Munster Team Talk Thread - New season title pending....

Murray has an auful habbit of throwing his arms in the air at ruck-time. What we need is for him to use those arms to instead pick the ball up and pass it like a scrum half would

There were some really good performances by a lot of players, which makes the loss, almost single handed-ly orchestrated, by one of our most experienced players all the more disappointing

Agreed. If someone is offside and in your passing line, they're obstructing you and you should be totally OK to pass it into them. Not your problem they can't get back fast enough/get out of the way.

I'm not talking about this specific incident, more in general.

I presume there is a case for them to be substantially interfering with play in an offside position? Slade pops out from between two of his offside teammates. From Murray's perspective, those players are probably (likely) preventing him from being able to see Slade coming?

But you don't and will not see refs do that as it isn't going to work. There's good reason refs don't act like that all the time and don't say rhe players will just adapt. Don't be naive.

Warn, warn warn warn warn and nothing changes

Warn, warn, penalty, penalty and you get less cynical play.

As regards that last Exeter try, can slade run forward as soon as Murray has hands on the ball, or does he have to pick it up?

I though Crowley played well. He had the backline clicking. Munster though, didn't. Gret 1st 40 and then Exeter made inroads.

The argument here seems to be Murray "wished" to make a pass into thin air therefore it should have been a penalty. It makes no sense.

I think Murray was trying to draw the penalty. I also think the pass was (just about) catchable by a Munster player. It was BOC who was the potential recipient. With Frisch and Crowley on the openside, it was surprising that he decided to go to the 19 year old who was on the field 30 seconds.

I think letting it go was fair enough but I also think Beirne was absolutely right to challenge it. If it works, everyone is talking about Murray's experience and cleverness. It didn't and he's savaged. Fine margins.

The thing is, if he actually hit BOC with a good pass, Munster were in with a good chance of a big break. A decent pass to BOC gives a 3 on 2. Slade will be out of the picture as he has shot up. The two remaining defenders are (unsurprisingly) very narrow. A simple skip pass and Munster are away. We can see the set up below. We can also see that BOC is lunging forward to try and catch the pass if it makes it the distance which highlights that it was a) an attempt to draw the penalty or b) a brutal pass.

He's not a blindside flanker, I agree with you. He's our ready made replacement for RG Synman. Thought we got that wrong against Exeter, Ahern should have been at 4 with Coombes at no.8 and JOD at 6. Everyone playing in their correct position then. We missed Coombes carrying in open field because he was in the engine room.