A five-day turnaround is brutal in this game but it’s doubly cruel when you consider that it’s backed up by a six-day turnaround from the week before.
When those two games are two bruising interpros in a scenario where you’re already carrying your usual tranche of injuries in the pack and you can understand how Munster’s selection this week might give the impression that we’re “limping” into this one. Last week against Ulster wasn’t a must-win game in my opinion if you want to talk about Munster’s ultimate aim this season to make the top 5 of the URC relatively comfortably, but win it we did. As a result, that means that this week has become a must-win game with a bit of a focus on picking up a bonus point on the way.
The Emirates Lions are currently two slots below us on the log in 11th place. A win for us here would begin our slow creep into the top eight proper with the four sides one win above us in the table all facing a few tricky fixtures this weekend but over the next few rounds too.
This is where we need to start picking up momentum and driving up the table and you know what that means – this one has to be a W, and no two ways about it.
Emirates Lions: 15. Quan Horn, 14. Stean Pienaar, 13. Henco Van Wyk, 12. Marius Louw (c), 11. Edwill Van Der Merwe, 10. Jordan Hendrikse, 9. Morne Van Den Berg; 1. JP Smith, 2. PJ Botha, 3. Asenathi Ntlabakanye, 4. Ruan Venter, 5. Darrien Landsberg, 6. Jarod Cairns, 7. Emile Van Heerden, 8. Emmanuel Tshitsuka
Replacements: 16. Michael Van Vuuren, 17. Morgan Naude, 18. Ruan Smith, 19. Willem Alberts, 20. Sibusiso Sangweni, 21. Andre Warner, 22. Gianni Lombard, 23. Manuel Rass
The Emirates Lions have been pretty impressive this season all things considered. They lost three core players in the off-season – Vincent Tshitsuka, Carlü Sadie and Burger Odendall – along with a few others but that’s been the way of things for the Lions in the last few years.
When we played them last season in Ellis Park we did really well right up until altitude kicked the brown stuff out of us and the Lions did the same in the last 30 minutes. All in all, we gave up a 14-0 lead and a 21-10 lead respectively during that game and left the field battered and heaving. The thin air and hot sun had a good laugh at us that day but now it’s our turn to show them some Cork weather. Yep, that’s right, it’s Musgrave Park in January so that means it’s dark, it’s windy and it’s lashing rain from angles you didn’t even know existed.
Welcome to Cork, bais.
If only we had some recent examples of the Lions playing away from home at sea level on a 4G pitch in rotten weather conditions. Good news! We do. A few rounds ago, the Lions played against Cardiff on a stormy wet Friday night and won that fixture 31-18.
The Lions usually kick quite long per kick from a raw distance POV if you look at their seasonal stats but that’s typically something they tend to do at home. Up north, they’ve tended to play a more “close quarters” type of kicking game that has tried to utilise the power advantage they have over most teams they face.
Now, true, they’ve rotated out some of their top players for this game – not all – so that might change the context of their kicking logic but I think in the projected weather conditions, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them pull it back. We’ll have to be super solid under the high ball, obviously, but we must be particularly mindful not to give up too many opportunities to Edwill Van Der Merwe in a close-range transition off a box kick.
From an offensive perspective, I think we’re a really bad match-up for this Lions side who tend to drop off on multi-phase or go looking for huge blitz moments from midfield or the edge, which is exaggerated even further off the scrum. They’ll consistently give up huge space in their backfield behind each winger if the scrumhalf breaks off the scrum laterally, so there’ll be an onus on Patterson to find this space out the back.
The key to hurting the Lions is similar to the type of tip-on and screen-layered game that we played against Ulster but with a particular focus – their captain Marius Louw. Louw is a big, big hitter. No one in the URC has more dominant hits than him this season but, by the same token, no other player has missed as many tackles. Some of these are angled scrags, yes, technical misses essentially but he gives up big missed blitzes and misreads as often as he nukes someone in contact.
If we can keep the accuracy and variety we’ve shown at 10/12/13 over the last few weeks, we can hurt the Lions if we settle into our scrum and lineout without too much disruption. If we’re accurate there, we’ll score tries and put this game away without too much fuss.
