If there’s been one thing that has impressed me during Johann Van Graan’s first few weeks in charge of Munster Rugby, it’s for the bravery in implementing specific plans for each game, based on what he and the Munster coaching group have seen from the opposition.
That plan doesn’t always work out, for a few reasons, but the urge to go out and specifically target the opposition is the sign of a confident head coach. Against Leinster, Munster planned to target Leinster’s back three under the high ball but were stymied by the changeable wind conditions and some poor on-field execution. Against Ulster, they targeted Ulster’s set-piece with ruthless brutality in the first 40 minutes before a tide of injuries, indiscipline and poor game management cost the win.
In the U-Arena, Munster calculated that a quick 4G pitch and a wider passing aspect than usual could be used to attack Racing’s cardio and defensive alignment.
Let’s have a look at how that played out.
Geometry
The last thing that 20+ stone guys want to do is run side to side without the ball. These lads want to run in straight lines, ideally with the ball in hand and anytime you can get them moving without the ball, you burn their gas tank. Not only does this make space for you to attack, it makes them incrementally less effective on their own ball.
Visualise it like a health meter in a video game;
Anytime you get a big pack shuttling between rucks, moving in defensive patterns, trying to get onside from kicks, you burn their cardio and bring that health meter down.
Most of Munster’s work with the ball on Sunday was targeting Racing’s cardio while preserving our own. We were looking to make line breaks and score tries, of course, but our attack was run in such a way that even if we didn’t get the rewards immediately, our patterns would pay off eventually. The way to attack this massive Racing pack was not to run slow one out carries from the base of the ruck.
Have a look at this high tempo grind pattern inside the first five minutes;
The premium here is on quick ball, wide passing lanes and, ultimately, dragging Racing across the pitch off the quick tap and go.
Munster gave away a penalty at the last ruck here but everything up to that was to plan – quick ball, good tempo, wide passing patterns and this;
Look at Maka, Nakawara, Chat, Tameifuna and Ben Arous shuttling across the middle of the pitch without the ball. This is the secondary objective if we can’t get a line break – make them sweat.
The last thing you want to do against a side this big is challenging them one on one in tight spaces – your one out and fringe carries – because they’ll gobble those up all day, slow you up and take a few bites out of your health meter while they’re at it.
Tempo, pace and – almost most importantly – width were the order of the day.
Have a look at this sequence.
First, let’s look at the picture Conor Murray was presented with at the base of the ruck.
It’s a fairly classic Big Open picture with four Munster pass options;
The orange dots are your heavy carry options and the blue dot starting with Keatley (behind a pod of three Munster forwards) gives Munster a viable wide-chain passing option (Keatley to Scannell to Farrell).
Murray doesn’t go for the blue option this time but the heavy carry option he takes is the most expansive one available to him.
Stander is the most conservative (or one out) option, Cloete is a viable second channel carrier and Kilcoyne is the highest risk option in the third channel. Why is this high risk? For the pass to reach Kilcoyne quickly it has to be fast – the faster the pass, the more likely a forward will drop it.
Let’s see how it plays out.
It’s the third channel option to Kilcoyne, who makes a strong carry into Chat. Munster don’t get the quick ball they wanted here – much to Murray’s frustration, but with this small bit of width they’ve isolated Maka, Ben Arous and Tameifuna on the openside of this ruck.
If Munster can take out Tameifuna/Ben Arous on the next carry, Munster are almost guaranteed to beat Racing’s defensive fold.
That’s exactly where Munster attack and they do a great job of (a) dragging Racing across the pitch, (b) targeting Racing’s slow runners to create gaps on the next phase and (c) advancing up the pitch.
A phase later and Tameifuna/Ben Arous are still only getting off the deck. On defensive sets – that’s a killer.
Munster kicked at the end of this sequence when – nit picking – I’d have liked to see one of Scannell or Keatley drift back inside to attack the space left by Tameifuna and Ben Arous but this sequence showed that we had a plan to attack them at pace.
Let’s look at the entire sequence again;
Pace, width, tempo. With quicker ball off the first carry and maybe a call back infield on the last one, you might have had a different outcome here but it’s good stuff all the same.
Munster would continually choose wider attacking options to work Racing in this game.
Look at the constant use of mid-range passes to increase the spacing of the rucks;
Every ruck has to be attended by the opposition as it resets the offside line. The further apart these rucks are, the more your heavy defenders have to work in the middle of the pitch.
Munster varied up their work too – look at Kilcoyne passing out the back of a third channel pass to put Keatley away here.
There’s no line break here, but look at the work rate dropping off on Racing’s forwards as they shuttle across the pitch;
Nakawara, Maka, Tameifuna and Ben Arous began to drop off as the half wore on and gaps like the above and below began to appear.
Slightly quicker ball on this occasion would have given Munster a chance to attack this specific gap, but it wasn’t to be.
These kinds of attacking patterns naturally target big men in the middle of the field. If you’re a side like Racing, you have to stack those heavy guys in the middle. You can’t have any of Nakawara, Tameifuna, Ben Arous or Maka defending space in the wide channels – they’d get scorched by the likes of Conway/Earls/Zebo – so this pattern made them work from ruck to ruck to stay in the middle of the pitch before isolating them on one side to be picked off.
Munster did this quite well and could have done with hanging onto the ball a little better in the second half. We had 35% in the second half and still managed two tries. If we’d controlled the ball a little better tactically, there were more tries there.
The Moyross Express
I mentioned earlier about how your carrying game has two effects – what it does now and what it does later. That was most evident for Keith Earls try.
Look at the build-up;
After some good width off the touchline ruck, Farrell gets on the ball and targets the big men in the middle of the field before Munster head back towards the touchline.
This isolates the big men in the middle of the pitch to set up for the next ruck.
Now that obviously wasn’t how it worked out – Zebo’s pass came out of his hands late and that spilt it back beyond the attacking line but that’s where the work from earlier in the game paid off.
After Earls beats Machenaud, look at the four lads I highlighted above.
Look at that space!
I’ll run this through;
If Tameifuna doesn’t slap this down, Munster are away off down the pitch with huge numbers over. He was probably going to cop a yellow card had Peter O’Mahony not given Conor Murray the shout that Racing were still out of position.
Let’s run it on;
The line break is sucking Racing onto one side of the pitch and leaving too many heavy forwards isolated on the openside.
Once Munster set this alignment in place with a same-side carry, the target is on;
Nakawara and Maka have been trapped on the outside edge with massive Munster support numbers in front of them. If Munster can get the ball to Earls – their best broken-field runner – then the potential is there to attack these two heavy forwards in space.
Let’s run it through;
What a try.
And good game planning. The only thing that undid it was some inaccuracies with the ball at times and not hanging onto the ball a little more while Racing were gassing.
