[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]his game was played out in lashing rain and driving wind in the stormlands of Thomond Park. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It seems that Munster have been on the road for most of the season and whenever we’ve been playing at home, it’s been played in conditions that normally start off a scary children’s book.
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
So what do you need on a dark and stormy night when you’re playing a professional rugby match? You need to kick well, you need to be relatively error-free when the opposition kick to you, you need your lineout and maul to function on both sides of the ball and you need your scrum to be stable.
If you don’t have all of those – and in that order, usually – you’ll need a lot of handy bounces if you want to win. Munster had all four, Scarlets had none and so it went that Munster would win comfortably.
The best kind of possession in your own half in this game was the possession that you used to pressure the opposition in their half of the field. So plays like this; an excellently driven kick off a solid scrum deep into the Scarlets half followed up by a stolen lineout were solid gold.
That’s what you have to do in conditions like these and making it any more complicated than it needs to be is playing against the weather, not with it. When you move the ball into the opposition half of the field you do so in the knowledge that in a few phases they will look to kick back to you so your work on the kick receipt and then on kick transition was going to be hugely important. Munster turned the game in their favour with two quality moments.
First, have a look at Haley’s take and pass to Daly, and then Daly’s break and super accurate kick to pressure downfield.
This kick and chase nailed the Scarlets deep into the corner of their 22. They tried to phase play their way into a better position but Munster nailed that route across the field shut and forced their right-footed scrumhalf into the kind of exit you have nightmares about. The ball screwed to just outside the Scarlets’ 5m line and Munster began to squeeze for the next six or seven minutes. We were held up over the line, blew the next lineout, mauled our way back in with the next lineout, won another penalty, mauled our way over the line before being held up again and then punishing Scarlets from close range off a good scrum launch.
That’s the kind of territorial pressure that creates try-scoring situations in weather conditions like this. Pin the opposition into their 22. Force them into an error. Punish them for that error. It really can be that simple. It also helps if you’ve got a guy that can tear the opposition to shreds when they kick loosely to him.
Enter Joey Carbery.
In this clip, look at how Haley doesn’t panic when he gets the kick back and just levers the pressure back on the Scarlets. We squeeze their reset phases and the scrum-half makes another error on the box kick. He leaves the kick around 8m too long and that gives Carbery a lane to cut back against in transition. He does just that.
Look at the way he beats Evans on the first contact before ghosting the rest of the Scarlets transition defence. The moment right at the end is my favourite part – a little stagger step to sell the line to McNicholl before popping it off to Shane Daly for the finish. Some guys just make it look easy but believe me when I say that there’s nothing easy about this opportunity and that there aren’t many players capable of nailing this opportunity like Joey Carbery did.
That was a moment of brilliance but Munster’s maul was equally effective in brutalising Scarlets out of this game. Look at this sequence of mauls in the build-up to the third try before halftime. From our 10m line to the Scarlets try line.
That is complete domination. Once again, look at Jean Kleyn beating up the front of the Scarlets’ counter-shove. That kind of physicality is what you need to build a platform in weather like this. There won’t be any scope for moving the ball around with the kind of freedom you might do in better conditions so the most efficient way to progress up the field is with the boot, through the scrum and then right over the top of the opposition pack in the maul.
Any long sequence of attacking rugby would have to follow these principles. The Scarlets had no such platform so they found it difficult to break Munster down. There was another try left on the table for Munster in the last 10 minutes after three really smart kicks by Jack Crowley – off his right and left foot, just to add a few style points – and the excellent Darren Sweetnam.
A little more accuracy on that last ruck and I think Munster powering over from close range was an inevitability. It wasn’t to be and the game finished out with Scarlets scoring late on the back of some silly indiscipline. Even with that late breach, I think Munster will be quite pleased with the strength of their defensive lineout, scrum and maul defence on a day when the result hinged directly on those aspects of our game.
Another win for the Stormlanders, eh?
Notable Players
First things first, I’m delighted to hear that Fineen Wycherley has been discharged from hospital after his neck injury during this game and I hope (a) it’s nothing too serious and (b) that he’s back on the field soon.
I thought JJ Hanrahan had a very tidy game as part of the dual-pivot we ran in this game. He looked solid in defence, sharp on his plays on-ball and could have had a try in the first 15 minutes if he’d gotten the pass off a maul break. This role really suited him, in my opinion, on a night when there wasn’t much scope for showing off his full skill set.
I thought Damian De Allende had another high-quality outing here. He just executes his role really well on a consistent basis. He’s top drawer defensively but it’s his decision-making that stands out to me.
His two involvements on this lineout move stood out too.
He draws defenders onto him, and that creates space for others to flourish. I’d have liked Nash to compete a little more on the last pass here but this was a decent example of what De Allende brings and he’ll be even better once the ground starts to firm up.
This was another instalment in the Mike Haley Is The Best Defensive Fullback In Ireland story with the usual highlights – rock solid under the high ball, increasingly incisive on transition and with a patient, accurate kicking game. He was joined on four stars by Shane Daly who ran an excellent support line for his try and looked dangerous whenever he got the ball in his hands in transition. His kicking is really good and it played a large part in Munster earning key field position for the first try.
I thought Billy Holland had an excellent game after last week’s disruption and called a near-perfect game from the touchline combined with excellent support forward work.
Gavin Coombes spent 80 minutes battering every single grey jersey that came anywhere near here and his try was just further proof that if you get the ball to him on the 5m line, there aren’t many guys who can go toe to toe with him.
They build them tough down in Skibbereen and this was another top-class performance from a guy who’s busting down more doors than a SWAT team this season. And he’s getting better every week.
I thought Nick McCarthy had his most complete game in a red jersey by some distance. The conditions really suited his short game and when Munster kept getting over the gain line, McCarthy kept finding close-range targets with sharp, accurate passing and well-timed breaks. Delighted to see it and young Patterson did OK too when he came off the bench.
Thomas Ahern and Alex Kendellan did exactly what you’d want from young forwards who are pushing hard for senior minutes over the next months.
Ahern didn’t have the kind of RG Snymanesque moments that have become something of a trademark for him – the ball didn’t fall for him that way – but he did manage to torture the Scarlets’ maul so thoroughly that they probably had to check their bags when they got home to make sure his arms weren’t rifling through them back in Llanelli.
If you want an example of his freak athletism and wingspan, have a look at this lineout. It’s a poor enough lift, to be fair, but Cassiem gets into the air a full second ahead of Ahern and, poor lift and all, he’s an inch away from nabbing this at the front.
This guy is a monster.
Alex Kendellan came on the pitch for Fineen Wycherley after 30 minutes and, an early knock-on aside, went on to look like a guy who regularly plays at this level, as opposed to the guy who was making his senior debut after just turning 20 ten days ago after playing for Pres last year. I mean, this isn’t normal. He’s winning jackal battles with Jac Morgan, a guy who’s on the fringes of the Welsh test side and who’s just behind Chris Cloete in the turnovers won column league wide.
He’s beating defenders in the tight exchanges on a night when he’d have every excuse to get hammered in contact. Here’s a small little moment of what I liked from him. Keep an eye on him as he helps to mop up this spilt lineout.
That’s Aaron Shingler he’s winning a collision against. He’s TWENTY and this was his DEBUT. I loved what I saw here, let’s put it that way.
Jack Crowley is the embodiment of GAN EAGLA. Zero fear. In a game where a lot of young playmakers would be looking to maximise their on-ball possessions, Crowley had the confidence to back his tactical kicking in the Scarlets’ half. Why wouldn’t he? He can kick off both sides and he gets the game so he doesn’t need to take contact he doesn’t need to for the sake of bumping his metres. That said, he had one mediocre moment when he crossed with De Allende on a transition runback late in the game but even that was shooting for some open ground. He’s a massive prospect.
This was another top-class performance from Jean Kleyn, who is playing as well as any second row in the league right now. He’s big, he’s mean, he’d scrummage a car through a wall for you and he’s beating up good defensive maulers as if they owe him money for BBQ equipment. If Munster are to win a title this season, it’ll be with the power and quality of Jean Kleyn as a cornerstone piece. ★★★★★
What is it about Munster’s Own Joey Carbery that gets people going? SPOILER: It’s cool stuff like this.
But if this was all Joey was, he’d be good but not the guy you’d want to hinge your attack around. If he was just a dead-eyed assassin off the tee, he’d be very good but still not a complete talent.
It’s his accuracy and instincts phase for phase and ruck for ruck combined with his carrying, passing, and kicking variety that excites me and they are coming back into sync fast. That’s what separates guys who are just “ballers” from players you can build around. Munster have been without Carbery, the guy they signed to be that attacking cornerstone, for more than a season and the more he plays, the better he gets. If Carbery stays fit and on this trajectory, it won’t be long until he’s back playing in green but there’s a lot of things to do and win in a red jersey before that. This was an exciting performance that hinted at the Full Carbery that we have yet to experience.
★★★★★
The Wally Ratings: Scarlets (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 | ★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★★ |
| Billy Holland | ★★★★ |
| Fineen Wycherley | N/A |
| Jack O'Sullivan | ★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★ |
| Nick McCarthy | ★★★★ |
| Joey Carbery | ★★★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★★ |
| JJ Hanrahan | ★★★ |
| Damian De Allende | ★★★★ |
| Calvin Nash | ★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★ |
| Kevin O'Byrne | ★★★ |
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★ |
| Thomas Ahern | ★★★★ |
| Alex Kendellan | ★★★★ |
| Paddy Patterson | ★★★ |
| Jack Crowley | ★★★★ |
| Darren Sweetnam | ★★★★ |
