing in that position.
You can see him standing in the second phase of this sequence behind a pod of Leavy, Stander and O’Mahony, with a heavy pod setting up the first phase. This allows Sexton to manipulate Scotland by showing them the enemies that they know. At this point in the game, Scotland will know all about Leavy and Stander’s ability with the ball in hand and have narrowed on them. Sexton is standing in between both to either use them as a screen, take a pullback from one of them or float onto the next phase if needs be. Either way, he’ll be playing into space if everyone does their job and if you watch him play live, you’ll see him barking orders at the players around him to give options when he sees a pattern developing in front of him.
The closest Munster have to this kind of tactical application and phase construction in the #10 shirt would be Tyler Bleyendaal. When it became apparent that Bleyendaal was going to struggle for fitness this season, I was more than a little concerned but Munster have compensated for his loss extremely well by spreading the first receiver duties between Keatley, Scannell and Zebo, with Hanrahan adding an intriguing extra option at fullback in the last few weeks.
Munster’s ability in open phase play is based on our opposition “knowing their enemy” in the carrying threat of the likes of Kilcoyne, Kleyn, O’Mahony (increasingly) and, of course, CJ Stander. When you have players that narrow the opposition’s defence, you can construct all kinds of plays off the back of them.
Let’s have a look at some of those plays against the Kings.
Second Layer
If you could look at one area where Munster’s use of width has improved, it would be in their work once the ball within 10m of the opposition’s try line.
Last season, Munster were a little too reliant on chained fringe carries once the ball got into this area of the field and, while it’s a low-risk way of grinding out a score, it carries a fairly high cardio cost with an ever-narrowing defence to try and hammer through. Think of it like trying to hammer through a wall that gets thicker with every blow and you have got an idea of how difficult chaining 7/8 fringe carries together in the red zone can be.
Munster have added plays that work on the preconception of the Munster fringe carry to the armoury this season.
Let’s have a look at an example of this. Here’s the picture before the ball gets used from the ruck.
There’s a distinct, multi-layered structure in place with Keatley in prime position to dictate play as the situation demands and Hanrahan adding another pass support option as he drifts back into the second layer after an involvement in the phase leading up to this.
Let’s see how these layers play out.
Not bad at all.
Grobler and Ryan act as a decoy screen for Keatley to hit his runners in the second layer and there was attackable space for Munster to work with as a result. It didn’t work in this instance for two reasons as far as I can see.
Hanrahan’s line is a little late around the corner – understandable given his involvement in the phase directly before this sequence – and that puts a slight hitch on Keatley’s pass.
That added to the slight slowdown we had on the previous ruck due to O’Callaghan going on a carry line rather than waiting to bind onto Scannell’s carry and speed up the ball.
This one ended up in a holding on penalty against Munster but the intent was good, and the phase construction had enough options that it could well have produced a significant break with a small bit of tightening up.
Hide In The Layer
I showed you a typical Schmidt/Sexton phase alignment earlier in this article and it’s worth looking at again for this segment but from a different angle.
In this alignment, you can see Sexton’s position behind the heavy pod and the previously discussed deception options this gives him.
Munster have been adding similar features to their openside alignments this season and they were particularly apparent in this game. Having three distributors in the backline – Keatley, Scannell and Hanrahan – gave Munster access to a lot of width that was screened by heavy pods all the way across the pitch.
Any one of these pods could have been a viable carrying option but Munster were able to use them to get a supply line to a pod of two forwards in the far touchline.
Here’s how it played out;
The pullback pass was key to unlocking this – the Kings will have been expecting a close in carry from Stander and the pass behind the screen unlocks the kind of space that Keatley can work with. Kilcoyne got a solid gain line win on the far touchline, the Kings heavy defence got worked across the pitch and Munster have the same kind of alignments settling in on the reverse.
This kind of pattern makes Munster a little harder to defend against and because there’s multiple potential receivers and distributors, the focal point of the attack is harder to determine.
Keatley Stitching
Ian Keatley gets a tough rap from a minority of Munster fans and, look, I won’t pretend that he’s in the same bracket as a Sexton or Barrett. His goal kicking can be a bit streaky (both in a good and bad sense) and he’s prone to a lack of consistency on his passing but when it comes to moving between phases on a dynamic sequence, I think Keatley’s really good.
In the build-up to Munster’s first try against the Kings, he showed good work on consecutive phases.
Look at Keatley’s work phase to phase here;
He drifts beyond the first ruck, gets a good flat attacking line and uses Stander as a decoy to get Hanrahan in from the second layer.
If anything, I’d have liked Hanrahan to take a little more out of his run to fix the edge defender – note Sexton from the GIF above – but this multiple layer work and phase construction using Keatley, Hanrahan and Scannell proved to be very effective against the Kings.
