When you scout an opponent, you’ll come up with a few ways to attack them in areas where they might be weak.
The teams that don’t know their areas of weakness are the easiest ones to exploit, while the teams that manage any glaring weaknesses with a change in their defensive (or attacking) structure are trickier to move into positions where you can isolate and then attack that weakness. My understanding of this concept was explained to me in New Zealand on an exaggerated scale. “If you want to know what a structural weakness is,” my coach told me, “you have to imagine how you’d exploit the opposition if they had a 10-year-old boy lining out for them, be it in the front row, the back row, at halfback, or further out. Boil everything down from there.”
That’s what clicked it for me. If they had a 10-year-old boy defending the wing but didn’t know it, what would you look to target him? You’d kick contestable balls at him. You’d also widen your attack to get your winger one on one with him as often as possible. If the 10-year-old boy was playing at hooker what would you do? You’d get your tighthead to drive in at him on every scrum and throw a jumper up at the front of all his throws. If they had a 10-year-old playing at 12, you’d structure moves off your set piece to isolate him one on one with one of your big runners until the opposition narrowed on him to protect him and then you’d target the spaces they left behind elsewhere in doing so.
Finding that “10-year-old” in the opposition can vary from team to team. Poor sides have multiple avenues of attack and all you have to do is pick one or two with the rest as backups. Better sides might only have a specific weakness that you can only exploit in certain positions. Either way, you need to execute your plan with accuracy to ensure you hit the weakness head-on.
Castres, as I went over last week, have one major weakness in their set up and that’s their lateral speed on defensive sets, be it multiphase or on set piece. The conditions and late injury changes didn’t really allow Munster to pressurise that lateral speed (and subsequent rushed decision making) on phase play until late in the second half.
This was the try but look at the build-up to it.
Munster went across the field setting four quick ruck points as they went. Pay attention to the pace of the forwards as they move to all three fold points.
By the time the ball reaches the end of the line, look at the space left at the ABC defensive position.
There’s no pillar defender and “A” (Samson, a replacement lock) is defending 10m of lateral space all on his own with Babillot and Caballero compacted as B & C defenders. Murray can slide across the gap and put Stander away through a colossal hole after Babillot and Caballero doubled up on Holland. Look at how Stander’s staggered support line makes him almost invisible to the B/C defenders.
But that space could only be exploited because Castres didn’t have the numbers to properly stack their defence from the ruck pillar on out. They lagged behind from the previous rucks and that created an opportunity for Murray to attack a weakness he’ll have looked at pre-game.
A lot of Munster’s lineout work was designed to exploit the same weakness, to mixed results.
This one looks like an overthrow but I don’t think it was. Look at O’Mahony’s peel away at the tail of the lineout – this was a planned scheme.
I think the intention was to compress Castres by forcing two counter-launches and then using O’Mahony to basketball pass this to Cloete coming around the tail.
I think Murray’s peel around from the front was a support line on Cloete’s inside shoulder, with Scannell on his outside. Tulou made a good read and intercepted but the area that Munster targeted was specific to Castres lateral speed problem in the forwards.
A lot of Munster’s work in the first half from the lineout was designed to attack the seam between the last forward – Tulou or Jenneker – and Urdipilleta.
Look at the way that Ryan grabs the tail defender to expose Jenneker to Cloete’s attacking line.
This was to give Cloete as much of a chance as possible to expose the Castres hooker. The move breaks down once Cloete runs too close to Jenneker but I think there was a bit of inaccuracy in the actual scheme for this one.
I think this was a multi-option play with Earls as a possible second layer strike runner off a one-two pass between Cloete and Murray. Either Cloete overran his line or Murray did – either way, I think Earls was in the right place to strike.
We went to this move again a few minutes later and should have scored from it.
This time, the one-two pass worked perfectly and exposed Jenneker in the seam. Conway went screaming through from the second layer, took the pass from Murray but couldn’t put Scannell away in support on the outside shoulder. The move worked perfectly – in part because of how shallowly Jenneker was standing in comparison to the one a few minutes prior. That meant we could take advantage of his movements, not give him an attacking line to gamble on. We exposed his lateral speed and got the break we wanted as a result.
We didn’t always get that break, but it was always what we were looking for in that part of the pitch.
Look at this one from earlier in the game.
You can see the double option here.
The first creates workable space in the seam after a pretty slow response from the back lifting pod.
That was an opportunity for Scannell himself, a pop to Cloete or a different runner coming through the space.
The other option was a one or two phase punch sequence to then come back against the grain so Conway could have a run at tight forwards trapped on the short side of the ruck defending a lot of lateral space. That’s why I think Conway started this move at the front.
The long throw pulled the opposition winger in-field, which gave Munster an option to hit Conway after a phase or two but they didn’t go for it.
It’ll be one that we might see this weekend. Either way, while Munster’s accuracy didn’t quite live up to what they had planned, they were always working to attack the weakness in Castres defensive structure.
