Munster Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread.

Munster twitter saying Botha is back near pitch but with Crutches :eek::mad:

If there's anything to take from that match it's that McGahan is going to be changing nothing.

My general reaction;
The lineout started quite well, a good thirty minutes with only one mistake. Nagle was excellent in the lineout and for 50 minutes caught everything thrown to him. It went downhill as the match wore on though. Poor throws, mistimed throws and jumps, and Wasps getting up just in front of our jumpers.

The scrum wasn't great, but wasn't as bad as the beginning of last last year. We didn't give away too much from it, and held our own half the time. There was a lot of wheeling though, which isn't a good sign should we come up against a strong scrum. I'd imagine Poite would have penalised us all over the spot, because the ref seemed to be the type to ignore everything as long as the ball came out.

General line defense was quite good. We contained a lot of Wasps attacks in normal play. Once they got a little break we ceded yards but 90% of the time regrouped again. Wasps got most of their yardage through blindside attacks. It seems that the defense is well disciplined in normal play but once the vagaries of tight play are brought to it it's less able to handle it.

All the forwards at one point did something well, but few put in a full match performance. The starting backrow all had a small break each, Nagle was good in tight, Archer was generally the best in the tight, very aggressive. They seemed to be lacking a little in cohesion. When they were on the Wasps five things were very slow, and it took a lot of fight to secure the ball, far more than necessary if they had a couple of pick and goers ready and waiting. Wasps held them out quite handily in general, although they were almost over the line once and were held up. At that point Stringer went wide and Deasy was clobbered as Wasps still had plenty of men in cover. Another time we were unlucky with kicks twice and would have had tries twice if the bounce went our way.

The backs had very little of the ball, and when they did it was in static play. Our best back play was in broken play, both attacking and defending. Deasy did well at full back, tracking back twice to cover a lot of ground and save our necks. Dougie was good as usual, but had very little opportunity in attack. All the backs took their tackles well. Biggest mess up was with Zebo and (someone else) both going for a pass back from our five metre line. In fairness it was a forward passing it back as Williams was in the ruck, however it lead to a turnover and that progressed to Wasps second try. Williams did get a good break in attack, although tried to offload when he should have gone to ground.

In general, there was little leadership shown, at least when it came to decisions of when to involve the backs. All the ball they got was slow, and it seemed the forwards were actually quite selfish in how they played. There was a lot of forwards take the ball into very tight contact until they lost it, and a lot of one forward taking it, getting nowhere and then being released to the backs. And at that point in the backs it would actually go to another forward waiting out wider and he'd crash it up doing nothing with it. It was far more akin to rugby leage style attack than union, with very little emphasis on gaining control and momentum.

In fairness, it was decided to maul more often, especially off lineouts. It didn't work out most of the time but there were one or two good progressions. Again poor decision making in letting the mauls collapse before the ball was spread out. Very bad use of any momentum we did get. With Stringer the most experienced on there, I'd have to blame him for the match decisions, but have no doubt this was intstructions from higher up.

The most rewarding play from a potential perspective was in defense. Deasy did well on a couple of occasions in the full back position. Zebo was mixed but again made some excellent critical tackles. Cusack was ok, he had little to work with but had the ball out fast when he was allowed use it rather than a forward taking it on. The absolute best, and what got the biggest cheers was two turnovers, one a forward who was put in cover defense out wide, tracked Wasps best player and pushed him out to the touch line to be tackled by both the forward and Zebo(I think), forward got up, rucked, turned the ball over. There was another tackle and turnover a few minutes later. Same forward in both instances I think, they both happened opposite me and I think it was Coughlan in both cases, and if not it was definitely one of the subbed forwards.

Tl:dr: Overall, aggressive play was a good sign, the players seemed very enthusiastic. We were let down by poor decision making and tactics. I do think that in general the younger lads will have learned a lot from the match. At least, if they're allowed to.


Edit: I missed out on Botha. He came off carrying the same leg that was strapped up for the match.

The ref was generally poor. He missed a couple of knock ons and high tackles. Wasps were diving down and sealing the ball in a lot of the rucks. They may have been pulling the mauls down but our maul form was so scrappy and indecisive that would have been hard to call.

Micko was there alright, just not playing. He walked up into the stands and went right past me.

Who is left to sign?

thomond2006 wrote: »

Who is left to sign?

I'd say the plan was to sign no one and still is!

Didn't McGahan recently say that he was waiting till the end of the RWC to sign one and they had somebody in their cross heirs.

Ill see can I find a link

Slightly morbid topic but how many years do people think Felix Jones has left as a player? I'd go maximum of 2 years.

Otacon wrote: »

The guy is only 24. He has a number of years ahead of him. If it were a recurring injury, you could say something, but his injuries have all been in different spots.

He's been a full time pro for what 4 years and injured for two and a half of them. If he's going to get one serious injury after another he's going to have to consider the long term effects of them at some stage.

GerM wrote: »

Easiest reference, Buck, is to have a quick glance at the Leinster side that beat Melbourne at the weekend. 20 academy products were on the field, 11 started. Most of them were about between 20 and 22. As Emmet says, if it's wearing thin, it's not for lack of evidence.

Thats the glaring difference between Munster and Leinster. We had a similar amount of home grown players out on Friday but the average age was proably around 25/26