Munster’s first game of the season was always going to be really interesting when it came to the offensive breakdown. Would we continue the good patterns from last season? Or start off with the bad ones again?
You’d think it’d be the good patterns but who knows? It could just as easily be the same rusty start as players get back into the pattern of games, just like it did in February and March after long layoffs.
Nothing about it was for certain.
Last season, I felt that Munster’s game was at its best when we were able to hammer teams with long on-ball sequences which led to a lot of rucks and, as a result, high ORW scores.
Ireland’s counter-transition style has produced an average Collective Offensive Ruck Work (CORW) score of 402 points per game but that average is pulled up because of two wildly aberrant games against France in the Six Nations and New Zealand in the World Cup quarter-final. If we remove those two games, Ireland’s CORW score falls to 357 points per game on average which, for me, properly reflects the hyper-efficient style required by counter-transition.
Munster, on the other hand, ran at an average of 488 CORW points, even including aberrant games that fall well below that average. This is the main sign of an On Ball team – a team that kicks less frequently and looks to pressure the opposition with the ball in hand across multi-phase sequences. My point is, that your style shows up in the ORW scoring for individuals and for the team as a collective.
So let’s have a look at the weekend;
Munster’s OFFENSIVE RUCK WORK SCORE VS SHARKS
- 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| J.Wycherley | 1 | 17 | 3 | 1 | 38 |
| Barron | 2 | 17 | 1 | 41 | |
| Archer | 3 | 14 | 1 | 35 | |
| Edogbo | 5 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 30 |
| F. Wycherley | 5 | 15 | 4 | 49 | |
| O'Donoghue | 16 | 1 | 1 | 31 | |
| Kendellen | 4 | 17 | 1 | 47 | |
| Coombes | 4 | 15 | 1 | 43 | |
| Coughlan | 0 | ||||
| Carbery | 2 | 4 | |||
| McCarthy | 2 | 9 | 24 | ||
| Scannell | 5 | 10 | |||
| Frisch | 1 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 26 |
| Conway | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Daly | 1 | 4 | 1 | 9 | |
| Buckley | 2 | 1 | 2 | ||
| K.Ryan | 2 | 4 | |||
| J. Ryan | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | |
| Ahern | 2 | 4 | |||
| Gleeson | 2 | 4 | |||
| Cronin | 0 | ||||
| Nankivell | 1 | 2 | 7 | ||
| Gibbons | 0 |
Top Five ORW
- Fineen Wycherley – 49 points
- Alex Kendellen – 47 points
- Gavin Coombes – 43 points
- Diarmuid Barron – 41 points
- Josh Wycherley – 38 points
The first thing you’ll notice about Munster’s numbers here is that the distribution of high ORW scores is quite high compared to what we’re used to from Ireland in the last few weeks at the World Cup. This reflects the style that Munster plays compared to Ireland i.e. it’s quite different and the breakdown usage shows you how different.
Firstly we don’t see a massive deviation between the forward groups, like we do for Ireland. This is genuinely down to Munster using a 3-3 central shape compared to the 3-2 central shape that Ireland uses. Munster’s shape will naturally mean more collisions, more rucks and more ORW scoring.
Munster’s intent in this game was to “stick in” the rucks to prevent Sharks from catching us on the counter-ruck, as they did to devastating effect in the European Cup Round of 16 last season and you can really see that here – we committed a lot of bodies and played narrow at times to make sure we had the numbers.
Fineen Wycherley’s numbers are really impressive, mainly because of the variety of his entries. Kendellen reminded me a lot of Josh Van Der Flier when it came to how he racked up guard actions in that floating ruck support role in the middle of the field while Gavin Coombes played, essentially, like Tadhg Beirne does when he wears the #4 jersey for Ireland. Coombes’ evolution into that half-lock power forward role type – even leaning more towards the half-lock style of that hybrid role build – allows Munster to use a guy like Edogbo as a power carrier and play a small forward/combo-flanker in the back five without seemingly losing any punch, physically.
Edogbo’s work was really good too, especially when you consider he was only on the pitch for 55 minutes – again, it’s very very encouraging from him.
Our rolling CORW average across the quarters followed last season’s trends pretty closely.
Now, that is with the proviso that we had a start where we underperformed our CORW on the scoreboard, a second quarter where we overperformed on the scoreboard and a poor third quarter that saw all of our good ORW accumulated in the first 10 minutes after half-time.
We finished relatively strongly after a scrappy 10 minutes bridging the third and fourth quarters.
