URC Round 8: Munster vs. Leinster - 26/12/2023

Had to see past a Leinster win.

Without the bulk of Kleyn, RG or Edogbo, it'll be a hard task for Munster to defend mauls.

Crowley will need to go 80, and it's telling this season how much Munster miss Healy, if even just to come on for the final ~10 minutes, and offer a different style and rhythm. Shake things up a bit.

POM's leadership will also be sorely missed, and I'm not yet convinced that Ahern at 6 gives you the nuts-and-bolts of what you need at blindside.

On the flipside, Leinster will be relying on a relatively inexperienced 10, and history has shown that the more Leinster's decision making is delegated to scrum half, the more disjointed their attack becomes.

Munster have also shown a few nice tricks recently that can make ground against a heavy blitz defense. Might see Scannell start at 12 for his boot.

For once, neither side should be too concerned about their scrum, given mutual issues with it.

Munsters bench isn't the strongest.

Since this thread is currently lacking on spice, I think its time to play a game of...

IS JOE MCCARTHY REALLY THAT GOOD? A (SOMEWHAT) DETAILED ANALYSIS:

Last week, I promise one @Lord Palmerston that I would re-watch Leinster v La Rochelle, IN FULL, with a focus solely on Joe McCarthy, in order to answer one bold question: Was this "the most promising performance by a young second row in recent memory"?

The layers of added spice have a fiery effect when you consider that two promising young second rows in good form are also playing in the Munster team this Stephen's Day. I'm sure there will inevitably be a Penny/Hodnett comparison made, but it won't be me doing it!

But lets get back to the key consideration at hand - Joe McCarthy vs La Rochelle.

WARNING: This is long; I try to look at basically everything he did in this game.

I am using this video in case people want to cross reference any points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCoJCHiw7tE&ab_channel=RUGBYREPUBLIC

The analysis can be found above. Time stamps are from the match clock, not the YouTube video's time. Immediately, it gives rise to some interesting observations.

• One thing which was heavily praised by certain individuals in the Leinster thread was his Maul Defence. However, his maul defence was actually quite mixed across the board. If anything, his counter lifting (working with Baird as a counter jumper) was far more impressive from a lineout defence perspective than his maul work.
• Lots of grunt work, to be expected from a tighthead second row. Made for very interesting viewing and data tracking, I can assure you :/.
• His major negative contributions come in two main forms: penalties (a well documented criticism of his) and missed tackles. He brings excellent linespeed which doesn't come across in this purely stats based analysis; however he shoots up without setting his feet which means he often misses initial hits leaving the backrows hunting inside him to clean up the mess. Some could argue that this is by design, but other plays (notably Baird, I found) were able to bring linespeed AND make their first up hits behind the gainline, so I'm inclined to view it as a net negative.
• The spacing of the timestamps are interesting too - he does seem to come in bursts rather than being a totallic presence throughout the game. For example: each of his "dominant" first half carries are after four-to-five minute spells of inactivity. Obviously, some of this is down to kick-tennis happening during these periods, but there are other occasions where he is out of action either due to sucking diesel or placing himself wider in the defensive line (which on the rainy day it was in LAR, the ball never really got out that wide all too often).
• I have omitted scrums from the picture. Some argued that him scrummaging against Skelton was another thing to factor into account. In fact, McCarthy was scrummaging on Wardi/Allalatoa's side of the scrum, which was rarely problematic from a scrum penalty perspective. The real battle seemed to be Antonio/Skelton v Porter/Ryan.

Overall, is it the most promising performance from a young long in recent memory? I still think not. In fact, I'd argue Baird's performance in the same game was, upon re-watch, far more impressive than McCarthy's, albeit in the six jersey. As for my own claim, which was that he is "more liability than asset", that was probably the opposite extreme and a bit harsh. Indeed, from tallying up the total net positive/neutral/negative contributions, it would appear on this particular day, he was actually equal parts asset and liability (something which I did not have planned and I had a good chuckle at once I counted up all the colours).

Is the potential there? Absolutely. But he is not there yet for me.

Obviously, some of the attributions of positive/negative/neutral are open for discussion. I tried to grade his contributions in line with how sports analysts actually do the stats. Naturally, some will argue that some neutrals should be positive (and vice versa) and some negatives should be neutral (and vice versa) but I tried my best to be impartial in my analysis. Some stuff was on the edge (example: the 3:30 tackle on Skelton could've been a positive, while the 40:20 LAR turnover could've been a negative), but where there was doubt, I tended to opt for neutral.

Ultimately, while my view on McCarthy's performance probably went up after re-watch, I still don't think it was anywhere near the level some were claiming.

Discuss.

P.S. COME ONNNNN MUNSTER :P

You've literally been playing a 2nd row in the back row for the last 4 weeks.

I appreciate the effort, but would be pretty critical of your methodology.

In what world are things like “effective chop tackle on Skelton”, “effective tackle on Bourgarit”, multiple effective carries and effective ruck cleans etc only deemed to be ‘neutral’?

I looked at some of your specific ones, including the sequence from 53:35 “effective carry” where he clearly beats the first man, gets Leinster rumbling forward and presents clean ball. How is that not deemed a positive?

I think you’ve over played the negatives here, and definitely short changed him a good few positives.

Let’s see how he goes against Edogbo on St Stephen’s Day.

Yeah, same, and I do appreciate the effort of it.

To me, the thing that gets lost a little in the analysis though is the level of the game, the quality of the opposition and the difficult conditions.

To me, his performance was exactly what many people have said Leinster have lacked against LAR in recent games (as was more apparently after Ryan left the Final in May).

He brings a great level of consistent physicality, something you just don’t see from many Irish locks. That, to me, is really exciting.

I don't think the weather is a huge factor here - considering we're looking at a lock. He's going to be expected to do what a lock does regardless of the weather (bar maybe an increased margin for error with regards clearouts and handling). It'd be different if it was, say, an outhalfs performance we were looking at, as the wind and rain would have a much larger effect on his game than the lock forward's.

Standard of opposition is a huge thing though for sure - and you can't deny his obvious physicality. I could see him being a Lion in eighteen months IF he can sort out his discipline and keep having those explosive impacts over the next year or so in Europe and 6N.

And if I do decide to track another player's stats, I will endeavour to apply the same level of scrutiny. So expect to see lots of neutral impacts in the future lol.

I'm going to ask you to elaborate slightly what you mean by that?

Glad the effort is being appreciated though! :)

Take (for example) Stormers v La Rochelle, and do the same analysis for Smith or Van Heerden.

Assuming you use the same criteria for involvements (dominant vs neutral), you'd then have a baseline to compare Joe McCarthy against.

E.g., if you did Van Heerden, and he came out something like:

Net positive 5, Net negative 30, Net neutral 8.

Then it's a sign McCarthy (11,11,25) is contributing more to a side that beat the same opposition, using the same criteria to judge involvements.

It's just an idea if you had any concerns about how you score involvements. I am by no means stressing that you need to do this.

Ah yes I see.

Now that I think of it, it would be interesting to cross compare across similar games to elite level tighthead locks.

I see LAR are playing Toulouse at home on December 30th. If, say, Arnold or Meafou were playing for Toulouse, and they narrowly beat a mostly full strength LAR in La Rochelle, it'd make for an interesting examination of how (in theory, off a very limited sample size) McCarthy's performance squares up against the top locks in Europe in a similar situation.

Food for thought :)

I used the term 'flogging' tongue firmly in cheek, though they've used him in every game (I believe every minute) they could since he was allowed back, presuming he had the same first option to return timing as the heavily used Leinster WC players. They didn't have to select him in all 3 of those initial URC games, as they had other healthy options, but they did.

I really don't know why the defensiveness about this, both sides seem to have been forced to rest players due to their early season decisions.