And just like that, Munster were in 5th place – for a time at least – and all the fuss of the early rounds of the season began to seem very far away.
It wasn’t so long ago in Musgrave Park that Munster were labouring away to a disappointing win over Zebre with the biggest factor in the result being a crippling Munster error rate. That game, as bad as it was even in victory, hinged on a promise that things would improve with time. We aren’t near where we’re going to be as of yet but one look through this game would show you the level of improvement in almost every single metric you could look at in astronomically worse conditions against an unheralded and rotated but seriously physical opposition.
Make no mistake, the very typical Cork in January rain bomb suited the Emirates Lions far more than it did us. Rain and wind like we experienced in Musgrave Park on Friday narrows the game down and usually rewards the bigger team with the more dominant scrum who choose to play off-ball.
I thought something quite unfair when I was watching this game back on the third viewing which was as follows; if we played this exact fixture last season with the exact same team out (within reason), we probably have a PPC rate of 0.9 and the end result is much closer on the scoreboard.
We’d still win, I’m almost sure of it, but we wouldn’t have broken the Lions down in the same manner – not even close. Last year we shapeshifted in line with the weather, first and foremost, and then the main strength of the opposition.
With the weather, Lions heft in the pack and their coverage in midfield, I think it’s a safe bet that we’d have gone a different way than what we saw on Friday night.
So what did we see? A confident, tactically imposing Munster performance that turned the weather on its head and backed our skillset to get the job done across the 80 minutes.
You can see our intent right from the kick off and, even though it ended up in a turnover, you can see the danger here for the Lions.The first three rucks were cleared at LQB speed – 2.10 seconds on average – and we only slowed down when we got purchase over the gainline.
It ended in an error but that was 8 rapid-fire phases inside the first minute of the game right on the Lions’ 22. That’s pace, that’s intent and also, let’s be clear, it’s low PPC machine gun possession rolling across the Lions defence looking for a weak spot.
When they kicked to exit, we refused to kick until it was absolutely on our terms. We were looking to drag the Lions’ front five into long sequences of defence where bad folds or drop-offs could be exploited at a micro level while also, at the macro level, stressing their overall conditioning on a night that would become more punishing over time for the bigger team.
We saw against Cardiff that playing a stop-start game in rotten weather conditions isn’t a bother on the Lions and it actually leans into core areas of their game that really work regardless of altitude. They have a massive pack, a huge scrum and their backline was close enough to full strength that they could bring a kicking game with a lot of variety. They could kick short, knowing they would have the advantage if any scrums were knocked out of the high ball and they could kick long to allow their incredibly pacey 11/13/14/15 to pressure the backfield.
Essentially, the question the Lions posed were the following; are you strong enough to run through us with weather conditions that make passing at pace incredibly difficult? If you knock on, can you live with us in the scrum? And if we kick long, can you evade our chasers?
To those questions, Munster answered yes, no, and yes.
Ultimately, this would come down to how well we would counter-attack against this Lions’ team. We knew they were going to kick but our question to them was this; can you live with us on the counter-attack?
The answer to that was no.
This is no fluke. We did the exact same against Ulster last weekend and consistently punished them for kicking to us too often. By attacking on kick transition so well, we narrowed the scope of the Lions’ game even further and left them with one avenue – the scrum. We got a right pasting in that area of the game, to be fair, as we struggled to live with the sheer size of their tighthead side drive through Wycherley/Buckley/Coombes.
But the scrum only matters these days if you have a lineout and maul to go with it and the Lions didn’t. We consistently hurt them on their throw and stuffed them at the maul defensively, which isn’t anything to be sniffed at.
In the end, another try on kick transition sealed the bonus point for us late in the game;
At that stage, we were pushing the boundaries of just how light you could go in the back five and still win a game against a South African provincial team but the principles of our game set up the Lions to dip late in the game and dip they did.
That commitment to our style, regardless of what the weather app said, is exactly the change of attitude I’ve been looking for. It’s been there all season but this game was the proof of concept. We had every reason to change tack but we didn’t and broke the Lions down in a long sequence of multi-phase sequences over the 80 minutes that showed our fitness levels, our wildly improved breakdown and our ever-broadening handling skills.
This was good, very good, and it augers well for the next few rounds of the URC as we look to hold onto 5th spot in the table.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Josh Wycherley | ★★ |
| Diarmuid Barron | N/A |
| Roman Salanoa | ★★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★★ |
| John Hodnett | ★★★★★ |
| Alex Kendellen | ★★★★★ |
| Paddy Patterson | ★★★★ |
| Ben Healy | ★★★★ |
| Liam Coombes | ★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★ |
| Malakai Fekitoa | ★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★★ |
| Scott Buckley | ★★★★ |
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★★ |
| Cian Hurley | ★★★ |
| Jack O'Sullivan | ★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★★ |
| Dan Goggin | ★★★ |
| Pa Campbell | ★★★ |
