[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]F[/su_dropcap]airytales aren’t real and stories don’t always have a happy ending. At least as far as this PRO14 season is concerned anyway. Munster’s PRO14 dreams ended in Dublin, just as they always have over the last three seasons. We can now a fourth to the list except this time we get runner-up medals.
They will be of scant consolation.
The scoreboard says that this was a 10 point game but make no mistake, this was a 20 point beating that was kept somewhat respectable by some admirable Munster defence.
Leinster didn’t need Dan Leavy. Leinster didn’t need Caelan Doris. Leinster didn’t need Johnny Sexton. They didn’t need James Ryan. Why? Because in Cian Healy, Andrew Porter, Ronán Kelleher and Tadhg Furlong, they had the diesel power in their front five to punish us repeatedly on both sides of the ball.
I’ve been saying variants of this for the last few years, right? Forward domination. Lost collisions. It feels familiar to even be writing this. Why am I still writing it? Because the physics of this game have not changed in the last four years and, if anything, they have become more profound. The old truism says “no-scrum, no-win”. It’s a truism for a reason but if we want to add a bit of profundity to it, we could easily expand it to “no front-five, no-win”. It isn’t that Munster don’t have a front five – I think we have a good front five – it’s just that Leinster have a top-class front five, and front row, in particular, that enhances everything they do.
We have a tendency to individualise players performances in this game. I get the irony of writing this in a match review that trades on rating players individually, believe me. What I mean to say is that rugby is particular in that players are uniquely interdependent on each other to succeed. In basketball, one player can put a team on his back and carry them through a season. In rugby, it’s really down to units. All of the units are important in their own way but the front five is the most important. When you look at all the teams that have been consistently successful at test and club level over the last few years, the one constant is a quality front five.
If we look at the dominant sides at a European level in the three replacement front row era, we see;
Peak Saracens: 1. Vunipola/Barringdon, 2. George/Woolstencroft, 3. Lamositele/Koch, 4. Itoje, 5. Kruis/Skelton
Peak Toulon: 1. Chiocci/Menini, 2. Craig Burden/Orioli, 3. Hayman/Castrogiovanni, 4. Botha/Williams, 5. Roussouw/Suta
Look at the common denominator – size and power in key front five positions.
When we look at Leinster’s ascension to being the team that has dominated the PRO14 for the last four years – with European Cup win in 2018 – we can see the same trend, even looking at yesterday’s selection that “weakened” by injuries to James Ryan.
2021 Leinster: 1. Healy/Byrne, 2. Kelleher/Tracey, 3. Porter/Furlong, 4. Toner, 5. Fardy
As an aside, the conversation that seems to be taking place about turning Porter back into a loosehead is, for me, absolute madness for Ireland and Leinster because of the devastating one-two punch that Leinster can roll off the bench in those tighthead jerseys. It’s the perfect power output and combination. When Leinster combine that 80-minute power-package with an athlete like Kelleher (who they left on the field for 70 minutes here) and an established, heavy-hitting veteran like Cian Healy, you have a physical blend in the front five that enhances everything you do.
When you have that physical anchor, you don’t necessarily “need” James Ryan because the combination in the front row both starting and off the bench gives them a platform to play off against Munster as we are currently constructed. I think a fit RG Snyman certainly helps but I still think Leinster’s front row and replacements would have been a key point of difference regardless.
We have good players there but when it comes to projecting power onto the opposition consistently, Leinster’s front row and replacements are on a different level, physically speaking. Look at their usage rate in this game offensively, defensively and at the breakdown.
Healy with 9 carries. Kelleher with 9 carries and 12 tackles. Porter with 12 carries. Furlong with 6 carries. They all had a tonne of offensive breakdown arrivals, latches and added collision wins.
They have small moments too, where they impose their power differential. Look at these two moments.
We slip off tackles and don’t impact Kelleher or the collision point in any meaningful way, Leinster consistently impact in these moments. They are small moments of physicality that nudge you towards where you need to be to win big games. Munster have previously managed to play around this, for the most part, by kicking and chasing really well. The box kick is ugly but when it is effective, it actively negates a lot of Leinster’s size advantage. We have used that tactic to work around the fundamental truth that Leinster are bigger than us in the front five as a collective. When it doesn’t work – and it didn’t here – we are left looking like a team that can’t impact Leinster effectively.
Look at this kicking exchange as an example. The key moments are Kearney and Keenan making great takes with Conway unable to pressure the receipt on the landing effectively. After Keenan’s take and break, we need to punish him for running into our front row but we fail to impact the moment. Dave Kearney dominantly cleans out Scannell but we aren’t folding with the pattern of play.
By the time Leinster have rotated through another phase, we are numbers down on the openside of the ruck and Van Der Flier has space and momentum to attack. That creates a linebreak, which creates options for Leinster. Only an excellent defensive read from Earls on the next phase prevented what looked like a certain try.
Lost collisions, on both sides of the ball, have been something we have consistently tried to box kick our way around but if it’s even a hair off, we look like we’re a cruiserweight boxing with a heavyweight because we have to play more set phases. Look at this moment early in the game where we managed some decent possession in their 22-50.
The initial collision between Ryan and Porter sees Ryan lose the collision point while technically getting to the gain line. What does this mean? It means that while Ryan has not dominantly lost the collision and gone backwards, he has not knocked Porter off as a threat so we have to burn two other forwards to recycle the possession. Our ruck is slow and by the time we recycle, Leinster have 12 men in the line with targets picked and comfortable backfield coverage.
When we look at how Munster lost this game, there are always lost collisions on both sides of the ball at the root of it.
Here’s a good example.
A dominantly lost collision off #9 drives us nearly 10m back from the gainline and we knock on as we try to reset. We concede a penalty at the scrum and then Leinster just pick and go until they get to the tryline.
We held them up once on this sequence but when they secured the ball off the resulting 5m scrum, there was an air of inevitability about what would come next.
At that point, 13-6 looked like an insurmountable deficit based on what we had seen to that point.
We pushed for a little bit with Healy and Porter off the field – Furlong took a while to get going – but we were let down by forwards not winning collision points, getting stripped of the ball and failing to impact the Leinster line consistently.
When our kicking and chasing game didn’t fire, it came back to our on-ball physicality and, like the last PRO14 semi-final back in September, they pieced us up in defence. In truth, we had very little for them. We looked tired, flat and incapable of breaking down Leinster for more than an odd phase or two here or there.
The focus will naturally fall on the coaches – and the head coach – after a defeat like this. There will be a clamour for change because Munster’s record against Leinster has not changed. This would be somewhat more bearable if Leinster were not plainly the best team in the league and a major player in Europe but they are. For the moment, Munster are certainly a top side in the PRO14 and capable of some big results on our day in Europe but when it comes down to big games against sides with physically imposing front fives, we are reliant on refereeing decisions going our way at the breakdown to overcome the power disadvantage we regularly give up in those contests. When we don’t get those decisions, we end up defending for long stretches. Leinster, as an example, don’t need a ref to reward the poach because they don’t really go for them. Offensively, they just need a referee to ignore their offensive breakdown entries 25% of the time to be brutally effective.
Why did it look so “easy” for them at times in this game? Because they played up to and beyond the edge in the collision points in contact and at the breakdown. We did not or, rather, could not do so to the same level.
Van Graan can rightly point to RG Snyman’s long term injury being a major factor in Munster looking exactly the same against Leinster in this final as we have done repeatedly when our kicking game isn’t A1. Snyman was signed to be a front five difference-maker for us in games like this but he can’t do much rehabbing a knee injury back in Limerick. Even if Snyman was playing, I’m not sure that alone would have been enough to close the gap in this game. We can talk about playing “attacking rugby” and “the Larkham factor” all we want but if we’re not getting our forwards over the gain line at key points, then fancy attacking movez will just be the things we do before getting swallowed up and turned over in the wider channels.
I had a good few dozen people in my Twitter mentions wondering why Tadhg Beirne looked like a back-row playing in the second row in this game compared to his work against England last week. Let’s forget about fatigue, which is a factor, just for the sake of argument. The tight five he’s part of just isn’t the same as what he’s part of at test level. I think Jean Kleyn played quite well here, turnovers aside, as he seemed capable of consistently impacting Leinster on-ball and in defence. The rest of the front row and replacements, bar Kilcoyne, who I thought did well, were unable to impact the game against their direct opposition and those confrontations happened again and again and again. Cronin, Ryan, Scannell, O’Byrne and Archer are good players and good professionals but this has been a consistent theme in these kinds of games. Cronin, Ryan and Scannell, in particular, are excellent scrummagers but if we weren’t showing penalty winning dominance in the scrum they were going to be under pressure during phase play against four of the six Leinster front-rows.
Look at how many times Porter played almost the full 80 minutes against Munster during Furlong’s year out of the game. Look at how Kelleher played 70 minutes – unusually long for a hooker – in this game. Why? Because they are key collision winners for Leinster on both sides of the ball. Not just carrying, but over the ball at the breakdown and in the tackle. When everything else is mostly equal, they make a big difference in slowing up our attacking setups and preventing us from getting our poaching game going in defence.
Much will be made of Munster’s box kicking in this game but Leinster box kicked more than we did. The difference is that they kicked better and they fielded better so they had more ball and more territory with it. The majority of the game, as a result, was played where Leinster are at their most dangerous – inside our 10m line.
We did well to keep the margin to ten points, in the circumstances.
Where to from here? Well, we just need to be bigger and better. This was not a case of missed opportunities or dodgy refereeing decisions. That, for me, would be a colossal cop-out. You can point to a lot being expected of Joey Carbery in his second start in two seasons and that would be true, but it isn’t a major factor in the loss. Until we can make Leinster uncomfortable in the front five, we will always be looking for ways around confronting them directly.
Our kicking game worked in this regard back in January, so we looked better and more effective as a result. We still lost, mind, but we looked better than we did here. When our kicking game doesn’t work, we will look average at best, ineffective in contact and fail to throw a shot.
We can waste time with talk about changing coaches and playing some kind of magical offloading game that defies the physics of this game at the top end but until our ability to consistently win collisions in the middle of the field changes on both sides of the ball, nothing will change outside of what we can earn on the fluctuating interpretations of different referees at the breakdown or through the mystery box of what happens between when the ball leaves the scrumhalf’s boot and our chasers meet their catchers. Until then, we will always be looking for a puncher’s chance against teams with a collective power advantage over us in the tight five.
Notable Players
There were two standout performers for me in this game from a Munster perspective. Both of them are in this clip.
Jean Kleyn turned the ball over three times but he was one of the few players to consistently show an ability to put Leinster back in contact on both sides of the ball.
Gavin Coombes was the standout Munster player for me and was a consistent positive on a day where not much went right for Munster. Positionally speaking, I think Coombes is better suited to a more central role on both sides of the ball so, for me, he has to be the man for Munster’s #8 role for the remainder of this season.
Coombes has been the breakthrough player of the season for Munster and it’ll take some heroics from others to prevent him from being my player of the season based on what I’ve seen from him since September.
Everyone else had below average to poor games. I can’t accuse anyone of not working hard or putting their bodies on the line or trying their best but the reality is that we’re on a run of two wins in fifteen games against Leinster since 2015/16. Beating them here would have been an aberration based on historic and recent results.
Until this group starts to beat Leinster semi-regularly, this knock-out fixture will always end the same way as we are currently constructed – with Munster fluctuating between coming close to hurting Leinster but coming up short or, games like this, where we were battered for 70 minutes and did well to keep the scoreboard respectable.
All changing the coach will do is change the voice talking after the game about the gap we have to close.
Until Leinster are afraid of our front five as a collective, nothing will change bar the odd freak result.
For now, we go again.
#SUAF and Munster Forever.
The Wally Ratings: Leinster (A)
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 |
|---|---|
| James Cronin | ★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★ |
| John Ryan | ★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★ |
| CJ Stander | ★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★ |
| Damian De Allende | ★★ |
| Chris Farrell | ★★ |
| Andrew Conway | ★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★ |
| Kevin O'Byrne | ★★ |
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★ |
| Billy Holland | N/A |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★ |
| Craig Casey | N/A |
| JJ Hanrahan | N/A |
| Rory Scannell | N/A |
