It’s not all over.
But it’s close. When we take the field against the Ospreys next weekend, we’ll do so in the hope that someone else can do us a favour. Hey, it might happen. Racing could beat Saracens, Gloucester and Northampton could lose and then Glasgow could beat Sale without a bonus point all while we stick a bonus-point win on the Ospreys in Thomond Park. That would see us qualify as 8th place runners up. All those things might happen but I don’t expect them to. We should beat the Ospreys, fair enough, but everything beyond that is in the hands of others and that isn’t where this club aspires to be.
We fell short in La Defence on Sunday. The scoreboard told a cruel story at the end that perhaps didn’t reflect the reality of the game but the scoreboard doesn’t care about your feelings. 39-22. We gave it everything. Fellas were coming off the field with nothing more to give. It might have been a plastic pitch in a concert hall, but no Munster man came off the field with a clean jersey. If you can’t get a win, that’s all you can ask for.
With 10 minutes left, it was 22-20 to Munster but it was a wobbly lead by the 70th minute. We earned that lead off some excellent pressure as the clock ticked into the third quarter.
Andrew Conway kicked through off an excellent take by Hanrahan off a Russell bomb. His pressure earned Munster a 5m lineout opportunity, which we took excellently.
We love this swivel play off the maul feint and we got deep into the 5m red zone off the back of it. From there we peppered the close-in Racing defence and were unlucky not to get the finish off Farrell here.
Taking this from a standing start gave Vakatawa a chance to roll under this ball but in context, there weren’t many other ways for Farrell to take this pass.
From the resulting scrum, we retained the ball and came really close off this Kleyn carry.
The next phase saw a bizarre passage where it looked like Racing knocked the ball on with Holland looking at a two on one isolation but there wasn’t a replay of it and it never reached the TMO or the referee.
For whatever reason. Anyway. We took 3 points away from the penalty advantage to retake the lead – memories of Allianz Park chief in the memory there, I feel – and faced into the last quarter with a defendable lead. For a while, after we took the lead, we looked like we had the momentum to possibly kick on and extend our advantage. Racing looked a little leggy and, for the next five minutes after retaking the lead, I thought we managed the game quite well.
We kicked well, forced some good kick returns out of Racing and earned some excellent positions as the clock ticked towards the last ten minutes.
Then, all at once, we just started to fall apart. These were the three examples that came to mind.
Those are tired looking passes, but I’ll get to that in a minute. We’re trying to play here. This is what we want from our forwards, isn’t it? The execution is off – mostly down to fatigue, you’d imagine – but these kinds of plays are what we want, just way more accurate.
Even with these errors, we managed to regain possession until we lost it with another tired carry on 69 minutes.
Racing booted the ball downfield and we kicked the ball out through Peter O’Mahony. Jean Kleyn was replaced by Arno Botha and a few minutes later, the floodgates broke. And when they broke, they broke heavy and hard.
Finn Russell put Teddy Thomas away with a crossfield kick that was narrowly adjudged to have been (a) onside and (b) not grounded on the dead ball line but the damage had been done in the 11 bruising phases that came to that point, directly from the lineout that came after the above sequence.
Have a look at the pop Racing are getting off their forward carries here.
We’re scrambling for defensive structure ruck to ruck because we’re really struggling to put Racing down. They’re getting quick ball and running into disrupted defensive shapes. We’re scrambling well though, and getting bodies in the way.
When Racing went to release from these central carries, they got position like this. They put the ball through the hands to Thomas in space and it’s a one on one with Earls.
All week I’ve heard about “want”. Tell me that Keith Earls doesn’t want to make this tackle. Tell me he’s not an experienced player who’s made god only knows how many crucial tackles over the years. He goes to take on Thomas side on and gets wiped out. That’s the reality of 6’1″ and 98kg up against 5’10” and 86kg when the attacking player does everything right. All the stories we see about Light beating Large in this game is when Large leaves a hole for Light to attack. When Large gets his angles and approach spot on, Light loses the collision – every time, without fail.
We lose around 5m after the contact here and when Racing reset, you can see the value of having the athletes they have on the bench.
Four Munster forwards doing their damnedest to put a guy down, putting their bodies on the line but running into an 18.5 stone physics problem in Hassan Kolingar. We’re working hard here, we’re scrambling but you can feel the break coming.
Earls is a hair away from taking this kick but Thomas (probably) finishes the try excellently. The kick is perfect, but the phases in the build-up showed the challenge we had over the course of the game. When we kicked off after this, we got a good sequence of attacking possession in the Racing half but we weren’t able to create the same kind of scenarios for them as they did for us. Here’s a 30-second sequence that, when you compare it to Racing’s initial few phases above, illustrates the problem when it comes to taking on top sides like Racing and Saracens.
Look how many times they get a big, strong jackal over the ball and how hard we have to work to get the ball back? That gives them a few half seconds to restructure their defence and pick defensive targets. If you don’t think a half-second is important, turn on the grill in your oven to the highest heat and then stick the palm of your hand onto the filament for half a second – it won’t feel so short then.
In the end, they turned the ball over and we spent the next five minutes watching Racing score the tries that would pad the scoreboard.
There was plenty of endeavour, plenty of “want” but when you’re playing a big team who want it as much as you do, you need something else when it comes down to the end game, and we didn’t have it.
Off this penalty, Racing peppered our line again. Rory Scannell left his decision that maybe Vakatawa was Chris Farrell’s man here a little late and Racing were off through the line again.
They reset with a few more heavy phases that we just about contained. When Racing released the ball to the edges, we had very little for Vakatawa once again and he scored the try that killed the game as a contest.
For me, Haley stepped up too hard on Russell and that conceded the line to Vakatawa who had a short-range 2 on 1 isolation on an Andrew Conway caught between two players.
It was all over.
Racing would go onto score another try that won them a try bonus point. They probably deserved it based on the balance of play to that point. We were right in this game until the last 10 minutes but the exertions of getting to that point in the previous 70 caught up with us. The lads who Racing rolled off the bench, especially in the front row, really hurt us with their power. It’s never about winning or losing collisions with lads like this in the first five minutes, it’s how you’re doing against them 60 minutes later that’s key in the modern game.
We had to work harder to stop Racing than they did to stop us, and that imbalance will catch you eventually. It caught us around 70 minutes in and we just couldn’t overcome it. It’s no one players fault. Blaming coaches is short-sighted.
We were close, but ultimately a fair bit off when it came to the actual winning of it. There’s no shame in it. The players left it all out there and I’ve yet to be convinced that there is any combination of coaching decisions that could have won this game for us bar un-injuring a few lads and maybe adding in some proper size where we’re currently lacking. This has been a similar story for a few seasons now.
The pack we fielded here was exactly the same as the one that started against Racing in Bordeaux two seasons ago. Sure, injury kept guys like Beirne, Marshall and Wycherley out of the matchday squad this weekend and we had guys like Botha and Cloete available this time around off the bench but the overall result was much the same. Close, for a time, and then not that close at all. There’ll have to be some change if we’re to progress, even with the time allowed for the World Class coaching hires to get their hands around the squad for a significant period.
Even then, success isn’t a given. For me, the squad has been mostly the same since 2017/2018 and needs a bit of refreshing in most of the lines of the squad. Front row, second row, backrow, halfbacks, midfield, back three, starting and finishing – they all need some fresh faces, in my opinion.
Europe isn’t dead for us – yet – but without all of our top, top guys we’ll always struggle against sides like Racing, Saracens, Toulouse and Leinster. Even with all of our top guys fit and firing, I think we’d be looking for one of those days where we catch Racing/Sarries/Leinster/Toulouse on a bad day.
The Wally Ratings: Racing 92 (A)
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 | ★★ |
| Stephen Archer | ★★ |
| Billy Holland | ★★ |
| Jean Kleyn | ★★★★ |
| Jack O'Donoghue | ★★★★ |
| Peter O'Mahony | ★★★ |
| CJ Stander | ★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★ |
| JJ Hanrahan | ★★★ |
| Keith Earls | ★★ |
| Rory Scannell | ★★ |
| Chris Farrell | ★★ |
| Andrew Conway | ★★★ |
| Mike Haley | ★★★ |
| Kevin O'Byrne | N/A |
| Jeremy Loughman | ★★ |
| John Ryan | ★★ |
| Arno Botha | ★★★ |
| Chris Cloete | ★★★ |
| Craig Casey | N/A |
| Dan Goggin | DNP |
| Shane Daly | N/A |
Notable Players
I thought our starting back row worked really hard on both sides of the ball and at the set-piece. O’Mahony and Stander had decent games but always looked like they were putting out fires somewhere else.
JJ Hanrahan came into the game 50/50 but didn’t play like it. He had a decent outing, for me. Mike Haley had two pretty notable errors but performed pretty well positionally, under the high ball and in transition. Andrew Conway looked like a player who could consistently make things happen and his try was a large part of why we were in with a shout of winning this for so long.
Jack O’Donoghue had some excellent moments and looked at home at this level of competition. His lineout work was particularly good and he’s turning into a real modern-day option flanker. He must only be one or two work-ons away from at least being in the wider Irish squad. Quality. ★★★★
My top performer from this game was Jean Kleyn. He had two poor handling errors right before going off and one silly penalty but he consistently stopped Racing in their tracks defensively and made hard ground against a big Racing defence. He’s been one of our top performers for some time now, and games like this are an illustration of how valuable Jean Kleyn is right now, and in the future. Giant. ★★★★
