[su_dropcap style=”flat”]A[/su_dropcap]s I walked back down the steps of the East Stand in the aftermath of Munster’s dominant win over our northern cousins, I was struck by one thought – this is as confidently as I’ve seen Munster play in several seasons. Sure, it’s easy to think that after a six-try, eminently comfortable bonus-point win, but I was getting this confident vibe early in the contest when Munster were conceding a few penalties and points.
We seemed to have a lot of clarity, not just on what we wanted to do but with what we were comfortable in allowing Ulster to do too. Any tactic that you look to implement during a game depends on your read of your own strengths relative to the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses. If Glasgow, for example, decided that they wanted to play a tight phase, high possession, set-piece focused game against, say, La Rochelle, that quite likely would end pretty badly for them because it would illustrate that they are delusional as to where they are strong and where they are weak.
With Ulster, there’s no way that you could watch their game against Leicester last Friday and then look at their team selection for this game and not come to the conclusion that a game plan hinging on conservative kicking tendencies inside your own 10m line would pay dividends in this contest. What does that mean? It means voluntarily giving up possession to this Ulster side in your own half and backing your defence on transition and off the lineout because, in general, Dan McFarland’s men have a tendency to overplay their phases and, while doing it, show up some predictable pictures. Using this approach, you can draw the sting out of Ulster without the ball and reap rewards in the second and fourth quarters.
Munster’s approach seemed to be in line with this thinking.
It isn’t as basic as simply kicking the ball to Ulster and waiting for them to blow themselves out. It’s a mixture of box kicking contestably to pressure their wide and backfield receivers but also being comfortable living with them on transition – where Stockdale in particular has a tendency to overrun his runbacks. I’d be most comfortable saying that if you can get Ulster running the ball back or taking possession off a ball kicked deep or within close range of the 10m line, you can tempt them into the kind of overplaying I spoke about last week.
This takes many forms. Take this kick and the following sequence off an Ulster restart, for example.
It doesn’t fully fit our criteria but it does show that Munster were relatively comfortable kicking to Ulster inside our own 10m line, chasing, pressurising their immediate runback and initial phases on transition both at the breakdown itself and in contact.
Munster were also comfortable kicking directly to touch off #9 from our 22 when necessary, challenging Ulster at the lineout, stopping McCloskey and then living with Ulster once they transitioned into phase play. As we saw against Leicester, Ulster were too willing to run through multiple phases of possession almost on auto-pilot for minimal gain.
All throughout the game, you see Ulster overplaying their phases for no real gain – either territorially or through a defensive unbalancing – and those sequences lead directly to Munster penalties and, in the second half, an intercept try.
Munster were really comfortable defending these sequences, both in contact and with well-timed one man poach attempts that regularly slowed Ulster’s phase progression – which helped our defensive set to pick targets and read Ulster’s patterns – or at the very least drew two or three Ulster forwards out of the attacking line which reduced their options. It would be at that point you’d normally expect a team to kick but Ulster just don’t tend to do that, to their detriment I think.
When they did kick – usually at the end of a really long sequence or when they had come to the end of a transition foray deep in their own half, they tend to kick poorly. Munster usually attacked hard in transition off those long returns.
Ulster’s box kicking and pressure kicking is relatively easy to predict and their chasing was consistently trying to make up ground on the ball if that makes sense. If I was to pinpoint one weakness in Ulster’s game – and their tendencies with the ball in hand might well relate to this – is that all of the scrumhalves have kicking games that range from average to poor and their #10s all seem to play with the same profile. By that I mean, they seem to run the same phase play patterns in a sequence that you can track. I was watching their warmup from the press box and the shapes they ran there were repeated throughout the game.
Hit pod of three forwards, #10 slides to space between ruck and next pod, #10 hits that pod flat, reset and assess, play a screen ball off a pod of three forwards to line up McCloskey for some play action and then see how that runs with a few short ball resets to a midfielder or looped winger to start again off slow ball.
You can see this structure in all of their long-form attacks.
Armed with this defensive certainty, Munster could repeatedly pressure Ulster without the ball, wait for a transition opportunity, hit that and then go through your transition phases. I think this stretch of the game shows both side’s mindset and execution pretty clearly.
This balance of play was a large part of the winning of the game from a Munster perspective. Defending (defence and transition defence) is one part of the game – and an important one – but it is only half of the game. You have to be accurate from your own launch points, especially with the way the modern game is balanced. Efficient scoring off the set-piece is what everyone wants and, on Friday, Munster were really efficient off the set-piece.
That all set the table for what amounted to a comfortable win.
Munster showed a lot of variety on phase play, efficiency at the set-piece, bruising work at the attacking breakdown and strong, hurtful defence in the tackle and at the defensive ruck. There was a real meanness to Munster’s play that I really enjoyed watching from the press box. You could see the organisation and the clarity of preparation which I think empowered the players to be as physical as possible on both sides of the ball.
Much has been made of the value of the Rainbow Cup but, from a Munster perspective, I don’t think the value of these last two rounds can be underestimated. We will play stronger Leinster sides and better prepared Ulster sides in the future but these last two games seem to have shown the squad that when we show up physically (and play with the freedom that physicality and aggression allows) we look good, very good. Players excelling in their roles, accurate set-piece launches, crunching defence and a few scraps – it was good to be back watching a game in person and, god willing, we’ll all be back doing the same very soon.
Notable Players
This was a really strong collective performance. I’ll go into more details in the accompanying podcast to this article and focus on the top performers in this article.
I spoke with my broadcast buddy Dan Mooney before the game about how underrated Conor Murray is, despite the fact that he, with a bit of luck with injury, will soon be a three-time Lion, something that only the likes of Brian O’Driscoll, Paul O’Connell and Ronan O’Gara – all-time greats of the game in this country – have done in an Irish context. How can a guy with that resume be “underrated”? Well, it’s a symptom of the modern game, where power dictates almost everything. If you have power and momentum, you can play. If you don’t, then playing to generate momentum can be physically taxing in a way that isn’t fully understood until after the game. You never know that you’ve overplayed a sequence of phases until you start dropping off later in the game so deciding what you do (or don’t do) with the ball has never been more important. Your halfbacks are the ones who make these decisions. Good halfbacks are pragmatic and make good decisions based on their read of the game. The #10 will usually see a wider picture of the game, like whether or not the opposition line is unbalanced at the edge or giving up mismatches in the line. The scrumhalf has a really good view of the collisions so can make decisions based on how that platform is performing – going forward and producing quick possession, let’s play. Going backwards or playing static over two or three phases? Now a decision needs to be made.
Essentially, are you “out of ideas” or has the scrumhalf decided that, actually, we’re losing these collisions so we need to reset.
The scrumhalf touches the ball more than anyone so when a player like Murray comes along who is more than capable of making and then executing tactical decisions on his own, he ends up taking the blame for the cause of kicking, rather than the kicking itself. When Ireland and Munster lose collisions, Murray takes the flak because it’s him who realises this fact first so he takes it on himself to do something about it. In a world where 10 good tactical kicks are worth about the same as one average offload, that’s how Conor Murray can be underrated.
In this game, Murray controlled things superbly, not just with his kicking – one or two duds but consistent excellence the rest of the time – but with the range and accuracy of his passing when Munster were rolling forward with momentum. When you’ve got go-forward possession, there’s very few who can touch Conor Murray and this game was a fulsome illustration of that. ★★★★★
Speaking of Lions, Tadhg Beirne marked his first squad selection with the kind of performance that might make you think that this rugby business is pretty easy, actually. I mean, it isn’t, but Beirne just makes it look that way with the accuracy of his decisions and the excellence of his execution of those decisions.
When you watch this guy, you get the impression that you’re watching a player for whom the game is constantly slowing down. Usually, that comes in “skill” positions – halfback and outside backs – but it fits for Beirne, who always seems to be operating a second or two ahead of the players facing him on both sides of the ball. He’s the perfect example of the modern back five player who defies pigeon holing. He’s not a lock, he’s not a back row, he’s both. This game showed him stacking up on defensive actions mostly but his involvements didn’t end there – he was one of the top passers in the pack, had a number of good carries himself and ran a pretty efficient lineout too.
A world-class operator. ★★★★★
Gavin Coombes is a guy who just continues to build up the “moments” that turn a player from a prospect into the kind of colossal figure that becomes a Name in this business. I wrote on Twitter that Coombes’ carry in the build-up to the first try was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen on a rugby field and I stand by that. I mean look at this.
Watching this live, I couldn’t help but think how a full Thomond Park crowd would have reacted to a moment like this and then it struck me that Gavin Coombes entire rise to a cast-iron starter for Munster has happened without any crowd’s whatsoever. Imagine what this guy would be like with the full Thomond Park Effect coursing through him, as it has for guys like Anthony Foley, David Wallace, Denis Leamy and CJ Stander before him?
Yes, I have imagined the crowd all shouting COOOOOOMMBES when he runs into contact like what used to happen with the Beast. Sue me.
His game wasn’t just this carry, though. He showed up extremely well with some lovely passes and offloads…
… which are always nice, but it’s the consistency of his power game that stands out to me. He wins big collisions on both sides of the ball while being an absolute menace at the breakdown and an effective lineout target. This kind of quality performance should hasten his arrival on the test stage against the USA and Japan this summer. If he’s fit for the summer, I think he’ll show Japan what kind of kaiju they’re growing down in West Cork. ★★★★★
I didn’t give Rory Scannell five stars because he scored two tries. They were nice touches on top of what was already a top-class performance. When Rory Scannell plays the role he did in this game, he looks like a different class of player. When I rate Rory down and I look at his stats, I generally tend to see more carries than passes. I thought this game would be an exception to that rule but when I looked at the numbers – 11 carries for +82m and 13 passes. That’s how involved he was. He had one poor carry sure, in my opinion, but everything else was near flawless role play as a passing platform and genuine breaking threat.
I have to say that I loved his response to a late shot from Addison in the first few minutes too – that showed a guy who wasn’t going to take any brown stuff and he played up to that all evening. He was playing with confidence and confident players are good players.
This moment right at the end summed it all up for me. He calls for the ball off De Allende on a transition play, picks his spot and drills a kick into the perfect spot for Conway to score.
At this point in the night, the wind and rain had picked up so any inaccuracy on this would have sent the ball skidding into touch but Scannell got it bang on. On a night when he could have easily ran into trouble against a physical hitter like McCloskey, Rory Scannell showed the kind of game that I have long been looking forward to. Class. ★★★★★
The Wally Ratings: Ulster (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 |
|---|---|
| Dave Kilcoyne | ★★★★ |
| Niall Scannell | ★★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★★ |
| Fineen Wycherley | ★★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★★★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★★ |
| Chris Cloete | ★★★★ |
| Gavin Coombes | ★★★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★★★ |
| JJ Hanrahan | ★★★★ |
| Shane Daly | ★★★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★★★★ |
| Dan Goggin | ★★★★ |
| Andrew Conway | ★★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★★ |
| Kevin O'Byrne | ★★★ |
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★★ |
| Roman Salanoa | ★★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| CJ Stander | ★★★ |
| Nick McCarthy | ★★★ |
| Ben Healy | ★★★ |
| Damian De Allende | ★★★ |
