This is a must-win game.

Why? A few reasons. I’ll list them, for brevity.

1. The Ospreys aren’t in the midst of an injury crisis, they’re in the midst of an injury apocalypse and they’ve been generally poor away from home in Ireland over the last few seasons and most recently in the RDS in round two.
2. Munster are coming off the back of a disappointing defeat in Bloemfontein and, while we’re unlikely to be the last side to suffer defeat there this season, the group will need to respond as the test players begin to filter back ahead of the Heineken Cup.

This is the season of opportunity, after all, and while some players have really grabbed the focus while the bright lights of public attention were in Japan – Shane Daly, Fineen Wycherley, Jack O’Donoghue, Kevin O’Byrne, Jeremy Loughman, Keynon Knox – others are still waiting for that “well, remember that game” moment as their opportunities begin to narrow as the test players filter back into the environment.

There won’t be ideal weather conditions in Musgrave Park on Friday night – the forecast is for cold and rain, as is the October tradition for Friday Night Lights in Cork over the past few years – but the surface will be impeccable and quick underfoot. The perfect environment for a young buck to help convince Johann Van Graan, Stephen Larkham and Graham Rowntree that he can help them win rugby matches this season.

You won’t convince the coaches of much if you’re part of a losing home effort that makes it two Ls in a row.

So, as I said, must-win.

***

Dan Lydiate in the second row?

Yeah, I noticed it too. But it’s needs-must time in Ospreylia right now and to say they’re short of bodies almost everywhere would be making the term “short of bodies” do so much heavy lifting it’d make Keynon Knox blush. The Ospreys have a long and varied injury list at the moment outside of the eight players they have away at the World Cup. Bar Gareth Anscombe, who’d be at the World Cup if he hadn’t injured his knee, the Ospreys are missing Harri Morgan, Cory Allen, Dan Evans, James King, Rhys Henry, Ben Glynn, Shaun Venter, Luke Morgan and Keelan Giles. All would have probably featured in this game in some form or another. In that regards, not much has changed given the last time we played the Ospreys they had a similarly long casualty list.

So this should be fairly straightforward for Munster, right?

Well, yes, I’d imagine so, but let’s have a look at where we can try to punch some holes anyway.

The biggest area where Ospreys are suffering is in the second row and that comes with some obvious consequences. Dan Lydiate might, on the face of it, seem like a guy wildly out of position but there’s very little of his basic game that doesn’t suit playing as a loosehead lock. He’s got decent height and weight – he’s taller and heavier than Billy Holland – and he’s always been a good lineout option so the Ospreys aren’t missing out on too much in the lineout or scrum. You might expect Munster to be picking off a lot of lineouts (always possible but I wouldn’t say it’s a huge likelihood) or dominating the scrum, but I wouldn’t expect that to play out here.

With Lydiate in the second row, the Ospreys handled themselves well enough in the scrum against Leinster and Benetton – a little ropey on the opposition put in – but looked very solid on their own ball for the most part.

The big issue with the Ospreys in light of their injury list seems to be their maul defence.

Leinster made consistent ground in the maul against the Ospreys and I think Munster can too. The Ospreys are lighter in the back five than they’d like to be, so they have a few key issues that we can exploit.

• They overcommit forwards to almost all defensive mauls – due to their worry about bring driven through without proper size in the second row – so they can be attacked through the middle and, importantly around the sides of the maul on the break if you commit enough numbers to worry them. Benetton failed to do this consistently and weren’t rewarded with any space as a result.
• When the Ospreys compete on the jump – as they do through Ashley – they are even more vulnerable to straight drives.
• On close range mauls, the Ospreys tend to overcommit to hitting one side of the maul – usually the touchline side pushing infield – so you can soak their initial drive and then counter-slide across.
• Their best tackler – Dan Lydiate – is often defending in midfield outside Luke Price on shortened lineouts and that increases their issues in the maul while also squeezing the space on Price’s inside shoulder for loop plays around the #9.

That issue – Lydiate being their best defender while also being one of their nominated centre-field defenders – creates an problem where the Ospreys often over-fold on rucks between the 15m lines as their back five goes chasing hits and counter-rucks.

Here’s a good example.

That can leave a lot of space for whoever is left of the tight five in midfield to cover and they can be hurt if you can draw Cracknell, Ashley and Cross onto the same side of the field as Scott Williams to expose the rest of their front five’s defensive alignments. You might also get lucky and find Lydiate over chasing wide-wide plays and leaving his front row defending a lot of centre-field space.

The Ospreys look a little vulnerable to edge grubber kicks and crossfield kicks. Without Giles in their backfield, the Ospreys have gone with Hanno Dirksen and Tom Williams, two big, heavy wingers. That helps their ball carrying structures but leaves them vulnerable to grubber kicks, angled kicks over the top and crossfield kicks.

Benetton almost scored in this instance, but they were chasing that space on the edges and behind the Ospreys defensive press a lot in the second half.

Benetton’s kicking position here – from #10 – allowed Williams to pull back inside from the edge but if Munster were to pull the ball back another step and maybe try popping this over (or through) the Ospreys defensive line with Scannell or Haley from closer to the edge of their defence. That takes Williams’ reading out of the game and puts positional pressure on the inexperienced Cai Evans at fullback while stressing the turning speed of Williams and Dirksen.

If we can sell the threat of the kick early, we can pin Williams and Dirksen into the second layer and possibly expose Thomas-Wheeler and Williams with the “two forward” midfield attacking unit in our 2-3-2-1 to get the likes of Nash and Daly away into space.

I’ll be covering this on Limerick Live 95, so the Blood & Thunder podcast will be a live stream from Musgrave Park at 18:20 Irish time.