When I clock up the amount of rugby I watch every year, you won’t be at all surprised to know that Munster take up the vast majority of my time. The second team on that list has to be Ireland, right? Wrong. It’s Leinster. The well-worn cliché of “living in your head 24/7” is boring now – mainly because ‘ould lads got a hold of it and made it wacker than a 70-year-old parish priest trying to talk about why vaping is cool to seem relatable to a class of bored transition years – but Leinster do live in my head 24/7.
I’m charging them the going rate, of course, but I am obsessed with them make no mistake about that.
Why wouldn’t you be? They are Munster’s historic rivals who are winning everything we want to win over the last few years and who we are negatively compared with in the media and fan sphere every season for the last 10 years. They have the representation in the Ireland squad we want, they have the plaudits we want and, even worse, they are starting to perceive us as mid-tier rivals, if they don’t already. They just don’t look at Munster the way we look at them.
For Leinster, the real challenge these days is in France, with a lingering worry that the old boogeyman Saracens will rise from the ashes and knock their school books out of their arms again.
For Munster, we have to make ourselves rivals again – actual rivals – and being best buds and Team Of Ussers off the field, pretend enemies for 80 minutes isn’t going to cut it. Leinster don’t look at it that way or, rather, they didn’t when they were overhauling Munster in the late 2000s with all the spite, bile and venom you’d expect from a team who’d been eating crow for going on nine years at that point.
10 years into Leinster’s dominance, where is our spite? Where is our venom? Some will argue that spite won’t win the game but you won’t win the important games without it and this is an important game. Sure, there are league points at a crucial point in the season at stake and Shield placings too but this is as much about sending a message as it is about anything else.
It’s about respect. It’s about knowing that until Leinster hate us again – and I mean properly hate us – they will never rate us and we will never be where we need to be.
It has to start this weekend.
Leinster Rugby: 15. Hugo Keenan, 14. Jimmy O’Brien, 13. Garry Ringrose, 12. Robbie Henshaw, 11. James Lowe, 10. Ross Byrne, 9. Jamison Gibson Park, 1. Ed Byrne, 2. James Tracey, 3. Michael Ala’alatoa, 4. Devin Toner, 5. Jack Dunne, 6. Caelan Doris, 7. Josh Van Der Flier, 8. Jack Conan
Replacements: 16. Dan Sheehan, 17. Cian Healy, 18. Tadhg Furlong, 19. Ross Molony, 20. Josh Murphy, 21. Luke McGrath, 22. Ciaran Frawley, 23. Max Deegan
My obsession with Leinster is such that I can tell you that there is no one way to beat them.
It’s way, way more complex than that. I saw a segment ahead of the Leinster/Connacht game last weekend that had a lot of stuff like not conceding turnovers or penalties, which is all true, but it’s something of a truism. You don’t really want to be conceding turnovers and penalties against anyone and not against Leinster, certainly, but it’s far more complex than that.
That said, there is something to be said for a low-risk retention-first style of possession – like the one used by Ulster – that frustrates Leinster and forces them into competing at the breakdown if they don’t rate your ball carrying. Do Leinster rate Munster’s ball carrying impact? We’ll see in this game. If you can force Leinster into attacking the breakdown, there are penalties to be won because while they have good jackals, Leinster are best when they are stopping, slowing in contact and then bouncing out into the defensive line to smother you and encourage kicking. There are gains to be had when you surprise Leinster in contact based on their read of you pre-game.
In the last few seasons, Leinster have (correctly) not rated Munster physically and that, in turn, has led to Munster doubling down on the kicking game in an attempt to circumvent Leinster’s blanket defence. That effect is amplified when Leinster beef up their own long, deep kicking game to squeeze your territory, beat you up physically and see you scrambling for a kicking game that can lift the siege but, essentially, just hands the ball back to them so they can starve you of possession, squeeze penalties out of you and slowly – and sometimes not so slowly – pull away out of sight.
All of our recent sour losses to Leinster have looked just like that. No territory, forever on the backfoot, no collisions and a gradual sense of the game pulling away from us the way a car does from a barking dog.
So what are the hallmarks of a Leinster loss (or near loss) outside of not making errors and not conceding a tonne of penalties? I would say that there are key points
For me, there are three key points that are associated with Leinster losing or being in an incredibly close game and for Munster to win this game, I think we have to achieve at least two of the below.
- Leinster’s lineout runs at under 75%
- Leinster’s breakdown runs at under 95%
- Having over 53% possession and territory
Two of these are off-ball events, you’ll note, and they directly intersect with kicking (boo! hiss!). There’s no way Munster win this without a smart application of our kicking game as it pertains to (a) attacking Leinster’s throw in the lineout and (b) winning turnovers on transition. When it became clear during the week that Beirne wouldn’t make this game, the chances of Chris Cloete starting went through the roof because we need as many specialist jackal threats on the field as possible to slow down Leinster’s ruck speed – with all the knock-on effects that forces on Gibson-Park and Byrne – and force breakdown turnovers.
If we establish that threat early, Leinster will be more likely to go to the deeper kicking game of Gibson-Park and Byrne. From there, our work on transition and post-transition will have to be sharp but, initially, quite conservative. We want to load highballs onto Keenan/O’Brien and Lowe consistently – not to win it back off them directly but to attack the next ruck on transition. After that first ruck, we’ll need to powder their ball carriers off #9, choke them up to the verge of conceding a penalty for not releasing and use De Allende and Farrell to worry Byrne and stress his tendency to pass through the screen too often when he’s worried about contact.
Whatever happens, if we don’t load up on breakdown turnovers we will find it difficult going here unless we have the effect of slowing Leinster down on their recycle and earning turnovers off Gibson-Park or whoever Gibson-Park is passing to. We need to be happy defending Leinster on and around our 10m line, we need to be getting up and under their carriers with jackal threats lurking behind.
The biggest indicator of Leinster losing games is having a sub 95% breakdown.
When they lost at home to Ulster this season? 94% completion.
When they lost to La Rochelle in Europe last season? 94% completion.
When they lost to Cardiff in January? 92% completion.
When they struggled to put away the Lions a few weeks ago? 94% completion.
When Munster won in the RDS last season in the Rainbow Cup we did so while winning 15 turnovers.
That is the key.
When threatened in possession, Leinster will revert to the deep kicking game and this is where sides usually make the mistake of over-running back into them. Exeter did this, Connacht have done this regularly and it’s essential that we don’t fall into the same trap. When Leinster kick deep into our 22, we have to get the majority of those lineouts to touch in and around the halfway line so we can attack Tracey’s throw and the “Toner Paradox” in Leinster’s lineout. Toner’s biggest usage at this stage of his career is as a primary lineout target and caller but he’s never been heavier to lift. The lift feint on Toner is the easiest building point to hit Dunne and Doris (in his preferred Heavy Support Forward role) but that only works in the middle space of the lineout so I’d be loading up O’Mahony and Wycherley there to stress Leinster’s scheme.
When Leinster lost to Ulster in Ravenhill a few weeks ago? 71% completion at the lineout.
When Leinster almost lost to the Dragons back at the start of the season? 75% at the lineout.
We won’t get a chance to attack this facet of their game without playing it safe on transition, at least initially. This is where Daly and Nash will really have to be sharp because any errors in this part of the game will be a killer. I fully expect Carbery to drop into the backfield to cover the majority of Leinster’s reset kicks and how he goes in these moments will go a long way to deciding the momentum in this game.
