The Omicron Variant of COVID was named and declared a variant of concern by the World Health Organisation on the 26th of November 2021 after being sequenced by South African researchers. Things moved very quickly from there, as they tend to in the modern age.

The UK government shut down non-essential travel from South Africa and, in an instant, all the European teams based there knew that if they didn’t leave by the time the window for quarantine-free travel closed, that they would likely be in trouble when it came to preparing for the Champions Cup. Little did they know how much trouble they would actually end up having to endure.

What came next can only be described as pure chaos. Chaos theory, even. One event crashed into the next which crashed into the next. The URC postponed games and the European teams – Zebre, Scarlets, Cardiff and Munster – moved quickly to get home. Munster went from Praetoria, where they were based, back to Cape Town to facilitate a flight home. They weren’t the only ones, as thousands of people tried to make the jump back to Europe as the clock ticked on.

Uncertainty was everywhere. Would they even be allowed to fly back home even if they could get on a flight? That was an active question for a while. Munster waited in the Cape Town airport for hours on the results of PCR tests and, when one failed, it meant everyone would have to go back into isolation in a hotel. And from there, everything started to spiral. More tests were detected, more flights were missed and it became increasingly likely that Munster’s start to the European campaign would be disrupted.

As the days passed, it became clear just how disrupted it would get. As the realisation dawned that a large bulk of Munster’s squad would either be stuck in South Africa recovering from positive tests, stuck running 5k stretches in hotel room length increments or working out at home, the stories started to whirl around.

Would Munster get in short term loan players? Would they be allowed to do that? Could they do that? I saw teamsheets with guys like Scott Penny shoehorned in, Tom Clarkson, guys from down the chart with Connacht… it was like a Munster Barbarians XV with the guys who were waiting for an injury at their own provinces or AN Other.

We didn’t go down that route.

Fairly early on it became clear that Munster were going to do this with the academy, our NTS/PTS guys and the internationals and other senior pros that didn’t make it to South Africa.

A walkover just wasn’t going to happen, not if anyone at the HPC or dotted around Ireland and South Africa could help it. I think it was the right decision. Transplanting some short term lads in who couldn’t get a game at home would feel just… wrong. I get medical jokers – they make sense and are necessary – but this is an us thing. I’m glad we backed our squad and the young talent around our province rather than picking up lads kicking their heels this weekend and throwing them in red shirts when they’d rather be wearing Ulster white, Leinster blue or Connacht green.

This is going to be Munster doing it the hard way, come hell or high water.

I think I prefer it that way. There’s a purity to it.

Munster against the odds, Munster against the world.

Just the way it should be.

♛ ♛ ♛

European weeks are something different for Munster, we know that, but even by the standards of this great club, the build-up to this weekend’s opening game has been special. It’s something I haven’t seen since the dawn of the 2000s.

Munster are a side with a proud history of performance in this tournament. We consistently draw big crowds and attention fully disproportionate to the fact that we haven’t won a European Cup since 2008, thirteen full rotations of Earth around the sun ago.

We are defined by this tournament. Always have been and, perhaps, always will be. We often define this tournament. That’s the power of narrative. Munster’s rise from the late 90s to the near misses of the early 2000s – would we ever win? – and the dominance of the middle spell of that decade played a large part in cementing the Heineken Cup as something worth winning. Because it was our holy grail, it became the holy grail.

It was as good a sporting story as there was in the game to that point.

Being defined by Europe makes success at this club quite difficult. We haven’t been winning domestic titles but, even if we had just been winning them and them alone, I feel like it wouldn’t truly be enough. The Holy Grail is the Holy Grail. That which is not, is not. When people talk about Munster “being in transition” it’s not with a view to transitioning to a side that can win domestic titles as an end in and of themselves, it’s about building to winning in Europe. About getting back to the pinnacle.

Losing to the eventual winners, as we have often done in the last few years, isn’t good enough. It can never be good enough.

So, with the unique circumstances of these last two weeks, does that give us a free pass this year, where that pressure comes off? No – not for me. Teams who want to be at the pinnacle don’t take years off, even in circumstances like this.

When I wrote earlier about this week feeling like the early 2000s, it’s because that pressure is still there but the team has changed radically. A Munster team is travelling to England to take on Wasps with a bunch of young, talented players thrust into the limelight with the hopes of a province on their backs and the odds stacked against them. What could be more early 2000s than that?

We would never see a teamsheet like this usually because this is a tournament where your senior players are built to peak for these middle of the season block games because coaches futures and team perceptions are built around these games. That responsibility is usually handed out to seasoned guys because of the pressure, the physical toll and the narrow margins of European competition.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. 

The pressure can be crippling – for players and coaches – because the margins are so impossibly tight. When you select young players en-masse, you accept that there are risks that come with it. Munster walk into this game on Sunday with full acceptance of the same risk because there is no other choice. Where there is potential, even great potential, there is uncertainty. Sometimes I feel that the demand to “throw the young lads in” and damning the coach who doesn’t is a vaguely delusional one because it says to the coach that they need to forget about results today – and their job, essentially – with the idea that the guy who comes after them will reap the benefit of their sacrifice. Look at how Matt O’Connor, the guy who blooded Tadhg Furlong, Jack Conan, Josh Van Der Flier and others at Leinster, is perceived compared to Leo Cullen for an example of that. O’Connor is often thought to have “ignored the young lads” at Leinster when, in reality, he gave debuts to a lot of the team that eventually won in Europe in 2018.

Munster want to contest in this tournament every season because they know that to jack in for one season “to develop” is as risky as it comes. We want to bring guys through, sure, but we also want the struggle for a jersey to be a real one. If you want to wear a starting jersey more often than not, take it from the incumbent. That isn’t as impossible as some would have you believe. Gavin Coombes did it inside one season. When you can prove your fitness, actually perform and get out of the slipstream of a central contract incumbent, the jersey is yours – until someone else takes it.

To best meet that aim, that means strong, category one selections, especially in this four-game pool structure where there are no margins for learning on the job – usually anyway.

In truth, we’ve been gatekeepers over the last few seasons – the team who the eventual winners usually have to beat on the way to lifting the big one – so the idea of throwing everything out and resetting is a tempting one for some. Give up the now, whatever it is, for a golden future. Many teams have done that over the years but we only ever think of the small few who it works out for. Even those who thought they had a sure thing aren’t guaranteed to evolve into a winning side. In truth, most winning sides evolve like a snake shedding its skin. Grow until the shedding of that which is no longer useful becomes inevitable. Rugby depth charts usually work in the same way.

That said, I don’t think we’re far away from getting a point where we become legitimate contenders.

I think a lot of the excitement of this team selection comes from the idea that we know the “usual” team has a ceiling just below winning trophies so a team that includes a rake of new names is particularly exciting because they could end up being anything. I’ve heard this weekend and next weekend being described as a shot to nothing as a result of this selection. It’s hard to know what to think of that.

Does this covid issue give us a free pass, so to speak? Is it OK to think that this year doesn’t count because of the last two weeks? Not having it. That’s a small-time mentality.

I don’t write that to heap pressure on the twelve young men set to make their senior debut for Munster this weekend – I write it to free them from it. If they were reading this, and they’re not, but if they were I’d tell them that they don’t need to go out there and play like prime Paul O’Connell or Ronan O’Gara or CJ Stander or Keith Earls. They just have to be themselves, but the best version of themselves. This is a chance to go out and live the dream, make your debut in Europe alongside guys like Peter O’Mahony, Conor Murray, Damian De Allende and Keith Earls. No one would blame any of these lads if we lost but what if we won? What if they played the game of their lives, won and etched their names into the great halls of Munster Rugby forever? The lads who went from the AIL to a win on the road in the European Cup – there’s a familiar ring to that.

Maybe it’s impossible for a team with fourteen players making their European debut to win but we’re the Brave and the Faithful, so don’t talk about “impossible” around these parts.

♛ ♛ ♛

We aren’t the only team in this fixture who have issues with players out missing for one reason or another. It’s like both sides have been undertaking a challenge to see how far down their depth chart they can go before pulling lads out of secondary school. While we have been dealing with the COVID and quarantine challenge, Wasps have been dealing with the injury list from hell for the last few months.

As of Friday, Wasps expect to be without Charlie Atkinson, Ali Crossdale, Tom Cruse, Kieran Curran, Malakai Fekitoa, Vaea Fifita, James Gaskell, Ben Harris, Joe Launchbury, Rob Miller, Ryan Mills, Ben Morris, Paolo Odogwu, Dan Robson, Will Simonds, Sam Spink, Theo Vukasinovic and Jack Willis for this game.

That puts this challenge solidly in that tantalizing space where I can see a heroic Munster win just as easily as an “ah well, they did their best” comprehensive defeat. I know what logic tells me should happen but Munster have made their name in roughing logic up, emptying his pockets and sending him limping home.

These are the players selected to represent the red jersey this weekend;

Wasps Rugby: 15. Marcus Watson, 14. Zach Kibirige, 13. Michael Le Bourgeois, 12. Jimmy Gopperth, 11. Josh Bassett; 10. Jacob Umaga, 9. Sam Wolstenholme; 1. Tom West, 2. Dan Frost, 3. Biyi Alo, 4. Sebastian de Chaves, 5. Elliott Stooke, 6. Alfie Barbeary, 7. Brad Shields (c), 8. Tom Willis

Replacements: 16. Gabriel Oghre, 17. Robin Hislop, 18. Jeffery Toomaga-Allen, 19. Tim Cardall, 20. Nizaam Carr, 21. Thomas Young, 22. Will Porter, 23. Francois Hougaard

It is possible for Munster to win this game.

Not a ringing endorsement, I know, but make no mistake this is an incredibly difficult challenge, even accepting Wasps poor form in the Premiership coming into this game and their well-established injury woes.

Munster will find it difficult to play with much in the way of flow or cohesion here – something I examined in this article – because the playing minutes in this group are incredibly low. Five of our starting pack are making their European debuts and four of that five are making their senior debuts. Our bench has 7 Munster caps between them and all of them belong to Roman Salanoa, who’s just back from injury.

This is not a recipe for a win in a lower level URC game, let alone the European Cup but still – there’s hope.

There are two non-negotiables for us, especially if we’re playing a form of kick pressure; we have to have parity in the scrum and we have to secure most of our own lineout possession. Defensively, I think we won’t actually do too badly. We have a hugely experienced, high-quality midfield and some of the best defensive wingers anywhere in Europe to hem in Wasps when they go to width.

Wasps play with a double playmaker system that channels most of their creative touches through Umaga and Gopperth. They have quite a fluid attacking structure but I’ve often seen them using a central pod of three off the first receiver for their offensive schemes. I wouldn’t say that Wasps are nailed down a specific forward shape, as much as they are using variations on “flat” and “deep” attacking structures arrayed off their double playmakers.

Umaga and Gopperth are the engine of Wasps phase play. If you look beyond who’s in a pod and look at their tendencies, you’ll see Umaga usually operating as the narrow handler (with scope to unhinge into the wider channels) who uses his agility and pace to slip through gaps when opposing forwards overcommit on a screen. Gopperth is usually laid out as the deeper playmaker, where his durability in contact, accuracy off either side and more developed kicking game is better suited.

Umaga and Gopperth orbit each other throughout the game. I’ve highlighted how often they aligned with each other on this scoring sequence. Forget about pods, look at the tendencies phase for phase.

The effectiveness of this style rests in how highly you rate Jimmy Gopperth’s ability to hurt you with the ball in hand once Wasps go into the screen. The temptation would be to blitz up on Gopperth – he is 38 years of age, after all – but that’s a mistake. The way to hurt Wasps is to wait. They’ll want to chop off your inside cover so you’ll worry about your inside shoulder but that’s what Gopperth wants. The key is to keep jockeying outside to cut off Wasps deeper-lying runners and back your inside cover to stop Gopperth. Without that bite, Gopperth’s options are reduced severely and if you can take away the deep option from Wasps, they become that bit easier to defend.

Gopperth and Umaga are also linked on defence. Umaga is not the best defender but Wasps know that. It would only be a major weakness if Wasps were unaware of this. They will often hide Umaga on the 5m tram on certain lineout schemes to avoid him taking traffic from big runners. Sure, Damian De Allende and Chris Farrell (and Daniel Okeke!) lining up Jacob Umaga off a lineout crash sounds good but it’s unlikely that Wasps will scheme him to defend in that traditional #10 channel. Wasps will usually put Jimmy Gopperth there with their hooker, Dan Frost, closing the gap off the lineout.

Any kind of quick ball action could see a guy like Hodnett, Buckley or Farrell going through that outside space, especially if we can establish the threat of De Allende early. Wasps have gone big in their back row so there will be space off the lineout as long as we have quick ball and possession – how quickly can Barbeary, Shields and Willis get from the lineout defence to the first ruck? That’s a key question.

There are opportunities in the spaces that Wasps want to keep Umaga away from but the key is in having a stable scrum and a working lineout.