Whatever about the rest of the season and all it may hold, this was one of the Good Days.
Elements of the performance featured the same inefficiencies and frustrations as other big games this season, I think that’s fair to say but, at the same time, there was the hard edge, grit, heart, bollocks and quality that runs like an iron rod through the spine of this club.
That would appear to be the juxtaposition at the heart of the last few months. Munster are a very good side but sometimes I feel like there are key elements holding us back from showing a complete performance in different games against different opponents for different reasons.
One of the consistent issues, for me, has been the balancing of our on-ball and off-ball states. This directly correlates to our kicking game – when we decide to kick, how we decide to kick and then, in turn, how we react on defensive transitions. Our performance in this game was illustrative of the best of our off-ball game and the downsides of it.
From a defensive perspective, we straight up destroyed Exeter at the breakdown. Getting your opponent under 95% completion on their ruck is a good achievement at the elite end of the game but Munster managed to bring them down to 91% here and it arguably won the game for us.
This is just a small selection of our work on the floor which really paired well against a bigger, heavier but less nimble opposition pack. If they won collisions – and they did – our poaching ability would allow us to win the race to the ball against heavier, possibly slightly overstretched, opposition support forwards.
This crucial penalty in the second half is a good example of that very concept.
Kirsten was caught out of position in a flow situation and doesn’t have the speed or agility to keep up with the play as it breaks. When O’Donoghue was in a position to poach there was no legal way for Kirsten to prevent it without rolling the dice on a side entry. That kind of moment is directly related to your pack build and Exeter’s five lock pack was always going to be vulnerable when things went off-script.
To get the benefit of that possible advantage, it meant that Exeter would almost have to have a lot of possession because if we kicked to them a lot – and we did – they will usually tend to turn that into long stretches of possession. I spoke before the game about what Exeter would look to play – off-ball or on-ball or a blend. We seemed to make that decision for them, at least initially. When you win breakdown turnovers or force errors in that scenario, great, but when you don’t? You concede a lot of ground, burn a lot of calories and leak points.
As an example, a kicking error from Murray in the second half lead to an Exeter lineout which lead to 16 phases of possession that ended with a penalty on the 5m line. Exeter converted that into five points after a series of tap and go penalties but that was 16+ phases where we didn’t get a stop or a poach or a referee’s decision and Exeter just kept driving forward.
This is the risk of playing an off-ball strategy but, in reality, we’re built to play that way. Any side that has Beirne, Coombes, O’Mahony, O’Donoghue Cloete, Hodnett, Kendellen, even De Allende and Wycherley in their ranks is going to put a lot of weight on winning or stressing jackal turnovers. When it works, you get a game like this where Munster can lift sieges, attack on transition and move down the field through penalties. When it doesn’t, you get that Leinster game from two weekends back where you only get the ball back when the opposition score, make an unforced error or kick the ball of their own volition.
It is a game of risk that, for a time in the third quarter, looked like it was threatening to slip away from us. Exeter are a good side – not a great side – but they are very difficult to beat when they play their game and they did that for long stretches. They are comfortable rolling off #9 and using their heavy runners to make incremental gains. Sure, we disrupted them at the breakdown but they would have been confident enough that, with just a few more possessions, they could have got more of the sequences that they wanted. Remember, right up until the 60th minute Exeter were ahead on aggregate. Right up until this bit of game-defining grit and bollocks from Peter O’Mahony, Jack O’Donoghue, John Hodnett and Fineen Wycherley. I’m going to give most of the credit to O’Mahony on this one, though.
Nothing too much to analyze about that. It’s just desire from a top-class player and there was a lot of that on show here. Carbery, De Allende, O’Mahony, Earls – a majority of the senior guys who needed a big one had a big one that was defined by winning a tonne of little moments when it mattered.
Carbery’s goal kicking was superb, yes, but he was also looking really sharp in possession and, when we attacked, he was genuinely attacking Exeter’s pack build. I spoke before the game about the issues that can arise when you don’t have a small forward in your pack build or some other build of player that’s capable of covering the wider spaces athletically. It’s not about winning breakdown turnovers – plenty of heavier players can do that – it’s about literally being able to cover lateral space between a compression point and the space targeted by the opposition.
Without Sam Simmonds and Luke Cowan-Dickie, Exeter were always going to be vulnerable to getting accordioned. This phenomenon is unique to any pack build that doesn’t have small forwards in it. Essentially you need to drag the ball to the middle of the field, compress the opposition forward line around multiple tight ruck points and then look to attack the space that should be there to the open side of the phase as their backline scrambles to cover the space left guarded by tight forwards.
The easiest way to start a sequence like that is off a set piece and that’s exactly what Munster did.
That’s well-executed stuff, for the most part, and showed that we got where we could get at Exeter in a controlled way. I still feel our transition work – kick and breakdown – could have been a lot sharper to exaggerate the effect even more but it got the job done when it was needed.
That leads us to Toulouse once again. Exeter, game, tough and hard as they are, are not the yardstick in Europe for this Munster side. Toulouse most certainly are the yardstick so we’ll see where we’re at in three weeks. Back into a European quarter-final? Against a Toulouse side packed with Grand Slam-winning French stars?
Bring it on.
With a Munster crowd like this behind them, I’d back Munster to do anything against anyone. Dare to believe, dare to hope and dare to be loud because when the Munster supporters show up like this, only the best of the best can stop us.
Is that Toulouse? I guess we’ll see.
Notable Players
This was a big game for Joey Carbery. A very big game. I think it’s fair to say that Carbery’s time at Munster has been in two segments. This first half a season he spent here was as exciting as it gets. Then he got injured and stayed injured for two full seasons, pretty much. Since his return to action at the tail end of last season and the start of this one, he’s been a guy finding his feet, building match sharpness and learning who he is as a player in 2022. We know the guy in 2018/19 was a top guy in waiting, but what about the player in 2022?
On the evidence of this game, he’s starting to really pull it together. He was sharp with the ball in hand, he kicked well, he was an assassin off the tee but, almost more importantly, he looked to have his eye in for what his body was capable of and he looked all the better for it.
This version of Carbery scaling up and up can win Munster a trophy. Long may it continue to scale because this was really good. ★★★★★
Damien De Allende is a world-class player and when you put world-class players in a position to succeed, they do just that. When we were struggling at points in this game, De Allende just kept putting his hand up for everything from donkey work to the kind of world-class trail line that saw him score the winner. He finally got his Thomond Park moment and man, was it ever badly needed and well timed. ★★★★★
I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Peter O’Mahony would show up for this game. None. He was as bad as I’ve ever seen him against Leinster and that will have stung him as much as anyone. When Peter O’Mahony is “on”, he will win a game for you in what seems like a single-handed display of game-turning defiance. When he’s “off”, the game can seem to pass him by and, while it happens way less than his detractors would like, that’s what happened against Leinster.
Even with that, I knew that he would have a Big One here. This was his Paul O’Connell at the Stoop moment and he didn’t disappoint with a display of peak Bad Bastardry. It had a bit of everything, offensive and defensive excellence at the breakdown, top-class lineout work on both sides of the throw, super handling, aggressive running and just grit.
Borderline unplayable. ★★★★★
The Wally Ratings: Exeter (H)
The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.
Players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Josh Wycherley | ★★★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| Fineen Wycherley | ★★★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★★★ |
| John Hodnett | ★★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★★★★ |
| Simon Zebo | ★★★★ |
| Damian De Allende | ★★★★★ |
| Chris Farrell | ★★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★ |
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★★ |
| Jason Jenkins | ★★★ |
| Thomas Ahern | ★★★ |
| Craig Casey | ★★★★ |
| Ben Healy | DNP |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★★ |
