As I walked out of Thomond Park last night, I made a solemn vow to myself – you will not use the trope of “it was a game of two halves” in your intro. I intend to keep that vow… even if it was a game where there was a large variance in performance between one segment of the match and the other.

I think I got away with that one.

There’s no escaping that Munster’s opening 30 minutes in this game was desperately poor. We went 15-0 down but it could have easily been 19-0 or worse. This intervention from Peter O’Mahony midway through the first half won’t be remembered too much because of the outcome of the game but this was a key moment that gave Munster a relatively realistic target to shoot for.

Coming back from 15-0 is tough but going down 19-0 after 24 minutes with who knows what else there would be to come is another story entirely. The emotional shock of conceding three tries without so much as landing a punch in return can be hard to quantify but that’s where Munster were at that point in the game, namely struggling to contain the Stormers as they dominated possession and territory.

The first 30 minutes were a good illustration of the importance of territory. We struggled to get the ball into the Stormers’ half and keep it there, for a number of different reasons.

That inability to move the ball up the field lead to a lot of defending in critical areas. A few slips here, a few lower quality exits there, a few poor tackles to gift a good attacking side momentum and, all of a sudden, you can find yourself unable to get out of your own half for prolonged periods and begin leaking points.

That was compounded by some issues at the breakdown on the offensive end gave the Stormers some real energy.

The Stormers were making the cleanout quite difficult in that first half and they were regularly able to swipe across the cleanout lane to make space for a poach. It wasn’t quite “not rolling away”, which would be a penalty, but it was in the same neighbourhood. We’ve been stymied by this approach in the past – Racing 92 back in 2018/19 and 2019/20 were particularly effective at it – and the Stormers used it to great effect here, winning a number of breakdown penalties. That final penalty in the above clip – where Brok Harris was penalised for the actions of the first tackler – was a bit of a sea-change in the game to that point.

We were struggling to win collisions too, mind, and the Stormers energetic blitz made life quite difficult for us, as did the impact of their pack in the tight exchanges.

Munster would have to retain the ball – difficult in the breakdown conditions – and extend the ball in play time to work space and the first time we managed that was around 30 minutes into the game.

That took 15 phases to work in this instance but a latching error let the Stormers off the hook. This was the way, though. We started incredibly poorly but you could tell in the stands that we were starting to make an impact in the collisions, ever so gradually, and at the set-piece – the maul in particular.

That try was hugely important because it gave us an attainable target in the second half, something we attacked with real tempo after the break. We were more aggressive, played with more tempo and started to kick that bit smarter. Now we were bossing territory and possession. In the face of this pressure, the Stormers began to infringe – especially at the lineout, where Peter O’Mahony was outstanding on both sides of the throw. O’Mahony’s link with the outstanding Niall Scannell at the lineout was a key launch point for us and it lead to a few key penalties that we kicked deep into Stormers territory.

What followed was some outstanding lineout and maul work that punished the Stormers over and over again.

Just like that, Stormers lead was gone. We needed an immediate reaction and we got it.

What’s more, our defensive lineout – O’Mahony in particular – had broken up a key launch point for the Stormers which allowed Munster to play in the right areas without too much defensive stress. The Stormers still created opportunities (because they are a good attacking side) but our forward play at the lineout and maul broke them up early in the second half and kept us out of range for a big comeback win.

If it felt like we struggled to play the same kind of style as last week, you’d be right. Our Pass Per Carry rate for this week was 1.02, down from 1.31 against the Sharks. That translates to a lot of pass, carry, collision style play but it was that kind of game, or ended up that way at least.

Yet, we won and won well. That’s why I feel the PPC rate is merely a way to illustrate a way of going about winning a game, rather than being a guideline towards a certain style being synonymous with winning. In this game, we struggled to get decent depth on our attack because of good Stormers’ pressure off #9. That forced a reset and a re-think, especially visible in the 15 phase sequence I showed above. That translated to a lot of pass, carry, collision to set up what we wanted.

We still had opportunities generated from more expansive play but we didn’t execute them as cleanly as we’d have liked.

Our attacking work, bar a few exceptions, was a set-up for penalties that we would then kick deep. The majority of our scoring opportunities came from this kind of sequence, which gave an impression that we struggled to break the Stormers down as cleanly as we’d have liked. I think that is certainly true – we did struggle to generate consistent clean opportunities from inside the 10m lines but I think that’s more of a reflection of the Stormers’ defensive intensity and a pretty average performance from Carbery, creatively speaking.

This seemed like a game where we could have done with a heavier ball-carrying rotation in the backrow – not that O’Donoghue or O’Mahony played poorly, far from it – and midfield but our set-piece work was more than enough to compensate, especially as the game progressed, where we looked really well-conditioned and strong.

We are still a work in progress, plainly, but when you consider the quality due to be rotated back in – Jenkins, Beirne, Farrell and De Allende, with Murray backing up Casey – there’s a fair bit of road to run with this group.

Notable Players

This ended up being a very positive performance, especially in the forwards.

I thought Craig Casey had another super smooth game at #9 and looks more assured with every game that passes. He did a great job marshalling things here and, one or two poor passes aside had his usual high-quality output in all facets of the game. Conor Murray will have to play very, very well to displace Casey at this rate, or he should do at least.

Mike Haley is, for me, the best fullback playing in the country right now. There’s very little he doesn’t do to a very high standard. His high fielding, positioning and kicking game is outstanding.

Previously, I’d have said his attacking work was the only part of his game that was sub-elite – maybe his top-end pace too – but he has addressed that almost completely. He is a slick, effective handler of the ball who is capable of playing at long-range, mid-range, short ball and offloading out of contact.

He just does not make mistakes and has firmly locked up that Munster #15 shirt for my money. Quality. ★★★★★

The rest of the backs were pretty good, for the most part, even if I was a little disappointed with Joey Carbery’s impact. He’s still got credit in the bank though, so I think giving him game time momentum is a smart decision, especially after his layoff.

This was a win dominated by the forwards.

Fineen Wycherley had a really busy, physical game where his lineout calling and execution was a real highlight. His fundamentals look really strong as a busy, technically solid, aggressive workhorse second row who can do a little bit of everything but who seems to excel at the offensive breakdown, lineout and maul, where his work is extremely sharp.

I thought Gavin Coombes and Jack O’Donoghue had very good games.  Both were physical, impactful and guarded the lineout in different ways. Coombes rotated out into the midfield to help lock up our 10/12 channel while O’Donoghue really went after the Stormers in the air.

Keynan Knox had a superb game. He got caught once by Brok Harris boring in but he looked really strong against a good Stormers tight five. His work around the breakdown was extremely physical and he mauled very well while adding some real pop in the collisions. He’s a massive prospect.

Jean Kleyn is chronically underrated on this island. For my money, he is comfortably playing the best rugby of his career over the last year and his work so far this season is a further extension of that.

His performance levels in the tighthead lock over the last two weeks against high quality, physical opposition have been outstandingly good. He was the dominant lock against two really good operators in Grobler and Le Roux Roets last week and this week he had a big game in the tight exchanges against Moerat and Smith. His breakdown work, carrying, scrummaging and lineout/mauling is top class. He’s comfortably one of our most important players and his performance here was commensurate with that status. Brutish. ★★★★★

This was the best I’ve seen from Niall Scannell in a few seasons. His last two weeks have been really, really strong and I think he’s really on track to get back into the reckoning for a green jersey on the strength of what I’ve seen against the Sharks and the Stormers.

Scannell’s lineout work was faultless; it was always a strength of his anyway, but his work here in finding jumpers all through the line was outstanding. That was backed up by a strong, really effective carrying game.

I have been quite vocal for a while now on where I feel Scannell’s best role is and that a lot of ball carrying typically does not suit him. That was far from the case here, where he was easily one of our more effective ball carriers.

He wasn’t just trucking up into contact either, though. He had some good footwork and hit the line pretty heavily. He seems to be carrying a bit of extra timber this season – whether that’s accurate or not I’m not sure, but he certainly looks heavier – but whatever about that, his carrying was unrecognisable here. He’ll never be the type of ball carrier that Ronán Kelleher is for Leinster and Ireland but he doesn’t have to be. His heavy leather carrying here coupled with his outstanding set-piece work is a winning combination. This version of Niall Scannell pushes hard for an Ireland jersey, in my opinion. Powerful. ★★★★★

When Peter O’Mahony plays like this, it can look like there are two of him. Maybe more than that at times. When you select two Combo Flankers like O’Donoghue and O’Mahony, you do so with the lineout and phase play mobility in mind. O’Mahony is one of the best players of this type playing the game. His skill set and willingness to ball in the wider areas of the field are a huge plus for Munster.

He’s an exceptional handler of the ball in these flow positions. If you get the ball to him, he will execute. His offensive and defensive breakdown work were superb here and he had the grit and brains to deny the Stormers a try under his own posts.

This is what a captain does. O’Mahony was a key factor in dragging Munster back into this game because even when we weren’t playing well, the captain was and his levels drove people on.

His lineout work was outstanding too and a massive factor in the win. Offensively, he just gets higher than everyone else and faster too, propelled by excellent, beefy lifting by Kleyn, Knox, Wycherley and others. His defensive lineout work is of such a high quality that he can often make your lineout look like his lineout.

This is the kind of performance you want from a captain and a leader. He was aggressive, he was bristling – look at the run-ins he had with Englebrecht, Fouche and others – and he made stuff happen. He consistently made massive plays on both sides of the ball and was a key difference-maker in turning this game back around for the Good Guys. Class. ★★★★★

The Wally Ratings: Stormers (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.