It took the full 80 minutes to get the bonus point job done here.

Arno Botha hammered over from close range in the 37th second of the 79th minute to finally book a bonus point but that doesn’t tell the entire story of this game. Yes, Munster were often frustrated by the Ospreys domination of the ball for long periods in both halves. Yes, some of that was down to good ball retention and possession management. Yes, a lot of that possession came off the back of poor Munster exits and errors. But in between all of those frustrating moments, there was some of the most incisive, fluid and clinical Munster attacking work we’ve seen in a while.

In some ways, looking at a new attacking structure this early into a season can sometimes give you false positives. No one would argue that previous seasons had nice moments in early season games too – Ulster last season, for example – but this season looks to have shown a much more radical departure than what I thought we’d see. I’ll couch that slightly by saying that we still need to see how we stack up against bigger, meaner defences and how the returning test players slot into things, but I quite like what I saw here when Munster clicked into place.

Here’s a good example on the first try – a one phase strike move off a lineout.

O’Donoghue won the lineout, and we swung the ball into O’Donnell on a wide pass off Bleyendaal.

That central ruck point gave the Ospreys a point to overfold on and, encouraged by Munster’s narrow “I” shape directly behind the ruck and our decoy runners, Munster attacked back the blindside. Holloway, O’Donoghue and Holland ran a tight decoy pod off O’Donnell’s ruck with Bleyendaal selling the openside.

The key part of this was the numbers Munster had in the “flux” space behind the ruck where, in theory, we could easily have chosen to attack the left side of this ruck if we wished.

Once we went back to the blindside, we’d need accuracy and viable options to engineer the space and that’s exactly what we got.

Neil Cronin played a 1-2 with Marshall before spreading the ball back to Goggin and Haley, who had come back across as a pair.

Munster had left the front row on the blindside, with Archer holding width on the far touchline. When Marshall combined with Neil Cronin, James Cronin ran a decoy-support line that isolated the edge defenders for Goggin/Haley before running through the line to act as an inside pass option.

The key part from Neil Cronin was picking the right pass option as it swept around. Pass it to Goggin, and you probably don’t drag the Ospreys second layer defender out of the line. If you don’t have the depth coming around the corner, you don’t freeze the Ospreys edge defence.

Combine them all and you have a superb opening try for James Cronin. The small details make it for me but I especially liked how Goggin and Haley paired their run to create a pod option on the blindside from nothing.

One minute, the Ospreys were looking at an empty blindside. The next, they were seeing a Goggin and Haley flying around the corner attacking the edge.

That Goggin/Haley paired run would play a part in Munster’s other standout try in the second half but before we do that, let’s have a look at the break that lead to it.

The key point of Munster’s attacking work on extended sequences was the fluidity of the shape we’d show the Ospreys on varying phases.

Munster switched between a 1-3-3-1 and variants 2-3-2-1 with every forward being expected to slot into the expected roles as required.

Ultimately, I think Munster’s aim this season will be to move beyond a reliance on shape and traditional structure. Fluidity will be key, as will building context-specific support structures.

Here, for example, you can get an idea of how we’re trying to vary our play. We’re attacking up the fringes here but building towards a strike. Watch the end phase after James Cronin’s carry.

Holloway tries to extend the Ospreys’ ruck defence to try to isolate the pillar defender for an offload. Marshall sells the pass to Holloway to hold Price, before shifting inside to draw the pillar defender, with the aim being to offload to O’Sullivan running a hard offload line next to the ruck.

We ended up getting turned over on the next ruck but it’s a risk we were willing to take. This is a context-specific support structure – planned, drilled in advance, called on the fly. It’s the kind of variation that we’ll need to see as the season wears on.

I was also quite impressed with our patience, despite the relative expense the Ospreys put on our possessions.

On this instance, we were testing out the Ospreys edge defence and, when we didn’t get the purchase we needed, reset through Nash.

On the next ruck, we had the Ospreys overload we were looking for and went back to the original plan. It wasn’t perfect execution – for me that would be a pass from Scannell to Bleyendaal without the extra ruck – but we waited for the picture we wanted, worked until we had it without panicking and then executed it.

Marshall’s deep pullback to Scannell and O’Sullivan’s push up to (almost) the 10m line gave Bleyendaal space to work but Holloway’s feint next to the work created a further isolation for Bleyendaal to work with.

Once we earned the wide position after great work from Shane Daly to Dan Goggin we started to work across the pitch to attack the opposite Ospreys edge. This was a great piece of situational structure built on width and paired runners.

Bleyendaal found Holland, who swivelled the ball around to Haley and Goggin who, once again, were coming around the corner as paired runners.

This doesn’t work if O’Donoghue doesn’t run a decoy line at the edge of the play to hold Aubrey so Haley and Goggin can work the isolation for the finish.

It would take Munster another 30 minutes to seal the bonus point.

***

So what to make of it all?

Munster were good when they needed to be and certainly had a plan in place to attack certain areas of the Ospreys defence set – their defensive overfolds and kicking behind their edge line – but didn’t control the game as they would have liked. The Ospreys handling of the ball for relatively long periods – plus their regular slowing of the game as it wore on – made sustained periods of Munster pressure a little hard to come by for large stretches of this game.

Some of those long stretches without the ball came off the back of some poor enough kick exits, handling errors, breakdown turnovers and penalties – in the scrum in particular, where we often fell on the wrong side of the conundrum that is Stuart Berry.

But I’d forgive some of the breakdown turnovers and handling errors. We’re trying things. New shapes and new attacking ambitions – especially on kick transition – don’t come easily and there will be knock-ons from forwards whose skillsets come under pressure, passes that don’t go to hand, and over-run lines. The key is sticking with what’s new because we’ve seen where the old way ends and if that means that some games lack “control” then so be it.

I love the pace we’re trying to play at, I love the ambition we’re showing, I love how we’re playing with more width and, despite not mentioning it once so far, I really liked how physical we were in defence in every facet of this performance too.

There’s a long road to go and, quite obviously, bigger tests to come but I’m liking what I’ve seen so far from an attacking perspective.

The Wally Ratings: Ospreys (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	★★★★
Rhys Marshall	★★★
Stephen Archer	★★
Jed Holloway	★★★
Billy Holland	★★★
Jack O'Donoghue	★★★
Tommy O'Donnell	★★★
Jack O'Sullivan	★★★
Neil Cronin	★★
Tyler Bleyendaal	★★★
Shane Daly	★★★
Rory Scannell	★★★
Dan Goggin	★★★★
Calvin Nash	★★★
Mike Haley	★★★★★
Kevin O'Byrne	★★★
Liam O'Connor	★★★
Jeremy Loughman	★★★
Fineen Wycherley	★★★
Arno Botha	★★★
Craig Casey	★★★
JJ Hanrahan	★★★
Sam Arnold	N/A

Notable Players

I thought Neil Cronin had very mixed games. He looked busy but seemed to struggle with the accuracy and especially the range demanded of his passing on certain attacking sets, especially as the game wore on.

I thought Tommy O’Donnell had a typically hard-working game in the back row and was a key defender.

James Cronin had a very prominent game and he really set the tone at the breakdown in particular. Aggressive, belligerent and a growing danger with the ball in hand.

Dan Goggin continued his impressive start to the season with two assists and some impressive physicality when presented with the opportunity. Looking like a guy who could easily start a Champion’s Cup game without much worry.

Craig Casey and JJ Hanrahan brought good urgency off the bench and Casey, in particular, added real tempo to Munster’s carrying that added real value.

Mike Haley had a pretty mixed first half, truth be told. Some great high fielding and transition work mixed with one poor knock into touch followed by a kick out on the full. His second half was a different story. He was faultless under the high ball, a constant danger on transition, and he made two key interventions in the last five minutes to put Munster in with a chance of getting the bonus point. He’s growing as a finisher and a creative outlet right as we start building for Europe. ★★★★★

There’s much to cover in this game and I’ll be doing that in TRK Premium all week long with GIF and Video Articles.