Make no mistake, Connacht treated this contest like a knockout game from a selection, application and execution perspective. I mean, for them, it was a knockout game. They knew that a loss here would end their slim chances of overhauling Munster in the race for a PRO14 final place and, well, they played like it.

Look through their teamsheet and you find all of their fit Category 1 starters in the starting XV; Aki, Dillane, Carty, Thornbury, Buckley, Daly, Porch, Heffernan, Boyle, Butler and Bealham. Connacht were here for a win, obviously, but they stacked their team to try to make sure and they were a hair away from achieving just that. That a Munster matchday squad shorn of Beirne, Stander, Kilcoyne, O’Mahony, Murray and Earls were able to topple this Connacht selection despite having a lineout running at near 50/50 levels of retention and consistent issues exiting through the boot is really something. Sure, Munster played pretty poorly on the whole but I’d be hard-pressed to describe the manner of Munster’s win as “flukey”, either.

Let’s start with Connacht’s approach. It was, as expected, based on a clever, progressive kick to pressure game but that on its own wouldn’t be enough. It would have to be paired with pressure on Munster’s exiting and pressure on Munster’s lineout.

I spoke before the game about this very thing;

On set-exits, Connacht will use Carty to kick long down the field between the backfield defence. Connacht will really pressure the receipt if you decide to run it back – and the space they’ll usually give you before you meet their transition defence can be tempting to run straight back at – but it’s something Connacht will live with. The likes of Aki, Butler, Boyle and Oliver will hassle your first two or three transition rucks and you’ll be in a position where you’ll probably have to box kick or kick back yourself.

All through the game, you see them going to his kick-to-pressure tactic and it was really, really successful.

That second kick down the middle of the field, in between the two backfield defenders, is typical Carty and the pressure chase on the bouncing ball brought a reward. Munster consistently found it difficult to progress play out our own 22 as Connacht repeatedly got hands in the way of our box kick and set exits. It was a massive, high-energy tactic by Connacht that would come with a cost elsewhere but it consistently earned them good position and possession.

Their first try came off the back of a charge down of Ben Healy that ended up in a 5m Connacht scrum. There have been some questions about this but Munster passed the ball into the in-goal area and the ball didn’t come back out again so that was an attacking scrum to Connacht.

Munster schemed this quite well from a defensive perspective. Conway shooting into the second layer on Carty was the play to make but Aki got a good bump on his route and that opened the space for Carty to sling the ball to where he knew there must be space.

It gave Connacht an early lead that their endeavour deserved but it would not have been so effective had Connacht not managed to pressure the Munster lineout into our worst performance of the season. Connacht’s kicking approach from 10 and beyond would lead to a lot of lineouts, both offensive and defensive, but their game was unnaturally leveraged on their defensive lineout.

If Connacht were going to try and pin Munster into our half of the field, they would have to squeeze our throw to prevent Munster from bossing possession and exposing Connacht’s pack to the kind of tight defensive contact that they weren’t set up to contain for very long. A lot of this hinged on Thornbury and Dillane, who Connacht would have to keep on the field for the full 80 minutes.

Dillane, in particular, was tasked with attacking the Munster lineout and he did so relentlessly for almost the entire game. In fact, Dillane, Thornbury and, on occasion, Paul Boyle contested almost every Munster lineout outside of the Connacht 22 with two pods in the air on most of our throws to the middle and beyond.

These are just the ones that Connacht stole. They disrupted a lot of other possession as we were forced to rotate through our targets with decoy routes, jump feints and low percentage throws into congested lanes and tight throwing windows. This was a bit of a gamble by Connacht because every action you decide to take in a game has to be accounted for physically and strategically. By pressuring Munster’s throw with multiple counter-launch pods, they were using energy that would be accounted for elsewhere. Basically, if Dillane was jumping on multiple Munster launches plus lifting and jumping in Connacht’s schemes – he took three lineouts on Connacht’s throw – that would limit his output in other areas of the field, especially if he was going to stay on for the full 80 minutes. The same applied to the equally impressive Thornbury.

Dillane, for example, didn’t get on-ball or act as a defensive hitter in the same way that he would have done with a lighter lineout load but given the success of Connacht’s lineout defence, it was worth it.

From a strategic perspective, counter-launching in the lineout means that if you don’t steal the ball or disrupt the opposition position you are automatically more vulnerable to the maul. If you’re jumping and being lifted in the maul, you cannot be bracing to defend a maul so there are risks and rewards to this strategy. Munster had a few good gains in this area when we were able to take the ball down off the top. In this first clip, Dillane challenged at the front so his pod was slightly out of position. That allowed Munster to build forward momentum and this gave Casey a positive platform to kick off.

When the ball lands, Daly has a static target to hit and Coombes is able to beat Oliver to the breakdown, which forces a penalty.

The other clips show Munster mauling into the “pocket” of space left by the Connacht counter-launch and getting big gains that lead to an almost inevitable penalty advantage. The longer an opposition maul is walking backwards, the likelier it is that a maul infringement will follow and that logic allowed Munster to gain key penalties and position.

Munster’s work on transition was pretty good too. It would stand to reason that if Connacht were going to kick long to pressure us as a general rule, we would have runback opportunities against the grain of the direction Connacht kicked from. If they kick the ball to our left side, we run right. If they kick it to our right side, we run left.

If they kick it poorly down the middle, well, they messed up. Mike Haley showed them the possible outcome when Porch duffed a kick right into centre-field straight to Mike Haley with the Connacht defensive line right in front of him.

Carbery’s patience in that kicking duel really paid off. Again, from the Red Eye;

I would stay patient with Connacht when it comes to kicking duels.

Let [Connacht] make the mistakes and avoid over chasing.

Munster almost got away on these kick transitions a few times and it was an area where we were able to stress the edges of Connacht’s strategy.

In the end, it was the impact of Munster’s bench that got us over the line. Carbery, Ryan, Kleyn and De Allende had sizeable contributions to Munster pushing ahead of Connacht and staying there, despite a poor exit hurting us again in the build-up to Connacht’s second score.

In the end, it was Munster’s defence that won them the game. This offensive sequence from Connacht met total gainline resistance from Munster up until the breakdown turnover from Cloete.

 

Munster kicked down the field, then the maul worked, then it worked again and that was it. It wasn’t pretty, it was quite ropey a lot of the time, but it was a 20-17 win that guaranteed Munster a shot at a PRO14 final in a few weeks time. Booking that spot now means that Munster can rotate players out of the side and prepare exclusively for Leinster or Ulster in the next two weeks.

That alone is an incredibly valuable commodity in this condensed season. I think it’s an appropriate reward for what has been an excellently navigated regular season by Johann Van Graan and his squad. Now all they’ve got to do is win it.

Notable Players

I felt this was quite a poor game from Rory Scannell. His balance with regards to carrying and passing was a bit better in this game, and a little closer to what I feel might be his best role going forward, but he just didn’t get involved enough for me. He had a few good moments in the second half – a nice offload and a good pass to the wing – but there were so many moments when I felt the game just passed him by offensively and defensively in the first half when we needed him on-ball.

I also felt that Ben Healy had a disappointing game during his 60 minutes on the field. He’ll be unhappy with his two missed penalties that were comfortably in his range based on what we’ve seen already this season but I felt it was his control and option taking at first receiver that will linger in the memory. It felt, at times, that he was committing to his options a little early from a playmaking perspective.

Here, for example, he’s decided on going with Farrell on an inside pass when there’s a 4 on 1 out in the 15m tramline.

This will come with time, you would expect, but it will be a valuable stage post on the road to the player we hope he will become with time. I like the range on his passes, I like his boot (I’d like to see a bit more of it, actually) but I feel the biggest steps for him are in the cognitive gap between consistently seeing opportunities and then executing them closer to the moment rather than “pre-reading”. We need to see a little more of him alongside Damian De Allende before making any value judgements in the short or medium term.

Billy Holland and Fineen Wycherley had a difficult night at the office. The lineout was pretty poor – in the face of heavy Connacht competition it has to be said – but I felt they were both a little flat in general.

I thought Chris Cloete had a pretty decent game. He was unlucky on the yellow card – I felt it should have been Holland’s – but he won a crucial breakdown turnover right at the end that secured the game in Munster’s favour. Fourteen turnovers in just seven games this season is bloody good going for the Gun Show.

I thought Jean Kleyn made a crucial impact off the bench. When we needed a big runner to get on-ball, he did just that. When we needed someone to impact Connacht in defence, he did that too. When we needed someone to beat up the front of the Connacht maul defence, you know what happened.

This was another statement performance from a crucial performer for this team. He was kept on the bench to have this exact impact in the last 20 minutes and he executed that gig superbly.

Big Mike Haley had his new two-year contract announced this past week and what better way to celebrate that with a performance that showcases all his strengths? He covered the backfield really well and only two kicking errors kept him from a five-star performance. His work on kick transition was as good as I’ve seen it from him and his try was one that not every fullback is capable of scoring.

He’s a proper good player and a guy who, for me, has a lot to offer Munster and Ireland over the next two seasons. This was another quality performance by one of the most consistently good fullbacks on this island. ★★★★

The Wally Ratings: Connacht (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
James Cronin	★★★
Niall Scannell	★★★
Stephen Archer	★★★
Fineen Wycherley	★★
Billy Holland	★★
Jack O'Donoghue	★★★
Chris Cloete	★★★
Gavin Coombes	★★★
Craig Casey	★★★
Ben Healy	★★
Shane Daly	★★★
Rory Scannell	★
Chris Farrell	★★★
Andrew Conway	★★★
Mike Haley	★★★★
Kevin O'Byrne	★★
Jeremy Loughman	★★★
John Ryan	★★★
Jean Kleyn	★★★★
Jack O'Sullivan	★★★
Nick McCarthy	DNP
Joey Carbery	★★★
Damian De Allende	★★★