Ulster 36 Munster 17

The End of an Era

The Van Graan era ended with a whimper on a desperately disappointing night in Belfast that was all too reminiscent of the last few years.

Match Importance

Match Intensity

Standard of Opposition

Match Quality

4.4

I got a text from a friend of mine who braved the chaos of the M50 yesterday to travel up to Belfast for this game. I’ve asked him if I can replicate what he sent me here and anyone from Munster Rugby reading this right now – and I know you are – would do well to read these 10 words and take them in.

That’s all it was. Ten words. But they speak quite loudly.

“I feel like they made a fool out of me.”

This guy loves Munster Rugby, as I do, and if he felt that vast swathes of the team that took the field yesterday mugged him off with a milquetoast, feeble performance in a knockout game, then imagine what people who do care less – way less – are thinking?

They’re thinking that a disinterested looking, fail sideways Munster side bottled another big game when it counts. And worse.

Before the game, I wrote the following at the end of the Red Eye.

Let’s see how it goes. I genuinely believe that if this team approaches the game with the aggression and accuracy we’ve seen from them at times this season we will beat Ulster and possibly beat our semi-final opponents too. What was our prep like this week? How is our mindset? Will we be up for this in a way we weren’t two weeks ago?

You’ll know inside the first five minutes.

The first 10 seconds of the game told me that we weren’t dialled to where we needed to be. The captain knocked on the restart after a dud lift.

Now O’Mahony won the ball back straight away after that and look, anyone can knock on a ball, but as the first thing that happens in a game of this importance, it illustrates that things aren’t where they needed to be as much as anything I could write here. Not sharp enough, not switched on, energy in the floor. O’Mahony didn’t even play all that badly. He’s had a good season. But you know where Munster are when you look at O’Mahony. He’s the canary in the coalmine. When I saw him walking out at the start of the game looking half-lethargic, I thought to myself that we were in for a rough 80 minutes. How right I was.

During the week, the departing Stephen Larkham and Conor Murray spoke about the “hangover” from the Heineken Cup defeat to Toulouse. So, eager for comparison, I watched Leinster against Glasgow on Saturday afternoon. A last-minute defeat to La Rochelle in the final? Some hangover on the way there, I thought to myself, at least if what the lads were talking about during the week was true.

Leinster won 76-14. Their hangover lasted five whole minutes of the first half.

Maybe they were drinking a lot of water after the La Rochelle game? Hitting the old solpadiene & Berocca cheat code? How come they could just snap back into peak performance almost immediately while we still have lads moping around the place two weeks after a Toulouse game where 90% of the team have been off on a few days’ break before a full week of training? What are Leinster doing differently to us? Why are Leinster powering through to the semi-finals while we’re packing our bags for the holibobs?

Are they that much better than us? Maybe they are, actually, but I think the simpler answer is that Leinster Rugby as an organisation does not deal in excuses or bullshit or catch 22s because, in Leinster, there are consequences for poor performance regardless of who you are.

As an example, ask yourself whether you thought the poor performances of Joey Carbery and Conor Murray against Leinster’s B team two weeks ago would have any impact on selection for this quarter-final. If you genuinely thought that Van Graan and Larkham would make a change at half-back like that for a big game like this, I can only assume that you haven’t been paying attention to what we do here for the last five years. We talk about hard conversations and learning lessons before selecting the same guys to underperform all over again in the next big game.

Everyone knows it. If you’re a senior guy in the Munster squad, you’ve got to be injured or retired to be replaced for big games. Leinster know it, for example, and can predict our starting team to play them months in advance. But in reality, everyone knows that when the big games arrive, it’ll be the same faces in the same spaces.

Even worse, the majority of our squad seem to know it too because we regularly play like a side that has our team for Category A games set in stone in the first month of the preseason. And, because everyone knows that, training begins to matter less and less as the season drags on because everyone knows there’s a glass ceiling through which you will not pass unless someone gets injured and, even then, they’ve got to be really injured.

Should Andrew Conway have started this game after his knee injury two weeks ago, for example? Trick question. He was always going to start unless he literally couldn’t jog and, as it turned out, he only lasted 46 minutes anyway.

If you’re a Munster player, coach or higher up reading this and find yourself getting steamed at the idea that the likes of me could be criticising this or even acknowledge that there is even a problem in the first place, you are part of the problem. Deep down you know this isn’t good enough but the urge to bottle it is so strong in you that you’re already making excuses.

Stop.

This acceptance of mediocrity is killing us. You know it is. We’re drowning in context, smothered in nuance and we’re none the better for it. Sometimes things are black and white. After Year 3 of a project, you are your end of season results because, for the coaching team, that was what you were building towards. Pat Lam’s third year saw a PRO12 title for Connacht. Leo Cullen’s third year at Leinster saw them win the double. Munster’s third year of Van Graan and Larkham saw us finish 6th in the URC and lose in the quarter-final of both the URC knockouts and Europe.

That speaks for itself and there’s no way to explain it away. If I was to explain it away, though, how do I explain a performance like this where it seemed like so many guys were already on the beach, mentally? I can’t. When people are coming away from a game thinking they were made fools of for making the effort to travel because they showed up but the team didn’t – again – that’s a real problem.

How do I explain why a test capped half-back pairing can’t link up a first phase strike off a lineout? I can’t.

Murray’s pass is fine here but how does it manage to fly through Carbery’s hands under zero physical pressure? Anyone can botch a pass – it happens – but it just always seems to happen to these two as of late. They played incredibly poorly two weeks ago and were backed to start this game – the most important one of the season – again seemingly in the hope that the players they might be on paper would somehow turn into the players they should be on grass.

How is it that those players were backed to start this game – where they’ll play anything from 100% to 60% of the contest – and they produce moments like this?

A four-man lineout scheme designed to draw Ulster to the openside with massive numbers before swinging to the blindside and we’re blowing the pass? In a quarter-final? Why were Ulster not producing moments like this? How come Gibson-Park and Ross Byrne weren’t making errors like this? Conor Murray conceded the same amount of turnovers on his own in this game as the entire Leinster backline combined against Glasgow.

I’ve been over this game four times now and tactically, I think our approach could have probably won the game if our set-piece and red zone backfield defence didn’t evaporate and our handling didn’t degrade to something like you’d see in a J2 game.

Defensively, this was just a deeply uncharacteristic performance when it came to the key, killer tries that we conceded.

Our deep concern for Carbery’s defensive channel – De Allende was tied closely to Carbery all game while he defended at #10 off scrum and lineout – was used by Ulster to manipulate De Allende and Farrell. They scored two tries just from the McCloskey “shell” game on Carbery’s channel. Ulster saw it as a weakness and exploited it for key scores. We defended Ulster way, way better a few weeks ago and have multiple other games this season where we were way stronger and more solid than this. You can’t concede four relatively soft tries like the above and expect to win any game, let alone a knock-out game away to Ulster.

Offensively, we actually looked quite good when we weren’t blowing simple passes and knocking the ball on. One of the big issues I’ve had with Munster over the years was the quality of our ball carrying but it was actually quite good here, as it has been for most of the season.

Inaccuracy on the defensive end makes inaccuracy at the offensive end especially costly. When you combine that with badly botched opportunities at key moments in the game – this sequence right before halftime was particularly costly – along with some fairly contentious “knock-ons” in the second half that could easily have been called as play-on on another day, and the game began to drift away. Some of the knock-ons and handling errors were far from contentious, however, and they fatally undermined any attempt Munster made to creep back into the game. Munster turned over the ball 20 times in this game. That was more than Leinster and Glasgow managed combined on Saturday. It was the worst day of handling Munster have had all season – only the away defeat to the Ospreys in a torrential downpour back in October comes close with 14 turnovers – and exactly when it was most devastating to our season. The last time we turned over the ball this much was… against Leinster in the PRO14 final of last season when we coughed up the ball 18 times.

Funny how that keeps happening.

This was a dry track, with perfect conditions for handling. And we blew it. All the talk about an attacking evolution all season long was for nothing. Munster were undercooked, inaccurate and sloppy right when it mattered most to the season. Saving your worst handling performance of the season for a quarter-final isn’t something that anyone would have planned, obviously, but it feels somewhat fitting given the way this season has listed so badly towards failure and misery.

With yet another season coming to an end in failure and disappointment, I have some tough questions of my own.

Why have performances been slowly degrading since Johann Van Graan, Stephen Larkham and JP Ferreira announced their departure in November 2021? I understand the COVID situation played a part, but that can’t be all of it. More pertinently, has the majority of the coaching unit deciding to quit on the playing group mid-season been reciprocated in kind? Or is that too dramatic? Is it just a case of year three of the Van Graan/Larkham project – when things should be at their most cohesive and complete – was, ultimately, a failed project that would have ended this poorly regardless of whether the coaching crew decided to stay or go.

This isn’t our first rodeo when it comes to falling short in knockout games either. If this was a one-off, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Last season we saved our worst handling performance of the season for the PRO14 final. A few weeks later we blew a home game against Connacht with two of the worst self-inflicted seven-point tries you’ll see in a game and our hopes to win the Rainbow Cup went up in smoke. It was, essentially, a knockout game and we performed accordingly.

This year’s draw with Toulouse was arguably our best knockout performance in the Van Graan era and that game was still pockmarked by a tonne of opportunities left behind.

I suppose the biggest indictment of the Van Graan era is the flat, insipid, slapless performances we’ve constantly seen from Munster at the business end of the season. Is it the senior players or the coaches? Honestly, I think It’s both. When the heat comes on, we look brittle, fragile and like we’d rather be anywhere else. That’s why the Toulouse game was such an aberration – we can call it that now – in that we finally played up to our ability in a big game with energy to match. It’s what makes the last two games so frustrating. Our energy was down, so we played rubbish. When we’re up against sides that are playing with the emotional energy we lack and the levels are approximately the same, we lose most of the time. Most of our games against Connacht and Leinster are a good example of this phenomenon. They’re always up for it. Us? Depends. Think about the last time you knew Munster were coming into a game pissed off and that the opposition were going to pay? I was wracking my brain trying to think of it. Maybe the Leinster game in 2018? The last time there was a collection of those games was in 2016/17, when we rarely took the field without being where we need to be mentally.

In 2021/22, we’re most often like a sailboat becalmed at sea – waiting for a great wind to sweep us along that never comes. That’s never a good sign. I think the biggest issue with Munster at the end of the Van Graan/Larkham era is that this Munster side don’t really have a visible character, except that when big games come around, we go into our shells more often than not. That just won’t do.

Ultimately that comes down to the senior players and the coaches. When people talk about “culture” they’re actually talking about the visible expression of the team during important games. So when people say that Munster’s culture is wrong or “off”, they’re not talking from experience inside the camp. They’re talking about feeble on-field performances and what that says about things inside the camp.

Essentially, if things look this bad on the field, what’s going on off the field?

Most of the coaches are leaving. Most of the senior players will still be here next season. Something has to change. There are new coaches on the way – great ones – and a man in Graham Rowntree who had a box seat to the failures of the last few weeks. He will have seen who blew it when backed to the hilt, and who performed when they were left in supporting roles. I believe that Rowntree has the character to bring Munster back to who we need to be. The feeble, shy Munster we’ve seen over the last few years when the heat comes on deserved everything they got – nothing. Rowntree’s Munster must go back to the mean, spiteful, always up for it, fuck you bastards we were when we were at our best. This isn’t ancient history, this is 2016/17 when we only finished trophyless because we ran out of steam. We have a better squad now – genuinely – but we play well below our level most of the time.

The one bonus of this loss is that no senior, tenured player can possibly look at it and go, yeah, we deserve to start next season in the same depth chart position as we finished this last one. Right?

Change or be changed. That’s what they say. Either things change in Munster or we’ll be changed – changed to a second rate outfit that will slip further and further from where we need to be. The talent is there, I genuinely believe that but the first thing the new coaching ticket has to do is rediscover a vision and a strategy that can bring the fire back to Munster Rugby.

I believe they can do it. They have to. It can’t be superficial change because we’ve seen that in the last few years. No pressure, it’s just the next decade of Munster Rugby hanging in the balance. Mike Prendergast, Graham Rowntree and Denis Leamy know what the fans want. It’s not necessarily “style” or highlight reel tries. It’s character. We didn’t see that against Leinster and Ulster in the last two months. We saw people talking about character but not showing us.

If you show Munster fans that you’ve got that character they’ll back you to the end of the Earth.

Our demands are simple.

All we want is everything you have, body and soul, and if you give us that we’ll give you ours in return.

The Wally Ratings: Ulster (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.