Munster Team Talk Thread - Snymans are(n't) Forever

Dubinusa

Tough loss. Considering the injury list, Munster had a good season, imo.

letowski

I’m surprised that we didn’t see the sort of game management tactics we used in South Africa a few weeks ago (or even the game plan we used last week). We played far too much rugby out the field, when our attack clearly wasn’t in sync and was making handling errors.
For me, Irish teams (and the national side) this season are trying to play too much rugby in their own half and while that grand during regular season, it’s not the way cup rugby games are won. It’s kick/territory, set piece/breakdown pressure, take the 3 points, it’s teams that do that the best win cup rugby competitions. Understand that Irish rugby have made huge improvements in attack, but the pre-requisites of wining a cup rugby match haven’t really changed in the pro era.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122264877#Comment_122264877

I'd have to disagree, I know the saying "no player goes out on the pitch with the intention of playing badly" but yesterday we saw the exception to that saying

There were moments of brilliance from Zebo and Beirne but we needed 23 men to win yesterday, not 2

Our handling was atrocious, attack was all over the place, defence was non existent.

Crowley is a fantastic player who forgot how to play yesterday, who was our backup kicker and why wasn't he replaced when this became apparent? Questionable coaching tactics if ever I saw

They will regroup, they will come back stronger in September but yesterday was nothing short of a disaster

mun1

lot of puff around here today about yesterday being a “disaster” “step backwards” “career ending”.

Munster did not play well as glasgows defence was all consuming. Glasgow didnt have to do a lot in attack and munster tried to do the 50/50 offloads in every part of the pitch . Thought we learned that lesson against ulster 2 weeks ago .

Glasgow were the better team on the day .

The time wasting by Glasgow looked very cynical , but id blame the referee for not nipping it in the bud with a free kick in a neutral area of the pitch.

Good crowd of over 20k and great atmosphere.

Subs didnt make the expected impact , and it was Glasgow who dug in from 50-70 mins. Could have done with carbery as Crowley wasn’t playing well. Only player who played well was beirne .

Missed Nash on the Wing .

Still consider it a good season from a munster perspective and with Klyne, edogbo, gleeson, ahern to come into the mix up front , we should be ok next season. But would worry about the quality of some of the replacements for Frisch, zebo, carbery, snyman , don’t think our squad is going to as strong next season, especially in LH and TH prop.

50HX

I don't think anybody would have subbed crowley for Butler yestarday.

TThat was the only viable option & management choose not to have him in the 23

phog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265325#Comment_122265325

I think Glasgow won the mess at the breakdown, they got two handy enough tries,, one was akin to an intercept, Glasgow like Munster got turned over meters from the try line.

I think we underperformed yesterday, I certainly don't feel devastated, even though we've lost Zebo, RGS, Carbery & Frisch for next season but let's see what the new lads bring to the party.

I thought the support yesterday was excellent, even as the game drifted away from us.

I feel sorry for the players as they will have a few what ifs from yesterday

Hank the DJ

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265329#Comment_122265329

And that cost us, Crowley knew there was no backup so kept away from his usual physical stuff.

Jump_In_Jack

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265325#Comment_122265325

Tom Farrell for Frisch, Abrahams for Zebo, Burns for Carbery, Kleyn for Snyman. Probably won’t be much of a difference.

Also Kilcoyne back soon, and maybe Salanoa back at some point before Christmas, and Edogbo back for the second half of the season.

phog

If Edogbo can make it back and stay fit he'll be awesome

Jump_In_Jack

The depth in our squad next season should be something like this:

1 Loughman, Kilcoyne, Wycherley, Donnelly
2 Scannell, Barron, Clarke, Buckley
3 Jager, Salanoa, Ryan, Archer
4 Kleyn, Wycherley, Edogbo,
5 Beirne, Ahern, O’Connell
6 O’Mahony, Hurley, Quinn
7 Hodnett, Kendellen, O’Sullivan, Daly,
8 Coombes, O’Donoghue, Gleeson
9 Murray, Casey, Patterson, Coughlan
10 Crowley, Burns, Butler
11 Daly, Abrahams, Coombes
12 Nankivell, Scannell
13 Farrell, O’Brien, Gibbons
14 Nash, Kilgallen, McCarthy
15 Haley, Campbell, O’Connor

Injuries make every squad unpredictable but to me that’s a squad that could win the league.

We need to build on the performances from this season and cut out the unforced errors.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265329#Comment_122265329

That's exactly what should have happened

Stanley 1

Shield passing is the in thing for backlines presently but they must occasionally give the dummy runner the ball otherwise Glasgow just used a drift defence to force Munster to the touchline.

It's not as if they didn't know what Tuipolotto but he still bounced guys in the tackle, he has to be taken sideways, front on, no matter how low, gets fended/bumped off.

theVersatile

Just finished watching it back on catch up there.

Jesus, that first half killed us. Only getting three points from so much ball is an absolutely criminal return. Add to that two of the softest tries we've conceded all year, and its a recipe for disaster. We got turned over far too easily on the deck and lost far too many attacking opportunities. It's hard to disagree with Prendergast who, in his mid-match interview, said that we needed to be more ruthless and clinical. Second best at breakdown, some silly errors, and that's a good run in wasted.

I thought Casey had a better game than posters on here gave him credit for. I don't think he played with any less tempo than he usually does and I thought his kicking was, for the most part, pretty good. That knock on at the base of the scrum is criminal though. Crowley had what seems to be becoming the typical Jack Crowley game: excellent ball in hand work in open play combined with some very mixed kicking. I don't mind his territorial kicks when they don't work out (he'd one that was very well read by the Glasgow winger off a scrum while another just bounced the wrong direction) but the shot at goal he missed early on was uncharacteristic and poor.

The bomb squad tactic didn't quite work in our favour - but I think Glasgow managed the game very well in the second half to make sure we didn't have much of an attacking platform in the final twenty minutes (much like we did in the second half v Ospreys). Coombes was busy with grunt work and RG had some vital contributions for the Frisch try (the initial blockdown and then the pass to Loughman) - but outside of that we really struggled to get any of our bench players involved in the game late on. It didn't help either that our discipline went to the dogs after the hour mark.

Beirne was outstanding, as was Jack O'Donoghue (who's performances seem to have flown under the radar amidst the whole Coombes on the bench discussion) and Hodnett I thought. We'll really miss Frisch next year - he's such a classy operator and I don't think Tom Farrell (or Sean O'Brien) is close to the same level.

Sad note for Zebo to go out on - he's rolled back the years this season and he's been nothing but a pleasure to watch his entire career.

50HX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266768#Comment_122266768

Ah come on, a young lad who has played 12 mins of champions cup & has one full 80 min game under his belt.

It wasn't the loosing of the game anyway

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266876#Comment_122266876

Yes he is inexperienced, so what? If you don't give him a chance he will always be inexperienced... For me the game was lost in the opening minutes when Crowley missed in front of the posts as mentally the team became completely unsettled then

That's not to downplay Glasgow's performance, plenty of teams wouldn't have responded as well as they did to Munsters performance

Lost Ormond

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267092#Comment_122267092

Butlers good player and for the future wlbut wasn't ready for this game this weekend at least to have that much responsibility on him. In no way was that miss the losing of thr ganen

Leslie Purkiss

how was POM yesterday? It’s notable the lack of comments on his performance.

sliabh 1956

I think we will let Quinny answer that tomorrow morning 😉

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267231#Comment_122267231

I hear Reggie Corrigan is coming out of retirement

50HX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267092#Comment_122267092

You don't wait for your starting 10 to miss a penalty before subbing him for an inexperienced lad to "have a go sure"

Glasgow played the smarter rugby, we weren't at it & that happens, v hard to do back-back URC since SA have joined which is good for league

Brief_Lives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267141#Comment_122267141

except for Beirne and Hodnett, the whole team played badly. I think we have established that,. Not sure what you are fishing for.

Brief_Lives

Actually where can we find the stats from the game, I'd like to have a look at the unforced errors by Munster, from where I was, it seemed 90% of our phases ended with an unforced error (or forced error).

phog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267702#Comment_122267702

A reaction?

phog

I assume Munster do a review on why we lost out on a final (a home final) I'd also assume that missing your first kick at goal is not something they'll dwell on.

Crowley also missed his first kick at goal only a few weeks ago, v Edinburgh, we went on to win that game with a BP win.

Neil3030

my 2 cents:

I want to be clear that there's a very fine line between choking due to nerves affecting routine behavior and pressure disrupting new strategies that haven't yet become second nature. I am not accusing the team of the former.

I do, however, wonder if this new "two games in one" Bomb Squad strategy ended up costing us the game. Initially, it showed promise during the run-in, but we ultimately looked disjointed in the first half against the Ospreys, and then for the entire game against Glasgow. I.e., once the pressure came on, things started getting disrupted.

Separately, you also had a series of injuries in midfield, and ensuing rotation. Nobody's fault, but continuity in midfield was essential last season; once Fekitoa and Frisch clicked in the latter half of the season, things were humming.

So I actually don't doubt that if Nank and Frisch had been together for 1-2 games before Glasgow, we'd have won. That's life.

But going forward, a separate question is whether the coaches will persist with the dual-game strategy.

I just watched a deep dive on how SpaceX came to dominate the current space race (link if anyone is interested). A key part of their business model was to just allow failure to happen (within limits), but then learn from it (a lot of their rockets exploded early on in test launches) - fail-fast.

The alternative might seem appealing (i.e., make sure you plan everything out meticulously, get everything right, then put it into practice). But in reality, that also means your evolution is stunted because you are so afraid of failure that you get locked into a cycle of over-planning and under-executing.

So while it's not IDEAL for a key learning moment to happen when it did in a semi-final, I wouldn't want to discourage the team from innovating. The potential payoff in the long run could be key to evolving as an elite-level team, with the opposition needing to prepare for several different game plans.

SUAF (fail-fast).

Brief_Lives

I think I will let the coaches do the analyzing and kicking the sh!t out of the group verbally, today, at the video review.

I think about 35 will go to South Africa, obviously not all will play, but it's good to have a lot of players learning from the established first teamers.

Farrell was in Thomond on Saturday, from what he witnessed, Hodnett and Beirne should go. no other MUnster player will. 🤔

nerd69

The dual game things fine i think the issue is more lack of consistent power in the front 5. If we started a strong team and finished week we lose we saw that earlier in the year

aloooof

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267717#Comment_122267717

I'm not sure where to get stats that detailed, but I'd agree…. we're down for 24 missed tackles. Criminal. The 2 tries were as bad as we'd conceded in a long time.

theVersatile

https://twitter.com/CianTracey1/status/1802679579569504476?t=MowIYOoasKGijnWj8HX76A&s=19

Beirne confirms that Jack O Sullivan is departing at the end of the season. All the best to him.

theVersatile

As expected, Frisch makes the experimental French squad for the Summer. Can't say it's not been deserved.

https://twitter.com/CianTracey1/status/1802642827114906003?t=6feHUGnlO1gU2_Zxx4KLKA&s=19