watched it again today.fourthirtythree wrote: ↑January 24th, 2021, 12:21 pm 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.
I think you are correct. Munster were very blunt in attack. box kicking in the first few minutes, spilled by us, gave them the space to go 10-0 up.
And that was it. They tried to go through our forwards but were constantly pushed back...usually with double hits. the only time I think they were in our 22 in the second half was via a kick to touch.
Henshaw and ringrose were brilliant and could have been up for MOTM. nullified their centres.....their 12 and 13 are way too similar and didn't really get their bish bash bosh thing going against henshaw & ringers.
If we had of being a little more clinical with our two try line drives that were turned over, we would have comfortably won. As it turns out we made "heavy work of it" as you put it.
to come back from 10-0 down after the first 20 minutes away from home against munsters best selection, ending up with a scrum half on the wing (JGP) and not letting them score for 60 minutes speaks volumes for our lads. A class try to win the game. Not so sure if we really pinched that...munster had a lot of possession but did nothing with it and rarely looked threatening, other than via a box kick in the hope of our back three spilling it.
As an aside...the reaction of the premiersports commentators Toland and Morris after the Larmour try was priceless....both were utterly gutted and couldn't disguise it.