Things would be so much easier if I didn’t care about this team. I’ve been told by people doing jobs adjacent to mine that, sooner or later, the team you’re covering day in day out, week in week out, season in season out become Just Another Thing You Do At Work. I must be broken then because we’re eight years in and I’m still living and dying every phase, heart still hammering, fist still pumping with every score.
I still love this game and I love this club. That won’t change.
I missed the first 60 minutes of this game live because real life, as it tends to do, stepped in the way. By the time I caught up with it live, Munster were defending a two-point lead with 15 minutes to play. In the last few years, I’ve known what to expect in heavy metal, ultra-intense games like this against quality opposition away from home. Somehow, we find an excuse to lose. We did it against Toulouse. We do it against Leinster every season. We did it against the Sharks just two short weeks ago.
The biggest thing – well, one of the biggest – things that Graham Rowntree and his coaching unit have to do in the ongoing rebuild is to remove that tendency as quickly as they can. Finding an excuse to lose is actually an easy thing to creep in. One failed rebuild, followed by another that petered out due to coaching flux, followed by another project that fell short of trophy-winning at the last, or second last hurdle a few too many seasons in a row.
Everyone thinks that they are immune to it but sooner or later, it always catches you.
This game was the perfect time to find an excuse to lose. All the ingredients were there. A bad loss to dump us out of Europe a few weeks prior, long trips up and back to South Africa in the build-up, and taking on a heavyweight pack in a stadium they haven’t lost in for 18 games over 16 months. After the Sharks game, there were some heated, testy, difficult exchanges over the following few weeks of training.
Throughout the season, I’ve heard Graham Rowntree say “that wasn’t us” in the aftermath of defeats. He has a vision of what “us” is and should be. He knows what isn’t “us”, and that those that aren’t “us” have to be purged, lest we become “them”.
After that Sharks defeat and the manner of it – who were we? Was that us? If it was, we’re finished.
This is personal for Graham Rowntree. He has skin in this game – just ask him to show you his Munster tattoo – and he knows who we’re supposed to be.
When we are who we’re supposed to be, there’s no team we can’t beat, no fortress we can’t storm, and no odds that can’t be defied.
On Saturday, I saw a glimpse of who we were always meant to be. Far from the finished article, still a work in progress but we had every reason to find an excuse to lose that game in Cape Town instead, we found a way to win.
***
When I tell you that things were testy over the last few weeks in the lead-up to this game – believe me. My wonder was this; could we translate that onfield? It feels like an age since I saw a properly angry Munster performance.
Within the first 20 seconds, I had my answer.
Snyman, O’Mahony and Daly as the kick chase berserker unit with Kendellen as the heavy jackal threat in the second wave produced an early Munster penalty right from the kickoff. The impact and venom on that first contact through the Stormers off early. Hammer the hammer.
These moments are where world-class talents like RG Snyman give you something a bit extra. Most second rows could make the contact point on this restart, but not many of them can do it at this speed, at 6’9″ and well over 120kg. I fundamentally believe that it’s almost impossible to concentrate on taking a restart like this cleanly as a defensive unit when you’ve got a man that size keeping pace with wingers over 20+ metres running right at you.
At a base level, RG Snyman brings this kind of freakish, almost extraterrestrial aura just by existing as a professional rugby player. Watching him in detail even now, at a good bit off the peak of his powers, is really something else. What a player we missed for the last two and a half seasons and, with a fair wind, that we’ll have for the run-in to this season and most of next year. When he’s playing like this, he is a certainty to go to the World Cup with the Springboks.
So what was the big change between the Sharks game and this one?
There was a few, actually. Our physicality and intensity were top-class and, importantly, top-class for most of the 80 minutes.
Our scrum, a source of momentum, go-forward and penalties against the Sharks was rock solid here in part because of an outstanding performance by our front five in general, and our front row in particular. Jeremy Loughman’s scrummaging against Frans Malherbe for 67 minutes was of the highest quality, only getting penalised once for a slip which, on this pitch, is more than forgivable.
Those were all important but, for me, the biggest improvement was our simplified lineout and, as a result, our infinitely more effective maul drive.
All throughout this season, we have been bedevilled by overly complex, easily blown lineout schemes that aim to get us clean possession away from the counter-launch but, in practice, it meant that the level of detail needed to run our lineout produced too many errors and coughed up opportunities. You know what it looks like – complex feints to the front, sliding lifters, cut-out jumpers and our hooker standing on the line playing a trumpet solo on the ball waiting for the launch.
This is the Small Ball lineout that we’ve been running for years in the absence of proper heavyweight, super-sized jumpers.
Against the Stormers, we finally – FINALLY – played Big in the lineout and we looked 100 times better. What do I mean by “playing big”? When you play big at the lineout, you don’t need to spend too much time running feints because you’ve got legitimate jumpers in all of the lineout slots. So, with that size throughout the line, you don’t need to overly complicate your schemes because… there’s no need. You can just throw to a position with set jumpers and lifters all the way through.
Let’s follow up on the penalty we looked at above. We kicked it to the 5m line and watch our scheme.
Throw it to the 6’9″ guy lifted at the front by the 6’8″ guy and build a 3-3-1 maul build right on the landing spot. With that simple launch, our drive was able to ride around the big Stormers counter-launch, not get separated – because the unit was in place on the drop and engaged before the drop – and produce a clear lane at the tryline relatively simply.
Look at this one; nothing flashy, just a throw to the middle to the 6’9″ guy. Did you spot what Kleyn did here though?
That’s a launch spot transit. It’ll be familiar because it’s what Leinster and Ireland use. In this scheme, the driving lock will transit across the jump while the “punch unit” gets ready to hit the lifting unit. The driving lock is usually the “tractor” of the pack and in this 5+1 scheme, we were even able to keep Gavin Coombes in midfield as a hitter and we still made ground. Simplicity = certainty = maul momentum and a PUNCH on the impact.
In the build-up to Barron’s second try, we did the same launch spot transit, this time with Peter O’Mahony changing the angle the power was coming through.
This time with a full 7-man lineout and Archer on the outside as the power pivot we would flow around to score our second try. Look at Snyman already positioning himself to lever the scrum around as it turned in response to the pressure from Stormers.
All throughout the game, we stuck with this formula of simplicity and we were so effective in the maul it was like watching a different team.
Simple scheme, 3-3-1 shape at the maul, punch on impact;
Is it a surprise that all four of our tries originated at the lineout maul?
It shouldn’t be. We were as good there as we have been in years, genuinely, and if we can keep that level of execution up we have the tools to hurt any team in this league – and I mean, any team.
This was the kind of fundamentally impressive performance that can change the course of a team’s trajectory, not just for this season but for seasons to come. This team now know that when the heat came on in Cape Town when everyone expected them to wilt, they stood up, fought, and won.
They should make a song about that.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| RG Snyman | ★★★★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★ |
| Malakai Fekitoa | ★★★ |
| Antoine Frisch | ★★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★ |
| Scott Buckley | ★★★★ |
| Josh Wycherley | N/A |
| Keynan Knox | N/A |
| Fineen Wycherley | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★ |
| Craig Casey | ★★★ |
| Ben Healy | ★★★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★★ |
