Over the last few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s absolutely no beauty in mechanical perfection. Every now and then, I’ll be scrolling away and I’ll see some hyperrealistic painting of, say, an orange pop up and, yeah, it certainly does look hyperreal, for sure, but I’ll think to myself “you should have just taken a photo of it and saved your energy”.
Art, for me, is all in the rough edges of creation. I want to see the strokes, the mistakes, the style and the interpretations of the artist. Someone drawing a perfect snapshot of real life just seems like a waste of time. Don’t show me things exactly as they appear, show me what it means to you.
My feeling about rugby is the same. Bland excellence bores me. It’s like looking at an AI-generated painting. Now, I’ll freely admit that when things are chaotically bad, all you want is bland excellence, like a port in a storm, but I think the real enjoyment of rugby is when the imperfect find a way. All of my best days supporting this club and then later writing about this club come from that place of joy. Rugby art doesn’t necessarily have to mean joue-joue, rahnning rahgby either because true art doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to make you feel.
On Saturday evening, boy I was feeling it.
This was a wildly imperfect performance, don’t get me wrong. It mixed some of the outstanding attacking work that has been an ever-growing part of our work this season with moments of jankiness, (costly) indiscipline and a creaking set piece.
But they held. When it looked like the game might slip away through our fingers like trying to finish a bowl of soup with a fork, the new Bad Guys said “no”. Not today. We’re winning this. And win it they did. It wasn’t as dramatic as the last time we played Northampton in Thomond Park but for a while there, man, it was close enough.
I will make one hot take in this article and it’s this. I think, with 15 players on the field for at least 60 minutes of this game, we win this game with a bonus point. Jack O’Donoghue’s red card was the key turning point in this game but it took a while for it to sink in, a bit like a slow puncture on a tyre.
Initially, losing O’Donoghue – and rightfully so, it was a clear red card for me – seemed like an inconvenience. An irritant. Northampton seemed to get a bit of a boost from it initially in that they had a little bit more pop in the carry off the resulting lineout but we repelled that attack easily enough and added to our then 17-0 lead a few minutes later to make it 24-0. We were cruising, right?
No. Three tries to the good with 40 minutes to play sounds like prime “shoot for the BP” territory – and it is – but there were a few things that remained true regardless of the scoreboard.
- Northampton’s pack build is an incredibly bad match-up for Munster right now and that would only be exaggerated when down to 7 forwards for the duration.
- We only had small forwards to bring off the bench in the second half which meant that the set piece – scrum, lineout and maul – would only come under more pressure as the game progressed.
All Northampton would have to do to get a foothold in this game would be to start the second half well and they got a chance to do just that with a pivotal scrum decision. I say “decision” there because I’ve seen this penalty given the other way for most of the season. Is the tighthead flopping to his belly? Or is the loosehead pulling down and hinging? The answer is yes, to both questions.
From that close-range position, Northampton would pull a score back to make it 24-7. We had to play it smart from that point but we made a few errors at core points. A Frisch kick out on the full brought Northampton back into our half and, from another scrum penalty against the head, it was a two-score game.
I wrote about this in the Red Eye pre-game and, essentially, it was the same thing here. The pressure started on the loosehead side – where we had Shane Daly fitting in behind Kilcoyne – which lifted Scannell that, in turn, raised Ryan enough for Waller to power in and up.
We got caught on a kick transition a few minutes later where Carbery should probably have run the ball into touch and now it was back to a one-score game. From there, Munster were able to hold out Northampton with the rivets squeaking and the engine blowing black smoke but hold them out they did. They fought to a standstill and managed to hold out the bigger team with seven forwards and a host of youngsters dragging the win over the line kicking and screaming.
It was cathartic.
My video editing software is currently off-line – I’m upgrading to a fancy new machine and studio this week – so, to illustrate the concept of how much energy Munster expended in this game, I thought I’d bring a €10 tier stable to the Wally Ratings to give an idea of who did what at the offensive breakdown in this game.
Munster’s core method of winning this game was literally retaining the ball over long sequences of multi-phase possession to keep Northampton from building their tight power into the game. Earlier in the season, this way of playing was entirely new to us so our forwards, in particular, would struggle to retain the ball at the breakdown. Last season we were a team that played three/four phases max outside the 22 before we’d narrow up for a kick of some kind. We’re radically different this season and it’s showing in our breakdown work. This game, in particular, was one of the best breakdown performances that I’ve seen this season, even with a few misses at key points in the second half.
MUNSTER’S OFFENSIVE RUCK WORK SCORE VS NORTHAMPTON SAINTS
- A Dominant Clean is an action that decisively secures possession when the ball carrier takes contact. A Dominant Clean does not have to be the first arrival at the breakdown but it is rewarded in the context of effectiveness. We will assign this action 3 points.
- A Guard Action is where a player plays a role in helping to retain possession after we have “re-won” the ball on the floor. Sometimes this can happen on a carry/ruck point where there is no active contention by the opposition. Let’s assign this action 2 points.
- An Attendance can be anything from standing as a “kick shield” on a ruck to adding a bit of bulk to ward against a counter-ruck. I’m marking this down as being worth 1 point.
- An Ineffective Action is a blown cleanout, a lean, a breakdown penalty or an action that I couldn’t see any direct benefit for. This will be worth -2 points.
| Dominant Clean | Guard Action | Attendance | Ineffective | Ruck Work Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kilcoyne | 2 | 11 | 4 | 32 | |
| N. Scannell | 12 | 21 | 3 | 81 | |
| Salanoa | 8 | 7 | 3 | 41 | |
| Kleyn | 10 | 13 | 9 | 2 | 61 |
| Beirne | 4 | 12 | 1 | 37 | |
| O'Donoghue | 2 | 4 | 14 | ||
| O'Mahony | 8 | 10 | 1 | 45 | |
| Coombes | 7 | 12 | 1 | 46 | |
| Casey | 1 | 3 | |||
| Carbery | 1 | 2 | |||
| Daly | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 8 |
| Crowley | 6 | 3 | 24 | ||
| Frisch | 6 | 4 | 1 | 24 | |
| Nash | 2 | 3 | 1 | 10 | |
| Haley | 8 | 4 | 32 | ||
| Buckley | 0 | ||||
| J. Wycherley | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 18 |
| Ryan | 4 | 5 | 22 | ||
| Hodnett | 2 | 4 | |||
| Kendellen | 4 | 2 | 16 | ||
| Patterson | 0 | ||||
| R. Scannell | 1 | 2 | |||
| L. Coombes | 0 |
That 81 scored by Niall Scannell is the highest I have on record this season and it’s only bested by the 82 points scored by Caelan Doris against Japan in 2021. Add in near-perfect throwing in difficult conditions, along with some clever passing and heavy defensive stops and you have the best Niall Scannell performance I’ve ever seen.
But look at the other numbers! Kleyn scored 61 in 60 minutes which is around the same level as Porter and Furlong against the All Blacks in the summer when it comes to breakdown efficiency while Gavin Coombes score of 46 points while making 20 tackles, 15 carries, scoring two tries and one assist is genuinely the stuff you’d be telling your grandkids about if Paul O’Connell or David Wallace had a game even close to this in the European Cup.
This kind of output – most of it with just seven forwards – is the stuff that a team coming into a level of performance that can give teams a massive rattle, even the more fancied sides in Europe and the URC this season. Not just that, though, this shows a group being driven by the younger players in their own image.
When you consider the size differential, the early red card and the concurrent injury crisis that hasn’t gone away, we’ve just become more used to it, this was an outstanding win in the context of this or any season.
Something to be proud of, rough edges and all.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★★★★ |
| Roman Salanoa | ★★★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| Jack O’Donoghue | N/A |
| Peter O’Mahony | ★★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★★ |
| Craig Casey | ★★★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★★★ |
| Antoine Frisch | ★★★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★★ |
| Scott Buckley | DNP |
| Josh Wycherley | ★★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★★ |
| John Hodnett | ★★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★★ |
| Paddy Patterson | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
| Liam Coombes | DNP |
