[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]W[/su_dropcap]e’ve been here before. For the last three years, Munster have arrived in Dublin on a road to a PRO14 final that runs through Leinster Rugby and, the last two years in a row, the road has ended here. Sometimes it’s been close – 2018 – and sometimes the gap has seemed wider than it ever has been – 2019 – but whatever happens this Friday night, nothing will come as a surprise.
We played largely the same Leinster side two weekends ago and the challenge now is “who learned more, who improves more?” It would be foolish to assume that Leinster are not deeply aware of the challenges behind getting an elite group up to full match sharpness. Remember, this time of year is usually where you’d be seeing both Leinster and Munster playing 30 man squads in friendly games against a variety of other opponents at the same stage to build towards the PRO14 restart, to build towards Europe and then on to international level for some. It’s a slow, measured build to peak performance but this is a season like no other. Munster and Leinster only returned to regular, combined training four weeks ago after gradually building up in small groups over the preceding weeks and all of this happened in an environment where neither side played or trained in six months. That’s the longest these guys would have been without a regular game or training session since they kids or injured.
A fair bit has been made of Munster’s choice to go down the match sharpness route where Leinster chose to rest and rotate large swathes of their squad against Ulster. Leinster are the more settled, cohesive group so you’d imagine the week’s rest would be of more benefit to them. Munster, on the other hand, were in the middle of a fairly drastic coaching and gameplan evolution after a season disrupted by the World Cup, a nightmarish Heineken Cup pool and then the Six Nations before that whole COVID19 thing that you might have heard about on the news happened.
Munster needed time on the field for cohesion, continuity and match hardness. Leinster can’t just think about Munster, Ulster and then a PRO14 playoff run; they also have the European Cup to plan for and have to consider each game with a longer timeline in mind. Munster can only play two more games after beating Connacht. Leinster might have to play five against the best sides in Europe every week.
Will match sharpness benefit Munster? Will the week’s rest and years of in-built cohesion benefit Leinster? Who will learn the most from the game two weeks ago? Let’s have a look.
Leinster: 15. Jordan Larmour, 14. Hugo Keenan, 13. Gary Ringrose, 12. Robbie Henshaw, 11. James Lowe; 10. Johnny Sexton (c) 9. Luke McGrath; 1. Cian Healy, 2. Rónan Kelleher, 3. Andrew Porter, 4. Scott Fardy, 5. Devin Toner, 6. Caelan Doris, 7. Will Connors, 8. Jack Conan
Replacements: 16. Seán Cronin, 17. Ed Byrne, 18. Michael Bent, 19. Ryan Baird, 20. Josh Van Der Flier, 21. Jamison Gibson-Park, 22. Ross Byrne, 23. Rory O’Loughlin.
There were three big takeaways for Leinster in their narrow win two weeks ago.
For me, they are; their relatively poor aerial work in the backfield, their attacking lineout and their offensive breakdown. Other stuff like their scrum and their clever use of kicks in behind the Munster blitz worked out really well for them but they won’t be focusing on that – they’ll be looking to shore up the areas that almost cost them the game.
The last two weeks have seen Leinster really back their defence as a unit that will win them games. They’ve lost the overall possession count in both games since the restart – approximately 55/45 over both games – and they’ve kicked the ball a lot. Against Ulster, Leinster kicked the ball 33 times to Ulster’s 19 and while the Munster game was closer on the kick count, they kicked more off #10 than they did from #9 compared to Munster. That was true in both of their fixtures to date.
Some of these kicks were really well-executed central kick throughs in behind the defensive line that stressed the opposition defensive system.
In both games and in all three instances here, Leinster attacked the space behind the primary defensive line with accurate, low angle kicks. Robbie Henshaw’s kick through for Ringrose was particularly devastating but the concept behind all of the kicks is to tug at the habits of team’s in the direct aftermath of a wide transition ruck or maul.
In regular phase play, this kind of kick would be pretty easily defended by a regular 13/2 defensive shape but off a maul or a linebreak ruck in the wide channels, the backfield opens up as a tempting target. In the Sexton example above, the space appeared in the backfield because Daly and Earls were involved in the previous ruck (a break from a scrum).
Sexton spots that space and targets it with a kick through and chase that lead directly to a 5m scrum for Leinster. Avoiding wide linebreaks is so obvious we won’t really go into any detail on it but limiting Leinster’s work at the maul will be a key part of Jack O’Donoghue’s remit on lineouts near the 22. Everything further out will be contested in the air quite heavily by Beirne, Holland and O’Mahony. We want to stress Leinster’s lineout to the point that Toner and Fardy are their primary targets at Two (front) and Four (the near middle).
The lineout is going to be crucial. Last time out, Leinster ran at 83% on 11 throws with much of their possession being relatively scrappy. The one exception was their mauled try in the first half that we’ll have been disappointed to concede relatively cheaply when we didn’t compete in the air. The issue happens on the landing here where Porter gets a big momentum win over O’Donnell and then through Holland.
It was all but impossible to slow the momentum from there, legally at least. I think when we read the launch point against this Leinster selection, we can match them in the air from a speed perspective.
If you look at O’Mahony here and in the below example, you can see him matching the hand target for the Leinster jumper. Both Doris and Fardy have a hard time matching O’Mahony in the air.
Note: Jumping across the lineout in the air isn’t illegal as long as you get back on your own side immediately on landing without touching the maul/lifters/jumper until you can do so from an onside position.Kelleher’s throw on this lineout is a direct response to the pressure exerted by O’Mahony at the front of the lineout. The selection of Jack O’Donoghue in the backrow gives Munster five legitimate jumping options and four counter jumpers to stress Kelleher’s throw and limit the range of movement Leinster can get from their set-piece. Toner’s selection is a direct response to their lineout issues but they can’t over-rely on him here either.
The breakdown will be a crucial area, as you’d expect, but I don’t expect it to have a seismic impact on the game. Both teams should be synced in closer to what Andrew Brace is looking for given the last game under his watch was less than two weeks ago. From a Munster perspective, we’ll be looking to avoid burning numbers on rucks – one man, one jackal – and I think we’ve picked O’Donoghue to balance us out a bit. I expect him to rack up pretty big tackle numbers along with O’Mahony to allow Beirne and Stander to attack loosely supporter Leinster forward interplay while De Allende and the rest of the Munster outside backs attack wider rucks with jackal attempts and counter-rucks.
A good result for Munster outside of multiple jackal penalties is for Leinster to consistently send three or four forwards to secure their centre-field ruck position while we lose one tackler and one jackaler max.
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Our kicking game will be an area of concern for Leinster. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this was the best kick chase performance we’ve pulled out against Leinster in a few seasons and it had an effect on the game. Leinster are missing Dave Kearney for this one after his hamstring pull in the last game and I think that’ll be an important loss for them even if Keenan is a talented young player.
Ulster won a fumble out of Keenan last week. Munster will be looking to do the same.
It isn’t that Keenan is poor in the air – he’s pretty decent – but it’s the positioning and alignment between Larmour and himself in the right-sided backfield that Munster will look to disrupt. Larmour is an outstanding young player with a big future but the one area of his game that is a real work-on is his aerial decision making, communication and execution in the air.
I think Larmour comes from way too far back and attacking the ball from an oblique angle into his own players. There are no comms with Henshaw or, if there is, Henshaw isn’t backing his fullback to take the kick. I think Keenan and Larmour will get an examination under the high ball in this contest, especially if we get stuck in and around our Q2 area, which I suspect we will.
On our side, we’ve added an interesting wrinkle to our kick chase that looks to hijack the walls of players we’ve seen being built in front of the kicking target. Keep an eye on JJ Hanrahan here;
Leinster try to build a wall in front of Andrew Conway as he attacks this box kick. A wall of players prevents Conway from getting a clean one on one with the isolated receiver.
This has stymied Munster’s kicking game a fair bit over the last two seasons in particular. So how do you get around it? Send two chasers after the ball from different sides of the ruck. JJ Hanrahan was one of most consistent kick chasers in both games so far as an aggressive out to in runner.
While Leinster are setting up a wall to block Conway or Earls from the touchline side, Hanrahan attacks from outside the wall and hassles the ball carrier.
We tend not to see Lowe in these backfield positions too often so the spacing and communication between Larmour and Keenan will be something that Munster will look to attack in the air. If Conor Murray has another accurate day with his box kicking, the potential for serious disruption is there.
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During phase play, I think we have to acknowledge that Will Connors has been selected to stack up defensive actions. Against Ulster, he made 19 tackles and was a consistent presence on Stuart McCloskey and Marcell Coetzee. If we give Connors tackles to make, he will make them and he’ll continue to do so for 80 minutes. He was a key part of Leinster’s strategy in Thomond Park and I suspect his selection here has Damian De Allende, Chris Farrell and CJ Stander in mind.
Connors will be Leinster’s primary openside defender in this game. Yes, I know he’s wearing #7 but Connors is a great example of a player filling a key role rather than a positional cliche. If you the most of key parts of Connors’ game, he’s more like a traditional blindside or lock. He’s listed as 6’5″/100kg but he’s got good lateral movement, mobility and excellent tackle technique for making his size count in contact. When you see the ball progress across the field, you’ll see Connors going with the ball. If he’s not making the tackle, he’s buzzing the breakdown – without ever attacking all but the most obvious jackal opportunities – and then filing out as the second or third man in the defensive line unless the gainline is very close to the try line and in a central position. When deep in his own 22, Connors will tend to stick mostly to central areas and look to chop tackle close range setups off #9.
The key for Munster is to avoid giving a bigger Leinster pack the opportunity to punish us where they’re strong – off #9 and just beyond it. We want to use our 3-2-2 shape to stress Leinster on the edge of their defensive line. When you’re giving up a physical disadvantage from a size and KG perspective, and you have a ball playing locks like Holland and Beirne, you use them. The last time I saw a team playing with a size advantage and running a 3-2-2/1 shape was Japan in the World Cup.
Look at these examples of how that shape stresses Ireland with a bigger front five and back row. Look at how Japan were able to find Healy/Furlong with a bit of space.
We can catch Leinster with the same kind of action, especially given the way they file out after the scrum. Let O’Connor follow De Allende and Farrell off the scrum break and then get the ball back across the field get Beirne an isolation with Porter or Healy as the play comes back across.
This kind of picture is something we can work with if we have the ambition to chase it. We won’t beat Leinster by repeatedly hitting them off #9 between the 22s.
