Zebre 17 Munster 34

A messy bonus point win counts the exact same at the end of the season

This won't be a game that makes many highlight reels at the end of the season but the five points will do nicely. That was the aim and that was the outcome - what happened in between was of little grand scheme importance.

Match Importance

Match Intensity

Match Quality

Standard of Opposition

2.1

One of the main criticisms of Van Graan’s reign at Munster has been the scheduling of game time weeks – or even months – in advance to evenly spread rugby out around the squad. To some, that means there isn’t an active competition for places most weeks because the team has been selected long in advance, injury or other unavailability allowing. On the other hand, it means that players will get a level of rugby that scans with their approximate position in the depth chart and the knowledge that opportunities will come, one way or the other, and they will have to be ready to perform.

Over the last few weeks, Munster will have been mainly running with the Category 1 team for back to back high importance Category 1 games against Castres, Leinster (even though it was cancelled, the same team would have been selected more or less), Connacht, Ulster, Castres and Wasps. Guys would be rotated in line with their position in the depth chart which will also be in line with the standard of the opposition and the requirements of the moment.

Irish Shield games are disproportionally important to the flow of a URC season. Wins “in-conference” are more valuable than “out of conference” wins because, this season, Munster are competing with Ulster, Leinster and Connacht directly first before we consider the overall URC log. That affects selection. In-Shield games will be as close as possible to full strength, IRFU mandates, injury and covid allowing. A game like this, against Zebre, will be a long scouted opportunity to build minutes into younger players and down chart options that, for the last number of weeks, will have mainly been playing AIL, holding tackle bags or running opposition plays in the High-Performance Centre.

This week, with all our internationals off in Portugal, all our NIQ internationals injured and a decision made to rotate out key senior guys like Archer, Haley, Ryan, Zebo, Scannell and even Ben Healy – who has taken on a senior role this season – Munster were making a definitive statement that we were backing a group of younger players to come in and do the job for us. The job, in this case, was getting five points come what may. Anything less than that maximum return would be, rightly, considered a failure given where we are in the Irish Shield and the wider United Rugby Championship right now.

So the team that Munster selected, in context, was heavily rotated and with less international experience than an Irish province usually fields during what is, essentially, a test window game.

If you go back through the last few seasons of PRO14/16 rugby, you’ll find a wealth of experienced Irish internationals and experienced foreign players dotted throughout test window matchday squads. These guys might be technically past their peak as players but they are key guys in fixtures like this from a mental and tactical perspective.

Why is that? Let’s examine it.

Mental: Experienced players, especially guys with a lot of high-level test experience are used to the frenetic, high pressure build to test games during the course of their career, be that as a starter or a replacement. When you experience those pressured moments and the tension that comes with them, they harden and season you as a performer. Those experiences give you the kind of perspective that can be a valuable asset in the build-up to test window games where a lot of young players might be daunted by what is, essentially, the first couple of games in their professional career.

During games, that experience can help guide younger players “in unit” through the rough patches that always crop up in games. An experienced, test capped second row, for example, would be the exact guy I’d want calling the lineout right after a young hooker made a poor throwing error. An experienced, crafty scrumhalf would be the exact guy I’d want guiding a rookie flyhalf around the field after a few mistakes too and the value of having an experienced second handler to switch with or a big, bruising inside centre who knows all the cheat lines and shortcuts to help out his teammate.

An experienced guy who’s been there and done that in their career has a stabilising effect on younger players around them. This isn’t just about “putting the arm around” a younger player because it’s often not even as prosaic as that – it’s the quality of being a “known quantity” so young players know what to expect from the established professional. That translates to knowing that you have a veteran in your unit that will take on a lot of the emotional load of the performance so that allows the younger player to concentrate on their game.

If you know that a senior player will be leading the forwards, for example, the allows the younger forwards in that unit to follow their lead rather than taking on the mental toll of doing that AND playing their game. The more experienced the player, the more mental bandwidth they have available – mostly, anyway.

That also translates into a settled performance and less “over-playing” which can happen with younger, less accomplished players who come into the team after a long spell and end up forcing things.
Technical: An experienced player in their 30s might be beyond their physical peak but they are a well-known quantity to the coaching staff. They don’t even have to be in their 30s – they just have to be an established player. Arno Botha would be a good example of this. He spent two years at Munster and saw a lot of action during test windows in particular because of what he allowed other guys to do around him. With Botha taking on a lot of the primary ball-carrying, that allowed younger, less seasoned players to take on secondary roles while they are still finding their feet as professional players.

Experience – or the idea of experience as being the opposite of youth – can sometimes be scoffed at when it comes to team selections but it’s a vital component of a low-cohesion unit.

When you have a tonne of new combinations coming in to play a URC level game after months of AIL and in-house training, your test-capped guys and club veterans are hugely important. Strangely enough, this was one of the least experienced test-window selections Munster have ever put out. If we count the test caps in the matchday squad, we see Munster had just 25 caps spread across the twenty-three and Chris Farrell had 15 of those caps. For context, Leinster had 234 international caps worth of experience against Cardiff. Connacht had 84 caps worth of test experience against Glasgow.

Sure, Munster have guys like O’Donoghue, Kleyn, Wycherley and Goggin who have a lot of Munster caps over the last four years – and that’s worth more than having one test cap, for example – but for me, you can’t beat having those 20 cap+ test guys or well-travelled NIQ talent dotted throughout the lines of the team. Leaders like Wycherley, Kleyn and O’Donoghue are massively important in putting a platform out there in games like this but there’s no doubting the impact guys like Archer, Zebo, Haley, Snyman, Jenkins, De Allende or even Healy would have had.

So when you look at Munster’s janky, disjointed performance against Zebre you have to take all of those things into the equation to get the full picture. Lots of new combinations, lots of guys playing for the first time in months and all the frustrations that can sometimes come with that.

This game is quite difficult to analyse because it’s more like a collection of individual moments than it is a flowing performance. It was too stop-start, there were too many errors. The first half was badly in need of someone to step up and start dictating the game. Jack Crowley did that quite well when he came on the field. That isn’t to down on Jake Flannery as he was a young player making his first start at #10 at this level in his career to date. All through the game, Munster suffered the kind of janky moments you’d expect from a team with low cohesion and tonnes of guys looking to make an impact after months without a game.

Would it be any surprise to learn that four of Munster’s five tries came from close range lineout launches? It shouldn’t be – the lineout launch is the one area where you can overcome the jankiness that comes with low cohesion team builds. The highlight score of those four lineout tries was this banger from Dan Goggin who ran a hard line, won the first collision and had the power to keep on running. It’s good stuff, but it’s mostly poor defence outside of a nice slide out from O’Sullivan to open the pocket up for Goggin.

The one real moment of quality during this game came during the build-up to Jack O’Donoghue’s try in the first half where Jack Crowley showed multiple class involvements across a multi-phase sequence.

There wasn’t much in the way of quality outside this but that’s almost to be expected in the circumstances against a relatively strong Zebre side. The win wasn’t ever in doubt – even if the bonus point was, for a spell in the second half – and that’s not anything to sniff at, again in context.

I know context can be annoying when you’re looking at bricked passes and lads getting scragged into touch but if you want a fuller understanding of the reasons why the performance was the way it was. You can have young lads and depth chart guys having opportunities together, or a fully cohesive team going smoothly from a Champions Cup bloc to a test window – you can’t realistically expect to have both.

My advice? Bank the five points and forgot the vast majority of this game as the mid-season grind that it was.

Notable Players

Neil Cronin got Player of the Match on the day and I thought he played pretty well too. There were a few errors and his pass quality wasn’t very consistent but he brought good energy and executed exits well.

Jake Flannery had a tough game but it’s the kind of 60 odd-minutes that’ll really stand to him as a player. He made a few mistakes, sure, but you expect that from a young #10 making his first start at this level, especially in a low-cohesion unit.

John Hodnett was the standout forward on show, in my opinion. He was impactful in defence and consistently effective with the ball in hand. He’s added some lineout work to his game over the last few weeks too and is really developing into a complete small forward in the backrow. He’s got some road left to go and a few layers to add to his game but he’s looking like, potentially, a very serious player with a very high ceiling.

Calvin Nash looked super sharp after his injury and looked like a guy ready to attack the next block of games. His offload in the buildup to O’Donoghue’s try was class.

I think Jack Crowley’s development over the last few weeks has been really, really remarkable. Look back at the game against Ulster earlier this month and you’ll see a guy making a few mistakes – kicks on the full, dropped balls, passing errors. Now fast forward to this game and look at the guy who bossed his 10 minutes as a HIA replacement in the first half – calm, mature and accurate work as the primary playmaker. He was finding passes, hitting runners, structuring pods and taking opportunities.

A very encouraging intervention from a very encouraging player.

The Wally Ratings: Zebre (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.