Leinster 27 Munster 13
“Tell me, do you bleed?
You will.”
―
I’m a connoisseur of watching Munster lose to Leinster. I am a sommelier of woe. I’ve watched Munster lose 13 times to Leinster in the last six seasons and of those games, I’ve watched them at least four times each. That’s 52 times I’ll have watched Leinster beat Munster across six seasons.
I’ve seen Munster lose to Leinster by far fewer points, by a lot more points and almost everything in between. This loss was different.
To get the full context, we need to look at the difference in relative strength.
Leinster were able to name a starting XV with seven current starting-level internationals, two more on the bench and a tonne of 50+ cap provincial stalwarts braced around them (and Cian Healy). Their least experienced starting forward was Scott Penny with 41 caps and their least experienced back was Jamie Osbourne with 19 caps. I thought that would have been Jimmy O’Brien before I checked but he’s got 53 Leinster caps. Fifty-three.
Munster’s most experienced current internationals were Murray and Carbery while only seven of the other 21 players reached that mythical Jimmy O’Brien watermark of 53 caps.
By any metric you want to look at, Leinster’s side that took the field for the kickoff was a good 20/30 points better on paper.
You had the starting Irish midfield pairing that some people say should start for the Lions in three years. You had the generational talent of Irish Rugby at #10 playing a rare enough full 80 minutes in a URC game at 38 years of age. A core Irish starter in the back row. The first choice lock pairing Leinster have been building to all season, including the 6’8″, 125KG second row they signed at a hefty premium from Munster. An all-test regular front row. Lions on the bench.
I know what should have happened here. I’ve seen it enough times.
But it just… didn’t.
It was still a loss, don’t get me wrong. A bonus point loss, in fact. On paper, no different than both games last season.
On grass?
A very different story.
***
What I wanted from Munster in this game first and foremost was spite.
The result would take care of itself, as it always does, but for Munster, the embarrassment of the previous two fixtures had to be answered on the field. Our two last defeats to Leinster in Thomond Park and the Aviva within six weeks of each other were the epitomai of a team who wanted to let their rugby do the talking but, when the moment came to speak, Leinster slapped the mic right out of their hands.
This is, first and foremost, a physical game. Without respect between the teams – proper, physical respect – one side will always bully the other. This isn’t primary school. There are no teachers to ensure everyone plays nice. There is a referee there to enforce the laws but the amount of talking between the teams – with the physical exchanges as words and sentences – that can exist in the lanes between those laws is staggering.
Last season we were too shy, too quiet, and too soft. That’s, ultimately, why we lost regardless of what else happened. This year, we were none of those things and lost because of obvious errors and attrition. These are two very different things.
Have a look at Munster’s contact work in the rucks following this scrum launch;
Dominant, aggressive, and it leaves a mark.
Sure, it’s a small window in the context of the game overall, but there’s no patty-cake, happy to be here buddy ball in this sequence or, when you go looking, in any sequence. That isn’t to say that we were outstanding here – we weren’t, not by any means – but I said I wanted more fight, more aggression and more bottle and I got that in spades.
Some of that comes down to a janky system fit at #9 – Murray played OK, for me, but his speed of service is an issue that was highlighted by Patterson’s performance off the bench – and some of it is down to players not seeing the opportunity in front of them.
These are the moments you have to take against Leinster, especially when we’d managed to ride out their typically high Pass Per Carry start to the game.
Some of that initial defensive resistance was down to luck, don’t get me wrong. Leinster made a few unforced errors that, on another day, would have led to at least a seven-point start but you’ve got to ride your luck and we did. How many times have you seen Johnny Sexton fuck up a screen like this? Probably once or twice ever?
But you take those all day when they arrive – it’s like finding €20 in an old jacket pocket. If Leinster’s high PPC game doesn’t blow you away inside the first 20 minutes you’ve always got a chance because the higher the PPC, the higher the energy output to sustain it. There’s always a drop-off when they start that way – especially with the pack they selected – so Munster began to quietly creep back into the game.
Look at how slow Jenkins and Ryan are to get back to their feet here;
Rory Scannell bought a handy penalty and we should have taken a 3-0 off the resultant penalty we won off the lineout. We would complete that a few minutes later and take an unlikely lead. After Leinster burned out their initial high PPC output, they returned to a more direct kicking game off Sexton – again, this is something that we know Leinster do, almost like clockwork – but our work on kick transition was much improved on last season, even if we left multiple try scoring opportunities slip.
Why is our kick transition better? Because after we receive a kick return from the opposition, we slip into a comfortable 3-2-X shape that suits the depth and width we want to get on transition.
There was more moments just like this where a pass needed to go but didn’t. But we know the shape and the structure is creating windows – even against an elite opponent – so we also know that with the right personnel and time, these reviewed moments will translate to the field as tries, rather than potential tries.
After we took the lead early in the second half – in line with catching Leinster slipping after a big first 20 minutes – they rolled on their bench power and that’s where things started to unravel.
As the game wore on, Munster began to lose power as Kleyn left the field early and two of our starting front row had to do 80 minutes because of injuries elsewhere. Jeremy Loughman played 50 minutes at loosehead and the final half hour + a 10-minute sin-bin as a tighthead, to give you an example of where we were both pre-game and mid-game when it came to injuries.
Two poor bits of maul defence allowed Leinster to snatch back the lead and, eventually, creep out to a two-score advantage heading into the last 15 minutes. Those two poor moments will be particularly frustrating because we did so well to scramble on Leinster’s high PPC game only to fall foul of their close-range maul game that we always knew was there. Sure, we were down our heaviest lock at that point, but some of our defensive work was far from good enough regardless of who was on the field.
Given the relative strength and current international quality available to both sides, I’m pretty happy with how Munster did overall despite the loss. Is that defeatist? Maybe it is but, remember, I’ve watched Munster lose to Leinster 52 times in the last few years. I know woe. I also know what it’s like to see Munster beaten out the gate in this fixture regardless of whether or not the scoreboard says it was a close game or not and this was far from that with no Casey, no Beirne, no O’Mahony, no Salanoa, no Wycherley brothers, no Fekitoa, no Snyman, no Kendellen, no Frisch, no Edogbo, no Haley, no Zebo, no Earls, no Conway, no names upon injured names upon names on and on into the ever-darkening distance.
After the game, Graham Rowntree spoke to the press and said;
“I’m proud of the lads, I just told them.
There’s a sombre mood in there. Some young men that wanted to do better. I thought they deserved better than the scoreline. But I’m proud of them.
I asked them to fight, keep fighting, get off the floor, keep fighting.
I asked them to be brave and they did that.”
With a bit more quality, a little more composure and even a slightly smaller injury list I think we close the gap even further but that’s steam in the wind. Ultimately, I like what this team represented on the day, namely Munster in the middle of a massive rebuild scrapping like there was no tomorrow while the season is already in motion against a Leinster side four or five years into their developmental peak.
We still have a tonne of problems with players being poor system fits and players not seeing the opportunities that open in front of them. That will come? Yes, but each passing game where we lose cranks a little more pressure on the next with an injury list growing by the minute, it seems.
These last two games have shown us, in different ways against both the Bulls and Leinster, that what we’re trying to do works and that, with the right approach, we can get where we need to go. I think what this game showed us is that the raw materials are there but we’ve still got a distance to travel from a quality perspective, obviously, but also when it comes to pulling the trigger fully during the physical exchanges at the breakdown. We were much better than in previous games but we’re still not fully “going there” as a collective. When that comes, we’ll make the big man in the blue suit do more than just bleed.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | ★★★★ |
| Keynan Knox | ★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| Thomas Ahern | ★★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★ |
| John Hodnett | ★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★ |
| Liam Coombes | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
| Dan Goggin | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★★★ |
| Scott Buckley | N/A |
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★ |
| James French | DNP |
| Jack O'Sullivan | N/A |
| Ruadhan Quinn | ★★★ |
| Paddy Patterson | ★★★ |
| Ben Healy | ★★ |
| Patrick Campbell | ★★★ |
