This has the feeling of a colossal game in Munster’s season.
From a purely “points on the log” perspective, it’s very important because it’s an Irish Shield game and we need a win to keep us in touch with Ulster and Connacht. If it was just that, it would be one of the biggest games of the season. But it’s not just that. This game is influenced by the banging headache and queasy stomach hangover from one of Munster’s worst performances of the last three seasons away to Connacht last weekend. Normally when you have a hangover you can at least point to a good time the night before. Not this time.
If we want to get rid of this hangover, we need a win but we need a performance more than anything after last week’s slapless strategic malfunction. A dour win using the same principles of last week will have the same impact on a bad hangover that a bowl of muesli would; prolong the agony. We need the greasy fry-up, glass of Solpadeine and big fat can of Red Bull of a reaction and a performance
If not, things could start to get ugly.
A team – players and coaching group – runs on vibes. With enough good vibes in the tank, you can drop a few poor performances here and there without much trouble. Look at Leinster’s relative wobbles against Dragons and Ulster this season. Munster are at a point this season where the middling credit available in the vibe account has been thoroughly drained by Larkham’s decision to leave, Van Graan’s exit clause and, almost more importantly, four poor performances stretching back to the Connacht game in October with the Wasps game in Coventry as something of a COVID fuelled aberration right in the middle.
All four of these games – Connacht (H), Ospreys (A), Castres (H), Connacht (A) – featured key elements of underperformance in different facets. We only lost two of them, but even the games we won were flawed performances that showcase how reactive we can be game to game. They featured good moments too, don’t get me wrong, but we’re in Season Three of the Van Graan & Larkham project and Year Five of the Van Graan era – good moments on their own aren’t enough.
When I write about being reactive, I went back and watched both Connacht games this season back to back. We dominated possession against Connacht in Thomond Park back in October and just about managed to get the win by two points. We inverted that trend in the Sportsground last weekend – dramatically so – and ended up losing by two points.
Against Ospreys, we put up some of our highest Pass Per Carry numbers of the season so far (1.66) but turnovers and poor discipline let us down on the night. We slipped to a poor enough loss. The home win against Castres was as much a product of Castres performance as it was our own, but it was a part of a trend where we’re very hard to predict game to game since the middle of October because we adapt so much to the opposition.
We looked different in almost every individual game since October. When we played Connacht, it was like two different teams while Connacht looked broadly similar (albeit with more possession in game two because we kicked back to them so often). Those games were different again from our loss away to the Ospreys and our grindathon against Castres.
When you look at our away game to Scarlets and our win at home to the Sharks and Stormers it gets even more confusing about what to expect this weekend.
We need a reaction, yes, but what Munster will it be doing the reacting?
The one that played against the Sharks and Scarlets? Or the one that played against Connacht last weekend? Because they are two different teams with two very different ways of playing.
Ulster Rugby: 15. Mike Lowry, 14. Craig Gilroy, 13. Ben Moxham, 12. James Hume, 11. Ethan McIlroy, 10. Billy Burns, 9. John Cooney; 1. Jack McGrath, 2. Rob Herring, 3. Tom O’Toole, 4. Alan O’Connor (C), 5. Sam Carter, 6. Greg Jones, 7. Nick Timoney, 8. Duane Vermeulen.
Replacements: 16. John Andrew, 17. Andrew Warwick, 18. Ross Kane, 19. Kieran Treadwell, 20. Marcus Rea, 21. Nathan Doak, 22. Angus Curtis, 23. Rob Lyttle
Despite their COVID trouble over the last few weeks, Ulster have managed to bring down a pretty strong side to Thomond Park.
Against Leinster, Ulster did a fabulous job of hurting Leinster’s offensive platform with heavy line speed and retained the ball incredibly well off #9 with a form of low-risk possession rugby that Leinster found quite difficult to live with. Without McCloskey, I’m in two minds as to whether Ulster will play as much on-ball as they did against Leinster. McCloskey is excellent at binding defenders and allowing Ulster to extend their attacking line off Burns which can “refresh” their patterns but that game against Leinster was marked by Leinster’s lack of competition at the breakdown.
Connacht competed heavily on the ground against Ulster – to good returns – and I think Munster will too. Whether or not that changes the equation for Ulster remains to be seen. The last time Ulster played Munster in Thomond Park, their lack of a kicking game was one of the most noticeable things about their approach to that game and it was costly. Munster attacked them at the breakdown, drew multiple cleaners out of the attacking line and made the Ulstermen look less dangerous with every passing phase of possession.
As a result, I think we’ll see Ulster move to kick more in this game; partly because of the threat of Munster’s defensive breakdown but also because I think they’ll be quite positive about their ability to stifle Munster on transition. If you’re Ulster, nothing you’ll have seen from Munster in the past couple of games will frighten you from an offensive perspective.
Is kicking back to Munster a low-risk proposition at the moment?
On the evidence of last weekend, I think that’s a fair enough statement.
After watching the game back again and again, my biggest issue was Munster’s work on transition – our counter-attack off kicks and turnovers. It started right from the kickoff when Mike Haley ran a kick return directly into Fineen Wycherley for a dozy early penalty concession.
We’re probably thinking “hit up and phase play” here with a deep contestable likely enough on phase two post runback but a sloppy, avoidable error kills that stone dead and allows Connacht onto the front foot early.
It was indicative of what was to come. The question is whether this is Munster playing to direct instruction – essentially “kick back any deep kicks to force Connacht to kick in turn from further back or risk a breakdown turnover” – or the guys involved just didn’t see the spaces. One of these is fixable pretty quickly. The other isn’t.
That kind of thing would be game plan specific, however, as I’ve seen Mike Haley in particular attack more comprehensively than this. We wanted to kick on our terms and drive the ball deeper than Connacht. What was more worrying was how we snatched at opportunities when we decided to keep the ball in hand.
Look at how many times you see the ball going to the edge in these sequences before a winger kicks long down the field to chase and pressure.
The first example in that montage is the most egregious, for me. Is that to instruction? To minimise risk as much as possible that we’re looking for a long kick to touch on that transition? In reality, we play this form of edge kick pressure quite a bit, especially when we’re in embedded defence mode. How often can you picture a ball going into the wide channels for Andrew Conway to kick and chase ahead? It happens a lot.
It can produce tries but it also relies on getting the bounce of the ball more often than not, as well as winning deep chases, which are a lottery of their own.
Our selection this week would suggest a change in tack, though. French and Zebo are not kick-chase wingers. They can apply pressure, sure, but that is an outside backline that I want to see attacking the line on transition. To do that, we need to be kicking deep from one wing while loading running assets on the other – I want Crowley taking kick returns with Haley, Zebo/French and Hodnett in support and having a crack off Ulster early. I’d love to see that kind of attacking overload to make Ulster think twice about kicking deep to us.
Sean French has a good chip and chase through too, actually, but I want to see us use Zebo and French – two big lads – as a pair of power wingers. Let’s go on-ball, let’s use Casey’s tempo and passing range, Crowley’s breaking threat and Scannell’s passing/kicking range to stress Ulster in possession.
It would be good for the vibes, yes, but I think it’s a winning strategy too.
