Munster Away 26/12 19:35 Eir Sport 1

[Oldschool]

Besides the win, I think again we showed we're not as good a team as perhaps many on here think we are.

That was a scrappy win lit up by a slightly fortunate but well executed try.

Poor start, lineout let us down again and plenty of unforced errors.

I believe we've gone backwards quite a bit since the return of rugby.

We'll only see the truth when we play one of the 4/5 top Euro teams.

Come on man, just enjoy the win.
We may not win any pots this year but let's enjoy what we can.

He's got a point, you know!

[Ruckedtobits]

McGrath, I believe, has gotten himself back into the Ireland squad after that. Those 2 runs up the left in the 2nd half alleviated a lot of pressure. Even if he throws the odd wobbly pass, that intelligence at 9 is priceless.

Sent from my 5029Y_EEA using Tapatalk

Some of his passing was woe jaysus and his kicking wasn’t great.
He’s such a competitor though. Name me a better pound for pound defender in the game: I’ll wait.

Not just his tackling but also backfield cover. I was hoping Larmour would get tied up in every ruck, so McGrath could field kicks instead of him.

Agree with all that, but his passing is just not good enough for International standard.

[D4surfer]

The bookies have Leinster 8/11 and Munster 6/4 and the handicap of 3 points. A draw is 25/1.

The bookies had it spot on.

[alanair]

Pretty clear that the lineout for our try was crooked imo.

But Marshall got away with another in the first half.

Also not sure how Brace didn't give a pen for that late hit on Daly. No malice in it but clear contact with the face.

I thought the Cronin 'on arms' was fine personally, he made an attempt. Marshall could've been yellowed but he did slip too.

I disagree with the Cronin no arms one... he clearly went very low , shoulder first , with an afterthought of an attempted grasp... and the outcome was a dangerous tackle...
whether he meant it or not is irrelevant ... I think Brace’s call on that was wrong

[alanair]

Besides the win, I think again we showed we're not as good a team as perhaps many on here think we are.

That was a scrappy win lit up by a slightly fortunate but well executed try.

Poor start, lineout let us down again and plenty of unforced errors.

I believe we've gone backwards quite a bit since the return of rugby.

We'll only see the truth when we play one of the 4/5 top Euro teams.

I don’t think that anyone ‘on here’ believes that we are currently as good as we have been , at our peak. But the simple fact is that , like Sarries know how to beat us , we know how to beat Munster. Every team has some rival who has the ‘hex’ on them.

[fourthirtythree]

I only watched it this morning, on TG4, and I clearly watched a different match to most here as the better team won, albeit making heavy work of it.

James Ryan back to his dominant self: pinching opposition lineouts, locking the winning scrum, and bullying Munster forwards in contact all day. That another lock, let alone the loser, got man of the match tells you more about the skew in the coverage than it does a out his performance.

With Cronin, Marshall, Ryan, and Kleyn on this was Munster's scrum team and I was a bit worried before the match. Leinster bested them comprehensively.

The only facet of the game they beat Leinster at was pressing the player in the air, not the ball, they never competed for it. We should have targeted the anonymous Earls. The centres are a well oiled machine and two big lads was never going to be the winning of that game. They looked, as Shane Horgan described one English back, like the kind of backs a forward would select.

Not a great game all round, but a win away is a win.

[LeinsterLeader]

Besides the win, I think again we showed we're not as good a team as perhaps many on here think we are.

That was a scrappy win lit up by a slightly fortunate but well executed try.

Poor start, lineout let us down again and plenty of unforced errors.

I believe we've gone backwards quite a bit since the return of rugby.

We'll only see the truth when we play one of the 4/5 top Euro teams.

I don’t think that anyone ‘on here’ believes that we are currently as good as we have been , at our peak. But the simple fact is that , like Sarries know how to beat us , we know how to beat Munster. Every team has some rival who has the ‘hex’ on them.

To paraphrase Neil Francis " Not only have Leinster got Munsters number, they have it on speed dial"

[cormac]

Think we missed the impact James Lowe can make in those moments close to their line. Would have fancied us to get him over in the corner off at least one of those attacking 5m scrums.

[FLIP]

Think we missed the impact James Lowe can make in those moments close to their line. Would have fancied us to get him over in the corner off at least one of those attacking 5m scrums.

Agreed, Dave Kearney would have also been good close to the line.

[mildlyinterested]

Think we missed the impact James Lowe can make in those moments close to their line. Would have fancied us to get him over in the corner off at least one of those attacking 5m scrums.

We were very blunt and played into their hands. Surely we can get a bit more creative.

[OTT]

One thing we do very badly is making use of penalty advantage. We sort of seem to treat it as a miracle play, last night one of them in the Munster 22 Sexton did a kick that was never on, we had another one and did nothing with it either. I think back to hard nosed teams like England and Saracens and when they get a penalty advantage the writing is usually on the wall that they will do something pre planned to convert. The bigger the game the more important these opportunities are and it would be nice if we were able to take them and not rely on our second bite of the cherry through the penalty that a team can fully defend.

[JohnB]

I thought that Sexton by his exalted standards had a poor game in the 50 minutes or so that he was on. Given that he went off feeling his hamstring it suggests that part of the reason for his recent average displays might be the possibility that he is playing with an injury. If that is the case, it's unfair to him and to the team generally. While there were very good individual displays by certain players last night collectively we were poor. Yet again we had a slow start which we cannot afford to keep enduring. A better team than Munster would have seen us off the premises last night.

[wixfjord]

Think we missed the impact James Lowe can make in those moments close to their line. Would have fancied us to get him over in the corner off at least one of those attacking 5m scrums.

Yep and not just in the corner, he adds another live option for rucking, latching and close carrying too.

Look at his impact in this for our try in this for eg -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtw3QOG ... PRO14Rugby

[Gearzbox2]

Smash smash smash and grab win last night
Have to admire everyone 1-23 how we stayed and fought in that game the full 80
Wasn’t perfect, far from it really but it never is going down there with 2 teams that know each other so well.

Scrum was impressive, a penalty each against for both teams and I thought we did very well there
Line out was ok, one 5m attack went over the top, looked a timing issue but again these opportunities need to be taken
Thought cronin and kelleher threw well in the conditions
We dismantled there line out which people on here have been crowing about that we haven’t been doing so great to see

Lukey Mc was very good, so snappy and moved it well
J10 was ok and Henshaw and Ringrose were rocks in midfield

Back 3 struggled under the high ball in the first half but they came good...some of the back field covering was suspect at times
Huge win for us and sets us up nicely

Big game in west wales next week

[Experimental]

A Shane Jennings style smash and grab burgulary if I ever saw one! I think theres a lot of positives we can take out of this game, one of the main ones being that the lineout seems to have improved. The backline and interchange between backs and forwards for our passing game worked well. A few horribily compounded mistakes from McGrath and Larmour at the start, let them into the game, need to cut that (fixable stuff) out of their games, otherwise played well. Keenan again a fine fine game and James Ryan was brilliant. Thought the back row played well, and gave very little to Munster. Positives for Munster, Haley had a very good game other than one or two forgivable mistakes and Tadhg Beirne was very good apart from the knockons which he needs to cut out of his game if he wants to play consistantly for Ireland. Murray looks like he might be finding some form and O'Mahony is keeping his good play of late consistent. I'm sure they'll be gutted after this (especially JJ), but they need to forget about it now very quickly and focus on Ireland duty. Centers were great and special mention for Porter, I thought he played very well other than his signature penalty or two at the breakdown. We are well capable of beating them by more next time.

[ronk]

Great impact from the subs. Really added energy. I was impressed with Kelleher.

Back 3 struggled in kick defence, especially Larmour. It was enough that the whole team struggled for a while. He was lively with the ball though so I put it down to rustiness.

Munster didn’t have the ability to run up a score when they had a dominant area of the game and Leinster chipped it away. Munster withstood a lot of pressure but it wasn’t quite enough.

I think Leinster were good for a couple of penalties even if the try didn’t come.

[Laighin Break]

In the perennial battle for who should be the starting openside, the stats have Connors down for 8/3 tackles made/missed in 60 minutes compared to VDF with 7/0 in 20.

[wixfjord]

In the perennial battle for who should be the starting openside, the stats have Connors down for 8/3 tackles made/missed in 60 minutes compared to VDF with 7/0 in 20.

And Connors down for 10 carries / 14 yards with VDF down for 1 carry / 2 yards.

Not sure what either of those stat breakdowns tell us!

Could be that both played very different roles, or that the game was different for the periods they were on.

I thought both played well. Connors had a few textbook big hits and carried well, JVDF had a lovely play for the try and led our line well.

[alanair]

The mystery to me is that in certain quarters, CJ. Is still allegedly ‘nailed on’ for # 6 for Irish team, despite a huge fall off in form...

[Keith]

The mystery to me is that in certain quarters, CJ. Is still allegedly ‘nailed on’ for # 6 for Irish team, despite a huge fall off in form...

Of course he is nailed on, this is Ireland we are talking about.