Don’t mistake Castres gritty, uneasy on the eye style of rugby for “disinterest” in Europe or, worse again, a lack of ability.
It might not be great to look at but Castres aren’t really here to entertain the neutral – they exist to kick and grind, win forward collisions and play the kind of heavy percentages that has seen them punch above their weight in France for the last 10 years. They have contested three TOP14 finals since 2013, won two of them (the last in 2018) and while they have finished outside the playoff spots domestically in the last few years, they are always a difficult, nasty side to play against and I mean that in the best way possible.
Even this season, you can see how tough they are to play against. They have lost their two Heineken Champions Cup games to date but both games were razor close. If you look at their TOP14 performance so far, you’ll see them sitting third in the log while having the 8th worse scoring record and 9th worse defence. If we sort the TOP14 by points differential, Castres are 8th – what does that tell us? That they are experts in getting into tight, sticky games and, this season in France as of late, coming out on top. Look at their last seven games and you’ll see four of them were decided by two points or less (they won two of those), they lost two games by less than a score and they had one home blowout win by 20 odd points against Racing.
Castres are big, physical and excel in creating ugly, dour kick and grind games that are as taxing mentally as they are physically.
For Munster, the challenge will be implementing our read of Castres based on what we’ve seen of them this season and what we’ve seen of them in Thomond Park back in December. In Thomond Park, Castres played an incredibly limited kick and grind game that… very nearly worked exactly as they drew it up and, to some extent, did the bare minimum they wanted. Castres left Thomond Park with a losing bonus point that they’ll have been relatively happy with without enduring much in the way of risk.
It was a game plan designed to frustrate Munster, cheese the clock and exploit our relatively weak work on transition. Essentially, I think Castres were happy enough kicking the ball to us because they felt they could mop up our counter-attacking game without much in the way of concern and, for the most part, they were right.
Playing Castres depends a lot on their expectations and in-game circumstances. In most games, Castres will be happy enough to play very high percentage, low-risk rugby, take their kicks at goal and play the clock as much as the opposition.
In their last game at home to Stade Francais, for example, they had a Pass Per Carry rating of 0.79 because they were never behind on the scoreboard at any stage. That was exactly on-plan for them based on what we saw in Thomond Park.
In their two games before that – two wins over La Rochelle and Perpignan – Castres were forced into a more expansive style – by their standards – and produced a 1.09 PPC against La Rochelle and a PPC 1.04 against Perpignan because they were behind on the scoreboard as the game progressed into the second half.
In both those games, Castres had a sub-95% retention rate at the breakdown because they were forced off structure by Perpignan and La Rochelle before pulling the scoreboard back late in the game.
The key for Munster will be unbalancing Castres enough to take them off script while having the wherewithal to deny them the scores they found late on in those two games. Have we read them correctly? We’ll soon find out.
Castres Olympique: 15. Thomas Larregain, 14. Antoine Zeghdar, 13. Thomas Combezou, 12. Pierre Aguillon, 11. Filipo Nakosi, 10. Ben Botica, 9. Santiago Arata; 1. Antoine Tichit, 2. Brice Humbert, 3. Antoine Guillamon, 4. Löic Jacquet, 5. Jack Whetton, 6. Mateaki Kafatolu, 7. Simon Meka, 8. Baptiste Delaporte
Replacements: 16. Pierre Colonna, 17. Julius Nostadt, 18, Matthew Tierney, 19. Ryno Pieterse, 20. Hugo Hermet, 21. Rory Kockott, 22. Louis Le Bruin, 23. Bastien Guillemin
From a stylistic perspective, there is external pressure for Munster to play like the platonic ideal of Japan in this game but from a hard-nosed, points on the board perspective, we have already all but qualified for the knockout stages of this season’s competition.
We need a minimum of four points from the next two weekends to be sure of qualification for the two-legged Round of 16. By denying Castres a winning bonus point this Friday night we would be all but qualified even if we left with nothing. In reality, a losing bonus point here plus any kind of win at home against Wasps would almost certainly do the job.
For this game, we have the Castres Conundrum to scheme against.
As Ronan O’Gara wrote about while discussing Munster’s laborious win over Castres back in December, Castres are never an easy game.
There were mitigating circumstances Saturday, however. There’s been a massive under-appreciation of what Munster faced at Thomond Park. That is what Castres do to every opposition, every week. They are one of the most difficult teams in Europe, if not the most difficult, to play against. And they are very proud of that fact, a trait handed down to this current group who play for their identity and what they stand for. They dog it out for each other.
They are a mirror of your weaknesses. Unlike a lot of teams in France who have a lot of money tied up in bigger marquee names, Castres have spread more of their resources around so while there aren’t any massively recognizable names in their squad – guys on the kind of “oh that guy” tier of Skelton, Aldritt, Arnold, Etzebeth, Ntamack, Dupont, Jalibert, Woki etc – they have a lot of heavy, powerful guys who are all of a pretty good standard and all perfectly dialled in to what they want to do on both sides of the ball.
So we know Castres will kick almost every ball in their own half and grind around the corner and off #9 when they’re inside our 10m line. We know that if they creep ahead we’ll be under pressure to pull something back and be more likely to overextend, which plays into their hands.
The question is, knowing that, what will we do?
Looking at our pack build, we have gone for a more mobile construction that, to me, puts a lot of focus on our lineout launch and, more importantly, our counter-launch on Castres throw. That is one part of the story, though, the other part is how Munster can stress and break Castres open.
If our intent is to “move Castres around” – an oblique term that I’ll speak about in more detail later – this is the exact pack we’d pick both to start and to finish. If our intent is to match kick pressure with kick pressure, this team selection will lose and lose badly.
Let’s have a look at the back five – all six front-row forwards selected are all Heavy Support Forwards – then we get a good idea of our general aims.
4. Fineen Wycherley – Heavy Support Forward
5. Tadhg Beirne – Offensive Half-Lock and Defensive Breakdown Specialist
19. Jean Kleyn – Heavy Tighthead Lock
6. Peter O’Mahony – Combo Flanker with Lineout Speciality & Wide Spaces offensive capacity
7. Jack O’Donoghue – Combo Flanker with Lineout Speciality & Wide Spaces offensive capacity
8. Gavin Coombes – Power Forward
20. John Hodnett – Small Forward with Heavy Wing Forward
If our aim is to play a tonne of off-ball rugby – kick every ball we get in our own half with the intent to defend Castres – we’ve selected the wrong team. If our aim is to hang onto the ball and vary our transition behaviour on Castres kicking game then we have a great chance.
The key is variety.
Getting into a long kicking duel with Castres is playing into their hands, but so is running back every kick they send you. The key is to mix up those actions – long kicks downfield as opposed to box exits with two or three-phase transition sets and the opposite wing transition attack I wrote about last time out – and keep the ball in play for longer periods. We want to engage their pack in multiple frontiers in the same sequence. That means having them shuttled back and forward on longer kicks, defending close-range rucks, scrambling on wide-wide sets and then defending shorter offensive kicks.
Watch this sequence against La Rochelle and watch how Hounkpatín – who’ll be replaced by an even heavier prop for this game – drops off as the sequence progresses.
This kind of variety plays into Munster’s Ruck Point Attack system that we have showcased at times this season. If we can get Castres moving and keep them moving – they won’t automatically kick straight to touch, especially with a covered backfield – we can stress them where they are strong and use that strength against them.
If we go out to maul them and play a tonne of box kick pressure, I don’t see anywhere near as much potential success. It’ll be a fascinating tactical battle one way or the other.
