ERC round 2 Munster Vs Edinburgh Sunday 21st (kick-off 12.45pm).

First topic message reminder :

Well 2 sides licking their wounds after a disapointing start to both of their Heineken cup campeigns.

One team's wounds are considerably deeper and more painful and will have no doubt had a massive psychological impact.

Still, Thormond has been a happy hunting ground for Edinburgh in the past...... hasn't it?

Well Bradley being and ex Munster man will know exactly what his troops are going to face at the weekend.

Edinburgh may be without Visser and Laidlaw after they were injured in the drubbing they received from the Saffercens and Musnter may be without Mr Dependable Ronan O'Gara.

I open the floor to discussion, banter and gentle mocking. Be gentle with us though Munster fans, we were taking some pelters on that other thread!

Munster

15. Denis Hurley
14. Doug Howlett capt,
13. Casey Laulala
12. James Downey
11. Simon Zebo
10. Ian Keatley
9. Conor Murray
1. Dave Kilcoyne
2. Mick Sherry
3. BJ Botha
4. Donncha O'Callaghan
5. Paul O'Connell
6. Donnacha Ryan
7. Sean Dougall
8. Peter O'Mahony

Replacements:
16. Damien Varley
17. Marcus Horan
18. Stephen Archer
19. Billy Holland
20. Paddy Butler
21. Duncan Williams
22. JJ Hanrahan
23. Felix Jones

Edinburgh

15 Greig Tonks
14 Lee Jones
13 Nick De Luca
12 Ben Atiga
11 Tim Visser
10 Gregor Hunter
9 Richie Rees

1 John Yapp
2 Ross Ford
3 Geoff Cross
4 Grant Gilchrist
5 Sean Cox CAPTAIN
6 David Denton
7 Stuart McInally
8 Netani Talei

Substitutes
16 Andy Titterrell
17 Robin Hislop
18 Willem Nel
19 Robert McAlpine
20 Dimitri Basilaia
21 Chris Leck
22 Matt Scott
23 Tom Brown.

Rdw it was a scrum advantage. all you get from a scrum is clean possession 5m behind the scrum. Thats what you got.

Munster need to get back to the set piece and forward play. Take teams on up front and get the confrontational stuff back.

There's pace in the Munster backline and tries will come when the space is created but the foundation need to be the pack.

Let O'Connell and these guys do what they are good at. Pick and go, catch and drive, maul, ruck, carry. Ryan has good hands and can move into the wider channels but some of the other guys are like fish out of water with the ball in space.

I'm not sure Penney is the right guy for Munster, nor Howlett as captain but Rome wasn't (re)built in a day so they deserve a chance, but I think Munster have gone backwards even since 2011 when they won the Rabo.

Its clear what the destination is, in terms of where Penney wants to take them, but I'm not convinced they are travelling in the right direction right now.

Results pay the bills though and Munster have kept themselves in contention with this result. Hopefully this will kick start their season again.

Damn it, missed almost the whole thing... Sunday visitors should be banned by Europe! Well I suppose I deserve it for my messing at the beginning. Congrats to Munster. More like the score they should be totting up albeit against a side that appears to be the most disimproved in Europe.

it's going to be a while before I even think about buying an edinburgh ticket again... losing to treviso at home? nilled by both saracens AND munster? At least Glasgow have been showing some aggression, team spirit and respect for the fans despite barely being able to field enough backs for the bench 2 weeks in a row! A team also coached by Townsend, an attack coach completely inept at coaching attack!!

Very disappointing. Conceding three tries in the last 10 mins is a bit of joke at this supposed level. My HC interest is well and truly over for another season.

Munster were not very good but Edinburgh were god aweful.

I would love to see JJ getting more match time as well

Congrats Munster.

POC really looks back on form, looking very strong again. Keatly at times looked good too.

Delighted to see F Jones back playing again, what an absolute champion of a lad. Such amazing mental strength

With no set-piece, lineout and scrum abysmal.
The Edinburgh backs are always going to be under pressuer, which forces mistakes.!

I'm actually more depressed than last week. You could put last week down to a (really) bad day at the office, but this has shown that we're just a really bad team this year.

That's much more depressing.

What happened to the likes of Cox, Denton, Talaie etc picking driving, getting over gain line, sucking in defenders? It made Edinburgh a tough team to play because they were always attacking in different ways. This year its just been so predictable, sloppy and inconsistent. I thought after the win away to the Blues things were on the up but its just gone from bad to worse.

I think its the tactics that are wrong, therefore the coaching staff. We have too many quality players to be playing this gash!

Just heard Scott Hastings call the Munster scrum half Conor O'Murray!!!

Edinburgh surrendered for the second week in a row. They were useless throughout the match. Typical Bradley. He gets them playing brilliant rugby last season but they're aweful this season. Neil Back has made no impact either or maybe a negative impact. Something is wrong in Edinburgh.

As for Munster, the big positive for me was Kilcoyne. For the second week running he put an international under all kinds of pressure. An Ireland cap must be close. POM played well too. I read people saying hes not an 8 etc etc. Maybe his bad temper is clouding how people see him. Overall from a Munster perspective I'm happy.

Hopeless. Shambolic. Depressing. Season over.

Bradley and his coaching staff must go now. McGinty was always a joke, Back appears to have added nothing.

No game plan, no team working as a team, time for Docherty to stand up and say enough is enough

I think the ONE positive, and i really am clutching at straws when I say this is that Gregor Hunter looked like he might have been quite good with a better platform, and a proper gameplan.

Profitus, I manage the #rugbyunited twitter page. I had a fella ask me earlier if I thought that Kilcoyne would tour with the Lions as a bolter. Some people get seriously carried away.

The positives for me were:

- Dave Kilcoyne. If these good performances continue I think he should certainly retain his place. I think Tom Court and Cian Healy are better looseheads but I dont care about who plays for Ireland. Having Kilcoyne do a good job for Munster is my first priority.

- Sean Dougall and Peter O'Mahony. Dougall is one of the only natural 7s in Ireland and has been a revelation since signing from the English second tier. O'Mahony is looking good - I would like to see him emerge as a pack leader soon. Stander should slot in alongside these two.

- Conor Murray. Bounced back from a bad game last week (always a key thing to be able to do). Kicked very well, got the ball moving and made a good sniping run for his try.

- The Youth in the Final Quarter - in the last 15 minutes we had no Paul O'Connell, no Doug Howlett, no Ronan O'Gara, no Keith Earls, no Wian du Preez, no James Downey as well as all those experienced guys who retired. We got 3 tries with guys like Paddy Butler, Sean Dougall, JJ Hanrahan, Billy Holland, Peter O'Mahony, Ian Keatley, Conor Murray etc leading the charge.

Cough cough... Damien Varley..cough cough.

Edinburgh positives:

Rodders - Varley was good. A year ago Mike Sherry was without a doubt the only way forward. But Varley has been good this year and will give us food for thought.

I watch game again just there and just heard Sky Sports saying that Munster need to shelve this expansive game plan and "go back to old Munster".

Why do we need to do one or the other? Why can't we simply vary our game to do both and keep the opposition guessing, using common sense to read the game and apply our skill set for the situation at hand.

RDW_Scotland wrote:Edinburgh positives:

...and that's being optimistic...

oooo I have a positive for Edinburgh! Nick De Luca did not have a brainfart! Or if he did it was hidden amongst the rest of the team's performance...

RDW some of the Edinburgh stuff today was crazy. The poor ability under the high ball was amazing.

Who was that Georgian lad who fell over try to catch it. Or the guy who walked into touch trying to catch a kick. Or the two knock ons from trying to catch high balls.

Really was amazing to watch.

Oh BTW moment of the match was the gang tackle on Talei - reminded me of when Sebastian Chabal came to Thomond Park in 2005/06.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzExIqWZXYI

He was stag, just thought he was a notable omission from your leading the charge group.

red_stag wrote:RDW some of the Edinburgh stuff today was crazy. The poor ability under the high ball was amazing.

Who was that Georgian lad who fell over try to catch it. Or the guy who walked into touch trying to catch a kick. Or the two knock ons from trying to catch high balls.

Really was amazing to watch.

Oh BTW moment of the match was the gang tackle on Talei - reminded me of when Sebastian Chabal came to Thomond Park in 2005/06.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzExIqWZXYI

All 3 of those were the same guy - the Georgian number 8! ::

I left him out as I specially mentioned youth (i.e. under 25). Varley is 29 next week. Hardly an old man and has years of rugby left in him but equally is not a guy with 8-9 years in him unlike others.

I think Paddy Butler will be a great player. I think Stander will be a great influence on him. He's just 21 and a big strong backrow who Ive never seen look out of place.

RDW Really?

Lee Jones was one of them actually early in the first half.

Basalaia has been decent for us this season but he was embarrassing today.

Nick de Luca made a bit hit at one point.

You think it would have been much different with Visser.

Visser couldn't have done much if the rest of the team couldn't manage more than one phase without being turned over.

Good thing visser, Laidlaw and rennie weren't playing - at least their reputations have remained in tact!

At least the players have the good grace to stay off Twitter tonight.

Id say they are going to get a beasting over next week or so.

I think that the return leg in Murrayfield holds a lot of danger.

red_stag wrote:Id say they are going to get a beasting over next week or so.

I think that the return leg in Murrayfield holds a lot of danger.

THey were supposed to geta beasting this week. Lokk what good that did...

Varley was good for the time he was on but lets not get carried away. He is a poor thrower and that is a hookers bread and butter. We also have Casey, Scannell and Rael in the academy who will be challenging Sherry in a few years.

There must be something wrong with Edinburgh behind the scenes. They looked like they didn't want to be there today. They put the effort in in defense but the school boy errors showed that their confidence was shot.

Don't think.a beasting would do much good with a 5 day turnaround to the next game and AIs round the corner.

Literally have no idea how to fix it - just remembering we didn't even get a penalty in a near kickable position. We had one attacking lineout which we lost. No attacking scrums. No.ball won in opponents 22.

Literally nothing.

I've seen teams be outplayed before and come up empty, but usually every team had chances to score. Even when Ireland were mullered 60-0 in NZ in June, we went for the line rather then taking meaningless 3 pointers and in doing so ensued that we either scored a try or remained on zero. But today, Edinburgh were genuinely toothless.

I have never seen a team be so ineffective in possession. And to be frank, Munster were affording you repeated opportunities with the ball due to over a dozen handling errors and general poor play at times. At 16-0 I was still uncertain that Munster would win as a i felt it was inevitable that our mistakes would be punished but i don't think Ed were in out half with the ball much in the final 20.

Fair play to the guys for sticking to task and chasing down and getting the BP. It was what was required today and a strong finish with the old ruthless streak was good to see. However, I am willing to be patient in respect of Penney and his efforts to reinvent the wheel. Munster are now the 3rd best team in Ireland and there is no way that 'old' Munster values & attributes will get us past Ulster or Leinster. 10 man rugby as plan 'A' is no longer good enough to win or be competitive in the modern game. By all means earn the right to go wide before farking the ball around, but the idea that Munster would have been better served today and this season, by tucking the ball back up the jumper is farcical.

How people that get paid to analyse and discuss the game can come up with that is beyond me. Munster have had better games this season with much more cohesion & much much higher execution of game plan and passing & running etc. Which is all the proof one needs to see that Penney, Mannix & Foley are doing the correct thing.

Game management is still important but seeing the youngsters take the game by the scruff in the final 15 was excellent to see, and what they pundits missed was the fact that two of the final three tries were done on the back of running rugby putting the set piece in a position to make the power plays.

We were pretty bad the last 8 days but a losing BP and an Try bonus at home with the double headers coming up is where we needed to be, if not quite where we wanted to be with 9 or 10 points.

With Earls to come back and the young players all around contributing, I am more optimistic now than i was before this weekend, truthfully before that final 20 mins. Now I do not mean to over hype that 20 but it was a relief and a tonic to finally see some execution as the last 3 or 4 games has lacked that.

To higher levels.

red_stag wrote:
Why do we need to do one or the other? Why can't we simply vary our game to do both and keep the opposition guessing, using common sense to read the game and apply our skill set for the situation at hand.

Thats what it was crying out for.

There are games where the tactics Munster played today will pay dividends, although the execution for 70 minutes was fairly poor and poor execution will rarely pay dividends.

But for 70 minutes Munster looked like they were playing to a script without any common sense. Whenever they attacked around the fringes they put points on the board, whenever they kicked for the corners they put Edinburgh under a great deal of pressure. But often they went wide for the sake of going wide. I believe Penney is taking Munster in the right direction and that they need to put more width on the ball than 'classic' Munster. But players and coaches showed a lack of the insight and nous to do the right thing at the right time that used to define Munster. I think that is Dean Ryans point.

Notch, that is the point that Dean Ryan should have made, but it isn't what he actually said or meant. What he said was Munster used to win doing x, so they should still do x to win. But simple rugby is not acceptable as a default setting anymore. Now, I fully agree noth today and last week, some basic boxing clever would have either relieved pressure on us or put pressure on our opposition, no question a lot of players made bad decisions etc but I don't think that is necessarily a game plan or coaching issue, nor should relative inexperience but forwarded as a reason, fark, school boys wouldnt make some of the errors Munster have shown in the last 160 mins of rugby, but the game plan is sound, the execution is the problem.

As soon as Paulie dropped that ball the Racing game changed and 3 - 15/17 after 20 mins with 2 tries would have meant Munster cruising to a win keeping their opposition at bay with a kicking game and then attempting to pick off the other two tries a a BP win. But missing that try cost us badly and because we were so much better but didnt have the scoreboard reflecting it, some of the senior players inc ROG before he got injured started to force it. marry that to a breathtakingly bad day at the office for Conor Murray and Dan Carter would have struggled to win that game.

Some heavy video analysis of the last 4 Munster matches and some hard work on the training pitch and even with the Int window and the disruption and potential injuries arising, Munster will be a threat to Saracens. I Hope.

Yeah I hope so too. I would love it if we could get 3 Irish provinces into the quarter-finals again- especially if we get an interprovincial clash at some point!

But, sadly, right now I feel like Saracens are favourites to get the better of Munster across the two games. Plenty of hard work needs to be done to get Munster into a position where they can overhaul Sarries and take command of the group... a LOT to work on.

Woke up this morning to this.

WTF happened? Any of my usual boys to comment please.

Never seen a team's HC and domestic league season over so fast. Unreal.

I thought Dean Ryan was talking more about the game in Paris where Munster should have won if, in horrid conditions, they had reverted to "old" Munster when in the lead.

George Carlin wrote:Woke up this morning to this.

WTF happened? Any of my usual boys to comment please.

Never seen a team's HC and domestic league season over so fast. Unreal.

George - same as last week! Lineout still a mess, turned over at pretty much every ruck, dropped high balls, anonymous in attack, scrum poor, I could go on but Monday mornings are hard enough.

Oh also - Atiga lasted 12 minutes and is now out for the foreseeable future.

This season is a write off. Best get rid of Bradley and give whoever comes in the best chance to salvage this debacle.

Last years HC run seemed to paper over the cracks of what was a terrible season in Edinburgh. This year Bradley has nowhere to hide.

Not scoring any points in 2 games is beyond embarrasing. I may mock the weegies for being soap dodging scum bags ( I say in jest my West coast bretheren) but at least they put their bodies on the line and seemed to play with a wee bit of pride!

Edinburgh trully do not deserve to even be in the HC IMO. They have litterally embarrased themselves.

Being a fan of Scottish rugby really sucks.

LT, I accept that Ryan was referring to both matches and he certainly had a point in that rgard in Paris, but the wheels came off the wagon there when Paulie dropped the ball and they never recovered composure and Murray had a shocker that resulted in most of Racing's points. But kicking the leather off the ball would not necessarily have guarenteed victoy after the relieving defensive scrum penalty.

I for one am happy to watch the team evolve and when you consider the number of changes in personnel and indeed, coaches, to be in with a shout in both comps of knockout qualificiation is a nice place to be.

And the fact that the young players stood up and got the BP yesterday was gratifying. Taking Leinster & Ulster as examples, it it the success of the academy & fringe players in learning what to do and when to do it that is the real success of Irish provincial rugby in the last 3 or 4 seasons. We're behind those two on a couple of levels but we're hopefully headed in the right direction now, in terms of style & results as well as building a a team for the next 5 years. Going forward. I love puns!

The Atiga signing is really starting to stink. Perhaps signing washed up Kiwis isn't the way forward.....Angus MacDonald hardly setting the heather on fire either.

I can't make the Scarlets game this weekend, but something tells me I won't be missing much. Fingers crossed we can score at least one penalty during the 80 minutes. I suppose that'll be an improvement.

RDW_Scotland wrote:

George Carlin wrote:Woke up this morning to this.

WTF happened? Any of my usual boys to comment please.

Never seen a team's HC and domestic league season over so fast. Unreal.

George - same as last week! Lineout still a mess, turned over at pretty much every ruck, dropped high balls, anonymous in attack, scrum poor, I could go on but Monday mornings are hard enough.

Oh also - Atiga lasted 12 minutes and is now out for the foreseeable future.

Are James King and John Houston also out? Personally I've seen nothing to suggest that Atiga is a better option than those two.

With confidence presumably shot to pieces, unless the players are self-deluding, should any of the Edinburgh lot (esp. in the pack) get included for the AIs?

Cross (necessity rather than desire), Ford (still better than Hall, even on a bad day), Rennie (although perhaps bench behind Barclay) and Denton should be involved from the pack.

In the backs I think Laidlaw should be on the bench if fit, to cover 9 and 10, and I'd say NDL and Visser will start. Scott and Tonks should be in the squad, possibly the match day squad, but I think Dunbar and Hogg will start 12 and 15 respectively. Jones may be involved but only if injuries permit. S Lamont ought to play on the opposite wing to Visser if fit (keeping it warm for the mighty Maitland).