[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]H[/su_dropcap]ope is in short enough supply this weather. Like vaccines, there isn’t an awful lot of it to go around. Last weekend’s dispiriting defeat to Leinster would be enough to kick the heart out of anyone because it featured all the hallmarks of the six games that came before it. With no aerial game to generate field position, Munster were beaten up in the forward exchanges against Leinster – yet again – and the script played out as it always does when you lose the battle upfront.
You might think that Toulouse this weekend will be a different challenge. Toulouse are ballers, right? Offloads? Slinging passes? Antoine Dupont, Cheslin Kolbe and Romain Ntamack? Yes, they are ballers, but what is that balling built on?
Colossal size in the pack.
Everything Toulouse do and do well is based on the physical pressure their forwards exert. The cool stuff you see from Toulouse, the highlights, even the forward offloads and passing shapes are built on their long-form game, which is underpinned by their dominant forward pressure. Are you noticing a trend here? Just look through that Toulouse pack Ugo Mola has selected and see the size he has at his disposal. This is not a different physical challenge than the Leinster game. If anything, this is a step up in physicality.
So, yes, marvel at the names on there like Kolbe, Ntamack, Medard and Dupont but anything they do will be built on the blunt force trauma of the likes of Tekori, the Arnolds, Marchand, Baille, Faumina and Cros.
Munster will – or should – have a better time at the breakdown with Wayne Barnes in charge and I expect us to hang in there with Toulouse defensively in general but if we want to win this game we are going to have to impact them up front offensively. Have a look at that Toulouse pack. Look at the size in their front five. Look at the power and versatility across their backrow. Look at their 6/2 split with Tekori and the 6’8″ Thibaud Flament.
That is what we have to stop – and impact offensively – if we want to go toe to toe with these guys.
Toulouse: 15. Maxime Medard, 14. Cheslin Kolbe, 13. Zack Holmes, 12. Pita Ahki, 11. Matthis Lebel; 10. Romaine Ntamack, 9. Antoine Dupont; 1. Cyril Baille, 2. Julien Marchand, 3. Charlie Faumuina, 4. Ritchie Arnold, 5. Rory Arnold, 6. François Cros, 7. Selevasio Tolofua, 8. Jerome Kaino (c)
Replacements: 16. Peato Mauvaka, 17. Clément Castets, 18. Dorian Aldegheri, 19. Iosefa Tekori, 20. Thibaud Flament, 21. Alban Placines, 22. Baptiste Germain, 23. Dimitri Delibes
I am not very optimistic about this game.
Munster certainly can win this game but it would take a massive week to week reversal against a side that is a worse physical matchup for us at the moment than Leinster were seven days ago. Make no mistake, this is every bit as challenging as last week’s game except with the added bonus that Toulouse are bigger and more powerful in the front five than Leinster are, purely from a physical standpoint. Anything we earn from Toulouse or, on the defensive side of the ball, stop Toulouse from doing will have to go through that front five first – at the scrum, in the lineout and during phase play.
It will be a challenge every bit as formidable as the one that we failed last weekend. I’ve looked back at the Ulster vs Toulouse game from the end of last year – the only European game Toulouse have played to date due to COVID – but its relevance to this game is fairly minimal in my opinion. The weather conditions the game was played in were absolutely desperate and bar a last-minute winter storm sweeping in off the Atlantic, this game will be played on a dry track in good conditions. Sure, Ulster impacted them well in the maul offensively up in the Kingspan, for a time, but the conditions played a part in that. Eventually, Ulster ran out of steam as Toulouse’s size and power kept rolling off the bench.
You’ll remember Kolbe’s chip through for his first try and you’ll definitely remember his step on Stockdale for his second but you probably won’t remember the dozens of won collisions, marginal gainline wins and dominant forward exchanges generated by Toulouse as the game progressed and they got to grips with the conditions.
This will be an incredibly difficult challenge. It is one that will have to met head-on.
Munster’s senior players who’ve been backed with selection after last week will have to stand up and be counted to get anything from this game. That is a bare minimum requirement. It didn’t happen last week, mind, so it is far from a guarantee this week. There is no immutable law that says we have to be better here. We will only get what we earn the hard way out of this game. The coaches have been the ones chowing down at the blame buffet all week long after that Leinster defeat but this is the time for the senior players they backed week to week to make a statement. If this week is more of the same, there’ll be plenty of room at the blame buffet for everyone, believe me. This isn’t a case of “put up or shut up” because Munster don’t go around shouting the odds about what we’re going to do before every season. The default expectation is that Munster should be winning trophies but this is a historic expectation based on players who are now long retired and either coaching or in the media room.
This senior group of players (O’Mahony, Stander, Murray, Earls, Holland, Cronin, Scannell, Ryan, Archer, Hanrahan and a few others have been in situ since 2013-15, more or less, and the time is due for fewer heartbreaking defeats and more performances that further our aim to win trophies. A lot of these guys are near the end of their time at the province one way or the other so what better way to sign off than with a deep Champions Cup run?
The PRO14 this season was a bust. It was a good regular season, for sure, and much improved but it was the exact same output in a knockout game against Leinster. Sure, we were missing RG Snyman, a guy signed to impact games just like last week (and this week). Sure, Joey Carbery looked rusty in his second start in two years. But it was a loss all the same.
This week is a new frontier and a different tournament. If we come over the hill and find this new frontier is just more of what we had last week, with most of the same guys involved, it will feel like a natural transition point for the province. That’s just the way of things at the top.
So how do Munster go about winning this game?
For a start, we’ll need to kick better.
Our box kicking off #9 – which was our primary form of tactical kicking against Leinster – didn’t function to the level required. Some were good, don’t get me wrong, but too many were dropping too short, going too long where they were easily marked or being followed up by a sub-par chase, which I found to be the most disappointing aspect of that kicking performance. For whatever reason – and kick accuracy plays a part in this too – we just weren’t getting hands-on the Leinster receivers.
The temptation will be to box kick onto guys like Cheslin Kolbe and Matthis Lebel to pressure with Carbery, Earls/Conway and Jack O’Donoghue. We’ve used that “trident chase” to good effect and we’ll certainly see it used here but I think kicking off #9 too much against Toulouse is a recipe for disaster.
If our chase is slightly off, or if the box is slightly too long, we risk giving Kolbe, in particular, a scenario where he only has one man to beat before entering into the backfield.
La Rochelle had a fair bit of success kicking long to Toulouse in their recent game. It might seem counter-intuitive to kick long to this Toulouse side but I think it’s a manageable strategy.
I think you want to bring Kolbe, Medard and Lebel’s long-range kicking into the game and if we’re going to see Kolbe on-ball, let’s have him in front of us where we can see him coming from a long way off, rather than risking him catching a ball in traffic, beating one man and breaking down the field.
The key is to stay patient, find the middle of the backfield and, well, see what happens.
Toulouse’s pack is of the collective size that we might well find value in kicking smartly off #10 and #15, moving their forward lines in transition and looking for Faumuina and the Arnold twins on the runback.
In attack, Toulouse run with four strike playmakers – Dupont, Kolbe, Ntamack and Holmes. You’ll often see Kolbe moving in off the wing to first receiver with Ntamack filing out where he can use his own agility and breaking threat but it really comes alive when all three of the outside playmakers link up with Dupont as he links the ball from the ruck to the players around the ruck. A lot of Toulouse’s ball-playing danger comes from their stacked options out the back of their rough 3-2-X shape.
With that in mind, they have to back a small number forwards to win their setups off #9. That can leave attackable space between the likes of the Arnold twins, Kaino and Tolofua that opens up the poach for the likes of Coombes, Beirne and Stander.
If you can turnover Toulouse on these setups – and you will get space to try the poach – you can win clean penalties and/or open up for turnover attacks that will have gaps to shoot for given that Toulouse will always have multiple heavy forwards to move in from the 2-X spots.
You can see these spaces show up again and again on their setups off #9 regardless of who is the scrumhalf. Look at the space/time I’ve highlighted here on a regular sequence of Toulouse phases.
If CJ, Beirne, Coombes and Cloete off the bench can get into a rhythm over the ball in these spaces and paint strong, decisive pictures we could open up a frontier where we can hurt Toulouse with penalties or force them to draw more forwards out of their attacking layers to make for cleaner wide defensive targets.
It will be incredibly difficult.
The odds are not in our favour.
We’ve had the hearts kicked out of us by last week’s defeat.
But to the brave and the faithful…
#SUAF
