Munster vs Leinster hasn’t been a proper rivalry for years.
By my count, the last time you could call this anything other than a geographical rivalry was a four-year period between 2013 and 2017 where Munster won four games and Leinster won four games in an eight-game “series”, of sorts, over four seasons that encompassed the end of Rob Penney’s tenure, Anthony Foley’s two seasons as head coach and Rassie Erasmus’ single season in charge.
Since then, Munster have played Leinster 14 times and won two of those games. Sure, from 2017/18 on Munster were playing an ascendant Leinster side that would win a European Cup that same season and then four league titles in a row but even on the balance of averages, Munster should still, even accidentally, have won more than 14% of the games between the two across six years and five seasons. The curiosities of the short-lived PRO14/16 conference system meant that for three seasons in a row, Munster would travel up to the RDS in May to play Leinster in a league semi-final… and then lose. Not every loss was the same, of course. Some of the games were very close, some were those irritating games that we would have won on another day but then that other day never came. At the end of that six-year, five-season stretch the gap was widening whenever Munster took the field against Leinster, regardless of how both sides were doing outside of that fixture.
Last season was something of a nadir when it came to the relationship between the two clubs, certainly from a Munster perspective. Two games, two facile, slapless, humiliating losses where Leinster all but dismissed us without so much as a second thought. First with their proper team in Thomond Park, then again with their B team while the proper team looked on laughing their heads off in a corporate box mid-way up the Aviva Stadium.
To make it worse, Munster seemed to take our beating in typical good grace and jolly humour. Some of our lads were walking off the field giggling and tee-hee-ing with the Leinster Select XV team that had just humiliated them in front of their travelling fans once again with such relish that you’d swear the loss meant nothing for them.
They were Johann’s Better Men, so conditioned to clapping victorious blue jerseys off the field in a tunnel that I felt some of them had to be restrained from doing it at halftime. There’s a whole 40 minutes left lads – just wait.
In the press conference the Tuesday after that game, Stephen Larkham and Conor Murray admitted that training hadn’t been right in the build-up to that game. It seemed that the Johann’s Better Men were still grief-stricken after the penalty shoot-out loss to Toulouse two weeks earlier. I mean, we knew that anyway though, right? When the head coach is crying on the field after losing a quarter-final when there is another trophy to win, the season is over. Done. Washed. Larkham and Murray were more or less doing the same thing on the presser, just not as overt. I came off that call knowing full well that Munster weren’t going to be winning shit in the Kingspan that coming Saturday.
And we didn’t. We were beaten, packed off and tucked into the night lands for the summer.
The problem with that Munster side of the last six years was that we never believed we were capable of beating Leinster.
We might have talked about it. Some lads might have even half-believed it at times. I genuinely believe we knew how to do it, by the way, but when it came to it we were always let down by the lads who knew their place when it came to Leinster. That place was near the touchline, taking their tape off wearily as they clapped Leinster off the field. After six years, you are what you are and, by the end of year six, we were a team that lost to Leinster every single time without fail, even when it seemed like the law of averages would actually pop up a fluke win once every few games.
In 2020/21, for example, we were beating Leinster with 10 minutes to go in Thomond Park but somehow conspired to lose to them all the same. In 2019/20 we had 52% possession, Leinster made 14 turnovers and 193 tackles and we spent most of the game camped in their half but if we’d been out there for a week we wouldn’t have scored a try. We lost that one 6-13.
In the PRO14 semi-final of 2019/20, we had huge momentum in the third quarter of that game only to see JJ Hanrahan miss two key penalties that would have brought us back to within a score with the last quarter to go but we ended up losing 16-3 in the end regardless.
Then you had last season’s games where we took the field as beaten dockets and the 80 minutes that followed confirmed our suspicions. The one in Thomond Park was the worst, with Caelan Doris talking to the TV cameras after about how much he loves playing in Thomond Park. Sure why wouldn’t he? He gets to be applauded by his Ireland teammates until their hands are sore every time.
What maddened me was that it didn’t seem to bother our senior players in any real fashion. Conor Murray gets dumped on the ground and roughed up by James Lowe in Thomond Park two metres away from our captain and… nothing. O’Mahony just watched him do it. It wouldn’t happen against any other team, I’m sure of it. Maybe Peter O’Mahony was too busy thinking of the #TeamOfThemUs photo shoot coming up for the summer tour of New Zealand. Can’t be making that awkward. “Ah that’s just Lowezo, he doesn’t really mean it”. But he did. Because when James Lowe plays for Leinster, he doesn’t give a shit about the #TeamOfUs – none of the Leinster players do. You’re just another team to be beaten. They’re all about Leinster.
If that was Stuart Hogg doing that to Conor Murray, what do you think O’Mahony would have done? Would he have just stood back and done nothing?
I think we all know the answer to that.
That has to change.
This week, I watched the Redeem Team documentary on Netflix about the USA basketball team in 2008. They had finished third in 2004 – an embarrassing loss for the USA basketball team whichever way you want to cut it – so, ahead of a big game against Spain, Kobe Bryant was looking for a way to get his team off on the right foot and put a hard defensive foul on his LA Lakers teammate Pau Gasol, who was a big player for Spain.
It was no accident.
LeBron James: “Kobe said he was gonna set the tone to start the game and he said, ‘I’m running through Pau’s f***ing chest.'”
Dwyane Wade: “‘First play of the game I’m running through Pau Gasol.’ And we was like, ‘What?'”
LeBron James: “Man, you trippin’. Man, that’s your teammate. You ain’t about to do that.”
Dwyane Wade: “He said, ‘First play of the game, I know what they’re gonna run.’ And he knew Pau was gonna be the last screen and he said, ‘I’m running through that motherf***er.'”
LeBron James: “I swear, the first play of the game [he did it]. We was like, ‘Holy s***.'”
Who’s going to be our Kobe Bryant here? Who’s going to be the first guy to run through a blue jersey with no thoughts about the losses that came before or what it’ll mean when you’re wearing a green jersey?
Who’s going to put a bit of respect back into that red jersey regardless of who’s selected?
I guess we’ll see. The fewer players with Ireland familiarity the better as far as I’m concerned.
Leinster Rugby: 15. Ciarán Frawley, 14. Jimmy O’Brien, 13. Garry Ringrose, 12. Robbie Henshaw, 11. Jamie Osborne, 10. Johnny Sexton, 9. Luke McGrath; 1. Cian Healy, 2. Dan Sheehan, 3. Tadhg Furlong, 4. Jason Jenkins, 5. James Ryan, 6. Max Deegan, 7. Scott Penny, 8. Caelan Doris
Replacements: 16. John McKee, 17. Andrew Porter, 18. Michael Ala’alatoa, 19. Ross Molony, 20. Jack Conan, 21. Nick McCarthy, 22. Ross Byrne, 23. Rob Russell
It’s hard to know what to make of Leinster this season.
They’re five for five without necessarily blowing away anyone – the Sharks aside, perhaps – but at the same time I’d be reluctant to say that they should have been beaten in any of those games, bar maybe away against Zebre where they really lost control of the contest towards the end and arguably Ulster where they didn’t really show that much at all outside the first 20 minutes.
All in all, though, Leinster have been doing a good job of playing much “bigger” than they did last season to the naked eye but if you track their PPC across the five games so far you can see a trend of their behaviour depending on the opposition.
- Game 1: 1.46 Zebre – 15 turnovers
- Game 2: 1.46 Benneton – 16 turnovers
- Game 3: 1.06 Ulster – 14 turnovers
- Game 4: 1.00 Sharks – 8 turnovers
- Game 5: 1.50 Connacht – 13 turnovers
When Leinster expect to have a physical advantage, their Pass Per Carry intent goes up to 1.4+ plus and turnovers go with them. When they expect the physical exchanges to be much closer their PPC intent goes right down to one in an attempt to cut down on turnovers, retain possession and “play big”, especially off the set piece. In this regard, we can see the Ulster game is something of an outlier because they had a low PPC rating for that game but the turnover count of a much higher PPC game from their perspective.
Is it any shock to remember that Leinster might well have ended up drawing that game if not for some scandalously poor finishing/excellent defence by Ulster’s Aaron Sexton?
For Munster, the ideal outcome here would be a low PPC game from Leinster with a high number of turnovers but that comes down to Leinster’s rating of Munster physically pre-game. If they think they can bully us, they’ll go high PPC which will make them more dangerous but also open them to the turnovers and errors that have hurt them at different points of the Zebre, Benetton and Connacht games. Let’s call this Plan L, for Leinstertainment. If they think we’re close to physical parity, they might see fit to pull back their PPC to a tighter, narrower game where they can concentrate more on retaining the ball, punishing us close in, winning penalties, kicking deep and then mauling over from close range. Let’s call this Plan A.
Looking at both selections, I’m unsure as to what Leinster will do. They are set up for Plan A but should be capable of launching Plan L given the disparity in selection between both sides.
There’s wiggle room there for Munster if Leinster flit between both states.
***
The one place to consistently hurt Leinster whether they play Plan A or Plan L is their lineout.
When Leinster have struggled in the past 12 months, it’s been because the opposition have deliberately targeted their lineout at every single point on the field – even at the risk of a runover maul try at close range – and spooked their calling structure, throwers and their lineout menu.
The Bulls did it, most notably, and there’s an opportunity here for Munster to do the same.
In most cases, Leinster don’t really look to attack the tail of the lineout. I won’t say they never hit the tail – because they do – but they are a side that mostly hits the front or middle, enough for it to be notable, despite what their cut-out action or sway feints say.
You have to be aware of two key concepts with their team selection for this game;
- Jenkins is the key to their new lineout structure.
- They will look to build their short-range maul drives around Caelan Doris as a jumper, James Ryan as the inside lifter with Cian Healy as the outside lifter.
- They will want to use Jason Jenkins as a pusher, not a jumper or a lifter if their intent is to maul.
When we examine what Leinster want to do at the lineout and where they typically like to exert control, I can only come to one conclusion. Munster, and Tom Ahern in particular, needs to counter-launch on everything – everything – at the front of the middle of the lineout.
If we look at Leinster’s pack build they’ve got Ryan, Jenkins, Deegan and Doris as their primary jumping core. Doris is typically used as a guy to hold forwards in midfield on Leinster’s favoured 5+1 outside the opposition 22 so that leaves a core of Deegan, Ryan and Jenkins as their main lineout group with Penny as the +1.
If Leinster typically want to use Jenkins as a lifter and a maul “engine” in behind the lifting pod, that means Leinster must focus most of their throws onto either Deegan or Ryan. Ryan will call the lineout in the middle, Deegan will typically rotate to the front as the cut-out/sway option and Ryan will run the middle as the caller. At a basic level, if Ahern (and O’Donoghue as a secondary counter-launcher in the middle on Ryan) can attack with that big wingspan between the front of the lineout and the front of the middle of the lineout, Munster can stress Leinster’s lineout schemes, pressure Ryan as the caller and pressure Sheehan’s throwing.
Essentially, Munster will have to invert Ahern’s position relative to Jenkins. If Jenkins is at the front of the middle, position Ahern at the back of the middle. If Jenkins is at the tail of the lineout, move Ahern to the front to launch the second Sheehan moves his arms backwards. We can then use O’Donoghue to “mark” whatever space is left with a particular focus on Ryan’s pod.
If we can disrupt Leinster at the lineout, we’ll be closer to getting parity – even with the disparity in experience across both teamsheets.
