Thomond Park, when combined with December nights and European rugby is a modern day gladiatorial arena.

And just like the coliseums of old, what happens there can make you – turn you into a giant. But it can break you just as easily. Either way, it’s a feeling you never forget and this Saturday evening, Chris Cloete is likely to have his first Thomond Park Experience. This is a star-making opportunity for the openside flanker.

I know, I know – I’ve been talking about Chris Cloete for an awfully long time at this point but part of me is still shocked that he’s playing for Munster at all.

 

Back in 2015, I saw a player whose physical characteristics and heavy fetcher openside style could make him an absolute superstar in the Northern Hemisphere. I just thought it would be for someone like Toulon, Racing or Sarries. Instead, contract after contract passed with him bouncing around Western Province, the Stormers, the Kings and the Pumas before eventually signing for Munster in June of this year.

Since he joined in October, Cloete has produced what I thought he would in spades but this Saturday, albeit against test window PRO14 opposition. This Saturday sees a significant step up in competition against Leicester Tigers in the Champions Cup. So what can we expect?

Ruck Dominance

Having watched back the most recent game against the Ospreys, Chris Cloete was the dominant back row forward on the pitch. As a heavy fetcher openside, Cloete allows a very specific subdivision of roles for the entire pack. With Cloete at 7, Munster can focus their back five in narrower areas of the pitch while deploying Cloete as a floating ruck threat around the “C” defender or in the wider channels.

This allows Munster to close a serious hole in our defensive pattern that teams like Glasgow and Scarlets have exploited over the past 18 months. Munster operate a blitz defence that places a premium on keeping numbers out of the ruck and in the defence line, to simplify it quite a bit.

This ensures that we stay numbers up in defence rather than committing men to the ruck to steal the ball or slow down the opposition’s possession. When you operate a system like this you essentially trade opposition quick ball for numbers in the defensive line. That’s why the tackler in Munster’s system has a responsibility to slow up the transition of the carrier to the floor to give the players around him time to reset out wide and set pillars alongside the ruck. If the tackler or tacklers do that, they essentially force the opposition to commit numbers out of the attacking line to clean the ruck and you’ll – in theory anyway – always have favourable defensive numbers.

One weakness that the blitz defence has is when teams get dominant centre ruck position which “breaks” your blitz and forces you to defend both sides or react passively. Munster are quite good at avoiding this and if you want an example, watch all four games versus Glasgow last season when the Warriors tried to play truck-it-up-the-middle rugby against Munster and failed miserably on every occasion.

Scarlets were a different story.

Their attacking game plan wasn’t based on attacking off dominant gain line – they didn’t have the ball carriers for it then and still don’t today – but what they could do is stage quick rucks across the pitch, leave players in wide areas post clean out and, when the moment was right, use their superior pass pace and handling to create overlaps on the reverse phase (or in overloaded blindside).

This was off a turnover, but the principle on their own phase play is basically the same.

Pacey ball across the field exposed our edge defence. With enough pace on the ruck and pass coupled with width, the Scarlets could essentially run around our blitz.

A player like Cloete helps prevent this because of his ability to attack the opposition’s ruck ball.

Here’s an example from the Ospreys game;

He takes three seconds off the Osprey’s ruck ball, turning their break into a slow phase and preventing the likes of Davies from narrowing our midfield, spreading the ball wide and exposing Jean Kleyn in the 13 channel to being attacked in space by outside backs.

With everything slowed down, Munster can set an offside line, identify targets and press the blitz with an advantage.

Here’s another example of his ability to slow down rucks in an area that’s been a staging post for an awful lot of the line breaks Munster have conceded in the last 18 months.

He doesn’t get a steal on this next example but it’s almost as good as one – he keeps four Ospreys out of the game.

That’s the guy on the floor who he’s preventing from rolling out and three guys trying to clear him out.

Cloete’s ability over the ball gives Munster a viable defensive jackal, a guy who can slow down opposition ruck ball and, crucially, a guy with a specific skill set and body type that will demand an awful lot of game plan bandwidth from the opposition coaches.

Openside

He’s not just a threat on opposition ruck ball. That’s just one part of an openside’s job. He’s just as effective on Munster’s ball.

Again – it’s his ultra-low body position that makes him such an effective operator here. This is largely down to his unique proportions coupled with excellent technique and outstanding core strength. He just adds value to most every ruck he interacts with. Look at this;

He turns relatively quick ruck ball into a lightning-quick ruck ball by giving Hart that extra bit of separation to make the kick.

It’s a little thing, but it adds real value to the ruck.

On set piece and turnover, Cloete runs hard, straight lines to the breakdown to secure that first phase ruck ball – any elite openside’s bread and butter.

His pace over the ground here allows him to be a support option if necessary, and with a super quick change of direction, a first arrival ruck securer.

It’s that pace – something you wouldn’t think he has but has in spades – that allows him to perform multiple duties up the middle of the pitch. In this GIF, he’s running a support line, then a cleaning line before acting as the halfback.

It’s that pace and power that make him such a difficult player to read in open play. Look at this example here as a decoy runner;

His line was a little tight to Scannell and he half over-ran Scannell on this phase but he turns it into a positive by introducing himself to Davies off the ball. Not nice boy stuff by any means, but it’s what you’d want your openside to be doing to an opposition fly-half all day long.

Challenge

This weekend will be a massive challenge for Cloete, should he be selected. If he scales up his performance to match the occasion, this will be a breakout moment for him on one of the biggest stages in rugby – Thomond Park on a dark December Saturday night in the European Cup.

The things I’ve shown you here are things Cloete does in every game – his pace, power over the ball and elite openside instincts are inherent to his game. He can’t play any other way.

What will define his performance is if he can time his heavy steals at the breakdown – something that has eluded him to date with Ian Davies, Lloyd Linton and Ben Whitehouse on the whistle. Jerome Garces will referee this Saturday and, for my money, is the best referee in the game right now. If Cloete can get his decision making correct, he can steal ball all day.

Let’s hope so.