The bright lights might be shining on Rome this weekend but there’s important business for Munster to see to in Swansea on Friday night.
This is an important time of the season and, in a lot of ways, this upcoming block of games – away to Ospreys today and then to the Scarlets next week – could go a long way to deciding who tops this conference come the end of the season. Points earned in front of the modern equivalent of a man and his dog in Swansea on a manky February evening spend exactly the same as points earned in high profile, must-win games in late March when things get tight and the test lads come riding back from the Six Nations. Do well enough during test windows and you might not even need to win the tight ones later in the season and I’m speaking purely in the horrible Must Win, Can’t Lose equivalent of knock out rugby in a pre-playoff league table. Play your cards right and, with a bit of luck, you might even come out of the Six Nations with your PRO14 work almost seen to. I mean, the opposite is true too, and multiple losses can put real pressure on the squad for the rest of the season especially with the race for the playoff spots so tight in both conferences. Munster, though, have a loftier aim than just playoff qualification – they want a home semi-final and a week off. Test windows might not be glamorous, but they are vital to a team’s chances of success.
In some ways, that’s why the Welsh hate this time of year. The Ospreys, when fully stacked with the likes of Alun Wyn Jones, Justin Tipuric, Adam Beard, Aled Davies, Owen Watkin, Nicky Smith and George North are a dangerous outfit capable of beating almost anyone on their day. Dip below that level, though, and they start to lose a bit of quality. When they’re struggling with injuries – as they are at the moment – then that quality gets even more diluted. Just look at the injury list for this game – Dan Baker (Knee), Sam Davies (Groin), Tom Habberfield (Shin), Rhodri Jones (Shoulder), Lesley Klim (Hamstring), Dan Lydiate (Elbow), Gareth Thomas (Ankle) and Scott Williams (Back). Of this list, I’d expect Baker, Davies, Habberfield, Jones, Lydiate and Williams to feature in a full strength Ospreys matchday squad and possibly would have started here bar a few international calls ups.
A list like that really hurts the Ospreys, especially at this time of year. The same could be said for all of the Welsh regions, in truth.
But all that won’t count for much this evening. Munster will walk on knowing that any kind of win would be gold dust, especially with Glasgow (two points back) taking on a Connacht side in great form at the same time. Any kind of win plus a Glasgow loss would put Munster more than five points clear with just five regular season rounds remaining.
What’s not to like?
Red Eye Report :: Ospreys (a)
I’ve decided to change this up slightly. I’ll be assessing specific facets of the opposition’s set piece, defensive structure and other stuff in the Blood & Thunder Podcast – and here – so here I thought it would be cool to show where I rate the opposition (and Munster) as a whole in a European context as first choice units and then, depending on the how far away both Munster and the opposition are from what I would consider “full strength”, how the teams actually taking the field rate against each other.
S – Elite level
A – Top European Level
B – Good Domestic League Level
C – Average Domestic League Level
D – Poor Domestic League Level
E – Minor League Minnow
Guinness PRO14 Round 16: Ospreys vs Munster
Full Strength Red Eye Rating: Ospreys (B) – Munster (A)
Teamsheet Adjusted Red Eye Rating: Ospreys (D) – Munster (B)
Current PRO14 Home/Away Form Over Last 5 Games: Ospreys (LWWWL) – Munster (WWLWW)
Freedom and Liberty
I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a strange enough old PRO14 season in Ospreylia. From an attacking perspective, they’re 9th overall in the combined conferences with regards to points scored and 12th overall in tries scored yet they’ve conceded the same amount of tries as Leinster (31) which is joint first amongst all the conferences and are third across both conferences for overall points conceded.
They’re not scoring very many tries – or points – but they aren’t really conceding them either. They’ve conceded an average of 17 points per game this season, which doesn’t sound great but two massive losses to Munster and Leinster in Ireland (they conceded 102 points in total in both of those games) blow their numbers up quite a bit. Remove those two results and they’re down to conceding an average of 12 points a game; for a bit of context, Leinster are conceding an average of 15 points per game.
A lot of that has to do with the philosophy that new head coach Allen Clarke seems to have bedded in since taking over full time in the summer. The Ospreys are playing very low-risk rugby that focuses on the basics that you’d look to bring into any rugby club that showed some of the rotten signs that were on show at the Liberty Stadium last season.
In some ways, the way that Clarke has the Ospreys playing is similar to the way that Rassie Erasmus had Munster playing in his first season in charge. The Ospreys have stripped back a lot of their expansive style and have adopted a few key principles.
Play in the Right Areas.
This usually manifests itself in kicking most of the turnover ball they get, be it kick turnover or breakdown, and looking for green grass down the field. That allows the Ospreys to chase, pressure the opposition kick reset and then look to attack off the resulting set piece.
Sam Davies has the most amount of kicks from hand out of any player in the PRO14 this season, and that’s mostly because he’s kicking away a lot of the turnover ball and kick returns that they pick up.
Here are two examples from last week.
The Ospreys had space to move on that last one – on both, in fact – but chose instead to kick to green grass and chase, hoping to pressure an exit off the field to attack through the lineout. Munster’s backfield defence will have to be excellently positioned and kick really well to punish the Ospreys every time they kick these back to us.
They are quite good on their kick transition defence because you can tell they structure a lot of their work around how they restructure after each box kick or kick from the second layer. They’ll chase, yes, but they have a mobile pack that is good at filling the gaps that teams normally look to hit on kick transition. It means they are solid on their kickaways – usually – but it also means that they essentially ignore all but the most glaring transition events. Kick and breakdown transition events are one of the key try scoring areas of the game in 2019 and the Ospreys know this but are playing it from the opposite side – structure well on every kick and don’t overchase the breaks and you’ll generally stop the other team from countering you. Ultimately, the way to deal with it is to kick a lot of length onto your exits from inside the 22. If the Ospreys go quickly – and they generally won’t – then they’re likely to kick the ball back to you inside two phases but that’ll be a time to hit their pack on transition. In all likelihood, they’re going to take the lineout wherever it is and look to build off that.
The Ospreys, in fairness, have a very solid lineout. James King is a key target jumper for them in the lineout, and he’s starting in the second row for them here. Normally he’s a #8, but their lineout won’t suffer for it in so far as he’s a credible target on most of their throws because of his speed across the floor and into the air.
Bradley Davies is a good lineout caller – and he likes using King a lot – but they will spread it out to Cracknell, Cross and McCusker a fair bit. What do you notice about the two lineouts I showed you?
No movement.
When King is the jumping target, the Ospreys maul suffers. He’s an excellent lineout jumper, yes, but look how quickly the Ulster counter-shove stands him up here – he tries to sink into the shove but Ulster are bracing him up the middle. That means the Ospreys have to shift to either side if they want movement and that’s a tough ask these days with how much movement up the side the defending team is allowed.
When McCusker is used as a maul target, the same weakness applies. Look at this maul from 5m with the game still in the balance.
Driven back. McCusker is standing up pretty soon after landing. They had no heavy jumpers on the field at the time and they’ve tried to structure their bench differently this time with Ashley coming off the bench rather than starting.
If the Ospreys have a close-range maul, I’d expect Davies to be the target in their starting XV, but he’s slow in the air and could be a target for Wycherley to mark and attack in the air, knowing that we have the likes of Kleyn and Archer to attack their lighter jumpers on any maul builds.
If you stop the Ospreys maul in their own half, you’ll usually get a kick away and, with that, an opportunity to catch them on the counter with their pack clustered on one side of the field.
High Blitz
The Ospreys play with a high, outside in hard blitz on defence that pressurises opposition possession and helps them win defensive collisions.
You can get a good feel for their general defensive structure and attitude on this series of phases.
Good solid stops, forwards doubling up on carriers on midfield carries and aggressive blitzing off the centre field ruck.
Their approximate structure is this.
That’s twelve up in the primary defensive line with three back. The fullback tends to track the ruck, rather than picking the #10, so that means that both wingers will stay recessed in the second line for longer than you’d normally expect to help guard against any shallow kick-throughs on the angle from first receiver.
The wingers are prone to getting kicked behind from the opposite wing, though, and this example from inside the first two minutes is a decent illustration of something that’s been prevalent with them all year.
Morgan stepped up from his deeper position when he saw McCloskey go to first receiver and that created a space for the big man to attack with the boot. McCloskey’s kick had a pretty high trajectory so we can assume that Morgan’s positioning was quite advanced for him to be chasing it as it went out of touch.
Sometimes the Ospreys wingers will drift out of position if they feel the edge defence is a little vulnerable and they’re unsure of the centre-field ruck position. If the ruck is closer to the middle of the halfway line, they’ll stay recessed. If it’s 5m closer to their touchline, they’ll step up with Fish chasing the space behind them from his ruck tracking position.
There is space behind the Ospreys at lineout time, though.
Here they only have two men in the backfield;
A quick ball off the top and then a dink over the top at an angle that targets their blindside winger could really work here. Here it is again.
When you have a full lineout, that space appears almost every time. If we can get Hanrahan into a tight position with enough time to kick and enough bodies in the way to disguise his motion from the backfield defender – or enough threat in the carry from Taute/Goggin to keep him on their line – you could see how a kick like this might work.
Ideally, it would be Nash/Sweetnam attacking this, with one of the two even standing in the lineout at the beginning to help disguise their running line.
Once you get the Ospreys defending a centre-field ruck position, certain opportunities come up. We remember how vulnerable we were to getting “super loaded” under Nienaber’s system against the Scarlets in 2016/2017 and the Ospreys are vulnerable in a similar way.
When they have to defend a centre-field position, the Ospreys will press hard into the opposition passing lanes to try and dominate the collisions out there but when they’re numbers down, they are vulnerable to giving up massive linebreaks if they can’t stop the ball at source. Have a look here;
Quick Ulster hands made the break and Ospreys were in big trouble after over blitzing. They’ll step up like this on almost all centre-field ruck positions and leave massive space behind and wide.
See how the winger hasn’t stepped up yet because of where the starting ruck position is? If Munster can get good width on that last pass, there’s an opportunity to be had against the Ospreys defensive structure.
With quick enough ball, you can sow doubt into the Ospreys backfield defence and create massive space to attack the edge. Look at what this big carry up the middle does to the wing defence;
Henderson’s big bust up the middle – the Ospreys defensive press up the middle of the field is super vulnerable to an accurate tip on pass, just FYI – creates real doubt for the backfield defender. Look at how frozen he is once the play comes through.
A little more accuracy, straight running and defender fixing could have created a score for Ulster here but it all came from unsettling the backfield and making the Ospreys’ narrow centre-field line work against them.
This game is eminently winnable.
