It would take a very unusual set of circumstances for anyone else other than the scrumhalf to have the most amount of interactions with the ball in any given game.

So much of the game flows from the hands of the scrumhalf yet it’s difficult to assess their game at a glance because only the very best or worst of their game gets noticed. Score a try or make a big support play running ahead of the play? Bang, good game. Fumble the ball a few times at the ruck or fling a ball behind a guy’s right ear? Woops, bad game.

I think in reality, in a game where a player might have 90 interactions with the ball in an offensive capacity, judging their game on one really good or really poor moment is (a) unfair and (b) likely to lead to bad judgements.

For example, if you were to judge Nick McCarthy’s game against Edinburgh on this moment, you’d think he had a stinker.

Eighteen seconds into the game and your second pass dips into the shoelaces of the flyhalf standing on the try line who also happens to be making his pro-debut? Hard yikes.

When you look at the pass itself, you can see what the issue was;

For me, I think McCarthy’s right hand slips off the side of the ball as he’s about to power through it and, as a result, it loses height immediately and the spin takes it down even further. Look, it happens. I’d rather focus on the rest of his game as, with Mathewson’s departure, McCarthy would appear to be the current guy in line behind Murray.

So how did he play on Friday? Pretty good. Not perfect by any means, but some decent fundamentals in my opinion.

I think kicking is an area of weakness for him. It’s the one area of the game on Friday where he seemed to consistently fall below what I’d class as “must-haves” on any good kick. Here’s one example of a poor kick, in my opinion.

Why do I think this is a poor kick?

It’s too far away from the chase, it drifts infield (which helps their transition attack) and it doesn’t freeze the receiver.

Any kick that starts in the 15m tramline will stay there or, ideally, land near to the 5m tramline to exert the ultimate pressure on the receiver. We want the kick to be in an accessible range of our chasers – this is directly related to how much “ball-in-air” time it gets – and it should draw the receiver out of his position and stick him under the ball.

Instead, the ball drifted infield and brought Van Der Merwe onto the ball with space and an angle to work with, which we don’t want. I’d class most of his kicks as pretty average (one had a great outcome but wasn’t necessarily a great kick in and of itself) and for large parts of the first half – in combination with some average aerial contesting – his kicks ended up being a source of territory and possession for Edinburgh.

Ruck to ruck, I thought he was pretty good – as you’d expect for a guy who’s got top-level Heineken Cup experience with Leinster.

The key to any scrumhalf’s game when they play in high tempo, fast and furious offence is adding value to every breakdown possession, be it breaking, arcing or passing.

From a passing perspective, we need regular high pace delivery beyond the second defender in the line, which is context-specific but should sync up well enough with what we can regularly expect ruck to ruck.

Ultimately, we’re looking to compress as many defenders as possible with our actions off every single ruck and the work of the scrumhalf is vital in this, as is communication.

When players see defenders turning in, that’s when it’s time to go out. When defenders turn out, that’s when it’s time to go in.

If you get the spacing right, you can cut out a lot of defenders from the defensive line and give yourself a look at isolating some defenders or getting some turn-ins/turn-outs.

Here’s a good example;

Goggin is lurking on the inside hip of Marshall and is probably a little unlucky that he had to transfer the ball from his left shoulder across his body. That extra half a second lets the Edinburgh blitz into the line and Goggin decides against passing the ball out. We got the reaction we were looking for – Edinburgh getting isolated at the edge and turning in – and we were a half a second of space away from getting the spacing we wanted.

Here’s a better example of a pass going right to the limit of the third defender and the extra space it creates.

So close! Wycherley took his eyes off the ball for a split second before he had possession secured but when you look at the buildup, the pass from McCarthy was exactly what it needed to be to give Marshall the space to make the play.

Shoulders in, make the play out. A lot of Munster’s attacking work this season is based around producing these options regularly, and at pace, so

In that regard, the reliability of McCarthy’s pass was pretty good when it came to range, accuracy and tempo.

He’s also quite good at arcing from the base of the ruck. This is a good way to vary your work in constricting the opposition by attacking the second defender in the line before breaking yourself or passing.

Here are a few examples of McCarthy’s arcing breaks from the base.

He arcs back and then across to try and draw in a pillar defender and isolate that second defender in space.

To pick out one of the examples, you can see Gilchrist beginning to sit down on his line here.

And, once we see the third defender start to angle his shoulders in because of O’Shea’s option line, you know what happens next.

Healy’s pass in this instance wasn’t good enough but McCarthy’s work with the ball in hand created an opportunity.

Nick McCarthy still has a bit to go but there’s no reason why he can’t step in this weekend and bring impact off the bench. Long term, I think he’ll have his work cut out for him when it comes to handling the rise of Craig Casey – especially when it comes to tempo and accuracy of pass mixed with his agility around the breakdown – but if he can build on what we saw against Edinburgh, he’ll be doing OK.