This game is… spooky.
Those are the stakes, you see. Winning is expected, demanded, even, because the alternative is so distressing. It’s been that kind of season. To get a feel for this mad scramble for European Cup qualification, you’ve got to go back to the dog days of 2015/16. Munster had two super tense home games – one in Cork, one in Limerick – to save the season and finish 6th. It’s more or less the same ten years later. We did the business we had to do last week against Ulster in an almost comfortable manner, but results elsewhere didn’t go our way.
Scarlets’ win in Johannesburg, Edinburgh’s win in Galway, and our opponents’ on Friday night, Benetton, winning against a free-falling Glasgow side, meant it would have to come down to this.
Nothing about Munster’s metrics have changed; we need to win this game. Win, and we qualify for the playoffs and next season’s European Cup. Lose? Well, it’s not an instant killshot, but it means other teams in this last round would have to do us a favour.
So it’s easy, in a way.
Just win.
Benetton are good. Very good. I won’t say they’re among the elite in this league, nor are we at the moment, but they’re punchy, have a very solid system and have landed some serious wins this season when they’ve been fully loaded. They are fairly close to fully loaded here, barring injuries to Matt Gallagher, Edoardo Iachizzi, Alessandro Izekor, Onisi Ratave, Andy Uren, and Giosuè Zilocchi, all of whom might have started here.
The stakes of this game might convince you that Benetton are better than what they are, however. As good as they are, they aren’t the Bulls, Leinster, or UBB level opponents. If we play to our potential, or even close to it, we’ll win and win comfortably. But that’s the key question; can we overcome our crippling inconsistency to do the business here?
I can’t say for certain that we will. That’s the nature of inconsistency, I suppose. I’ll put it like this: the performance we put in against Ulster, minus most of the egregious unforced errors from overplaying inside our 10m line, and we’ll win.
See? Easy.
Munster Rugby: 15. Thaakir Abrahams; 14. Calvin Nash, 13. Tom Farrell, 12. Alex Nankivell, 11. Diarmuid Kilgallen; 10. Jack Crowley, 9. Craig Casey; 1. Michael Milne, 2. Niall Scannell, 3. Stephen Archer; 4. Jean Kleyn, 5. Tadhg Beirne (c); 6. Peter O’Mahony, 7. John Hodnett, 8. Gavin Coombes.
Replacements: 16. Lee Barron, 17. Josh Wycherley, 18. John Ryan, 19. Fineen Wycherley, 20. Tom Ahern, 21. Conor Murray, 22. Seán O’Brien, 23. Alex Kendellen.
Benetton: 15. Rhyno Smith; 14. Ignacio Mendy, 13. Tommaso Menoncello, 12. Ignacio Brex, 11. Paolo Odogwu; 10. Jacob Umaga, 9. Alessandro Garbisi; 1. Thomas Gallo, 2. Siua Maile, 3. Simone Ferrari; 4. Scott Scrafton, 5. Federico Ruzza; 6. Riccardo Favretto, 7. Manuel Zuliani, 8. Lorenzo Cannone
Replacements: 16. Bautista Bernasconi, 17. Mirco Spagnolo, 18. Tiziano Pasquali, 19. Niccolò Cannone, 20. Sebastian Negri, 21. Nicolò Casilio, 22. Tomas Albornoz, 23. Malakai Fekitoa.
On the face of it, Benetton have many of the pack qualities that we have struggled with this season. They are fourth in the URC for opposition lineouts won and have a scrum that generates penalties at a rate just below that of the Bulls and Edinburgh.
The scrum will decide how difficult this game will be for Munster, and by that I mean scrum penalties and penalties in general.
In every game since the turn of the calendar year bar one, Benetton have won or almost won in games where the opposition have conceded 12+ penalties. That one exception is last time out against the Glasgow Warriors, but even then, the flow of the game was mostly decided by Benetton’s near-total dominance in the scrum.
In a way, that describes Benetton’s preferred sequencing; they will mostly kick to exit, mostly in the short or mid-range and almost always contestably. If that produces a lot of scrums, they are completely fine with that. Against Glasgow, Benetton’s tighthead Simone Ferrari blew up the Warriors’ loosehead side for more of the game.
We’ve seen this happen before in Musgrave Park. I’m sure you remember that one. A completely dominant Edinburgh scrum dogwalked Munster for most of that game, killing any momentum we had on multiple occasions. Benetton can and will do the same if we don’t paint a dominant picture early on. Benetton are good at launching off the scrum too, and they’ve got all the pace and power in the outside backline that you could want to execute, especially on penalty advantage.
We like to play from deep, and I don’t expect that to change here. Benetton are a little vulnerable to long-range plays up the middle of the field, actually, but we have to treat their scrum like it’s the Vodacom Bulls; any mistakes handling the ball can and will lead to Benetton penalties.
Weirdly, though, Glasgow should have been a lot closer to Bennetton, despite the dominance of the scoreline and Glasgow’s injury crisis before and during the game. Despite getting bombed out of it in the scrum, Glasgow still managed seven entries to the Benetton 22 and only scored one late try off a quick tap penalty in the 63rd minute.
This season, Benetton have a defensive record inside the 22 that is as leaky as ours, all while struggling to convert at the other end. Glasgow had multiple close-range opportunities that they lost to knock-ons, offensive penalties, and poor decision-making to leave Benetton off the hook over and over again.
If we get into their 22, we will score.
On the other end, Benetton have the third lowest conversion rate in the 22 in the URC, make the second fewest metres ball in hand of any team and don’t beat defenders at any serious rate. What does this tell me? That we can deny them 22 entries with our defensive phase play, and if we make the scrum a non-factor, they have no reliable way to break us down away from home bar this very typical Benetton strike play from deep using Rhyno Smyth as a late arriving offload target.
We tend to tackle quite high and not allow offloading, so I really believe that if we take the scrum out of the game, Benetton will spend most of the game on the back foot and concede the kind of tries they have done with great regularity this season.
Nerves are what they are, but so is the game; nail the scrum, and we nail this game.
