EPCR Quarter Final Edinburgh V Munster

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Edinburgh
v
Munster Rugby


Saturday 30 March 2019 12:45 (GMT)  Champions Cup  Round  Quarter-Finals  BT Murrayfield Stadium  Ref: Pascal Gauzère (France)  Assis Ref 1: Ludovic Cayre (France) Assis Ref 2: Jonathan Dufort (France)  TMO: Eric Gauzins (France)

Teams

Edinburgh



15. Darcy Graham, 14. Damien Hoyland, 13. James Johnstone, 12. Chris Dean, 11. Duhan Van Der Merwe, 10. Jaco van der Walt, 9. Henry Pyrgos, 1. Pierre Schoeman, 2. Stuart McInally (c), 3. WP Nel, 4. Ben Toolis, 5. Grant Gilchrist, 6. John Barclay, 7. Hamish Watson, 8. Viliame Mata.

Replacements:
16. Ross Ford, 17. Allan Dell, 18. Simon Berghan, 19. Magnus Bradbury, 20. Jamie Ritchie, 21. Charlie Shiel, 22. Simon Hickey, 23. Mark Bennett,

Munster



15. Mike Haley, 14. Andrew Conway, 13. Chris Farrell, 12. Rory Scannell, 11. Keith Earls, 10. Joey Carbery, 9. Conor Murray, 1. Dave Kilcoyne, 2. Niall Scannell, 3. John Ryan, 4. Jean Kleyn, 5. Tadhg Beirne, 6. Peter O'Mahony (c), 7. Jack O'Donoghue, 8. CJ Stander.

This look to be a brutal match up - two very physical teams who prefer route one rugby, but have a bit of flair to finish things off too. Munster are heavy favourites at the bookies at 4/9 with Edinburgh 9/5 - bookies don't often get things wrong but that seems very generous odds for Edinburgh given how successful they've been in Europe this season, combined with Munster still trying to get back to their glory days of European heavyweights.

Schoeman has to hope they get out of this

should be fined after the game.

Stupid by shue, but typical Munster cheating. It's not football, but that was football behaviour.

Seriously who waves their arms around after a light shoulder charge, and then to pretend they are injured, really sad to see in our game.

Munster have sunk to a new low.

To be fair shoeman moves towards him with his shoulder, soft but stupid and no need to do it.

Munster Defence has been very good

Game management and cool heads cost us this game.

What goes through a players head to dip the shoulder into an opponent off the ball is beyond me. Is it some kinda hardman thing to prove you’ve got big stones or something?

It’s a shame Dell is away to LI as I’d be wanting to tell Shoemann that if he does something that idiotic again his contract is terminated as there’s a perfectly good replacement to take his place

We had the ball we had the territory, we didn’t have the scrum half to punish Munster. But we know Pyrgos is a limited and slow player. The can for this firmly sits with the idiocy of Shoemann

Well played Munster though. Defences win championships as they say

So cheats do prosper!

Hmm?

Absolute heartbreak. We should have won that game. Munster defence was amazing, but we really needed to show more ambition, we were much the better side when we played quickly but would always return to Pyrgos slowing things down again.

That was some good game.

Munster defence was solid and won it

Edinburgh I think will be pushing for the league next year

Brendan wrote:To be fair shoeman moves towards him with his shoulder, soft but stupid and no need to do it.

Munster Defence has been very good

Thing is while it was a penalty offence, contact was so light that no-one would have noticed if Beirne had not thrown himself to the ground as if he had been hit by an HGV. The Munster challenge for which advantage was being played was a pretty nasty one.

The defence was good, but I will remember the dive.

Great game and hard luck Edinburgh.

Munster do it again.

LondonTiger wrote:

Brendan wrote:To be fair shoeman moves towards him with his shoulder, soft but stupid and no need to do it.

Munster Defence has been very good

Thing is while it was a penalty offence, contact was so light that no-one would have noticed if Beirne had not thrown himself to the ground as if he had been hit by an HGV. The Munster challenge for which advantage was being played was a pretty nasty one.

The defence was good, but I will remember the dive.

It was very soft as I said, I just don't know why he would do it.

Surprised that Bernie did it but but Leinster players do it a fair bit. If any of us were in the same position would we do it.

LondonTiger wrote:

Brendan wrote:To be fair shoeman moves towards him with his shoulder, soft but stupid and no need to do it.

Munster Defence has been very good

Thing is while it was a penalty offence, contact was so light that no-one would have noticed if Beirne had not thrown himself to the ground as if he had been hit by an HGV. The Munster challenge for which advantage was being played was a pretty nasty one.

The defence was good, but I will remember the dive.

If you were Beirne you’d have gone down exactly the same. Well, if you were a pro sportsman who is paid to win games you would

I agree it’s not a nice thing, but it’s pro sport.

The worst thing is Shoemann effectively costing his team the game and a semi final place as he gave Beirne the opportunity to do a Naymar. Had Shoemann not done that we’d be looking at Edinburgh being 6 points up with the original penalty.

Big Jim saying it’s a lapse in concentration, it wasn’t concentration it was an act of stupidity

Munster benefits from the ref on this game with a few decisions.

Munster were lucky and I think it shows Edinburgh need to improve their street smarts.

If Edinburgh had taken their kicks at goal they would have won this comfortably. If it's Sarries in the semis Munster will be nothing more than a speed bump I think.

Crazy by Shoemann - almost certainly cost the game.  Sad to see the play acting though.

It wasn't exactly a Neymar - yes Beirne exaggerates but he's still been blindsided by a shoulder from a 20 stone prop. Attempting to deceive the ref should never be acceptable but in my eyes Beirne is within his rights to draw attention to foul play.

A few things went Munster's way today - the 2nd Earls try came when Hamish Watson was down and out of the game and Botha gets away with a possible high tackle on Bradbury (?) on the final whistle. On the other hand they had to deal with losing their 3rd choice 7 in the first 10 minutes and also Carbery on 35 minutes. I'd be surprised if they have the beating of Saracens as their attack doesn't excite atm but they should take a lot of satisfaction in that win. I feel it's become fashionable to slightly write off Munster but there is still a lot of quality there and no better team to win an away QF.

TightHEAD wrote:So cheats do prosper!

Hmm?

You again? You really don’t give up trolling do you.

Congratulations to the lads from the wild Atlantic coast. They don't seem to be getting much lurve in recent years...seems when they win it's always because the 'better' side hit some snags in the free flowing high skill stuff or the ref loses his contacts. So from Leinster then, mucho respect to team and fans. 14th European semi-final. Player driven doggedness and an undying love of this grade of competition that explains their greatest seasonal motivation and their remarkable consistency in the competition.

TheMildlyFranticLlama wrote:Absolute heartbreak. We should have won that game. Munster defence was amazing, but we really needed to show more ambition, we were much the better side when we played quickly but would always return to Pyrgos slowing things down again.

Commiserations there buddy. It was a great game and I also feel the Edinburgh should have won.

Pyrgos, was just so slow, it was horrible to watch. When Edinburgh moved the ball quickly they were outclassing Munster and stretching them badly. I cannot fathom why he would be so slow and allow Munster to set their defensive line time and time again.

Just watched the game - first off congratulations Munster. All the Munster fans I was speaking to after the game were saying we were the better team, which is nice, but counts for nothing as Munster won and we didn't! You lot know how to win and you won - simple as that.

As disappointing it was to lose, it was still a very good performance where we showed we completely deserved to be at that level. The fact that we really should have won a QF gives a good platform to build on - but only if we can convert that to actually winning these games in the future.

I thought our front 3 and back row were superb - I was surprised Nel was subbed off immediately after that huge scrum pen as he would have been full of confidence, and that may have got us a scrum pen when we were down on their line not long after- was only 55 minutes when he went off. Mcinally was outstanding and Mata put in a few huge carries. Barclay looked a little off pace but still contributed well.

Back wise Dean was excellent and Graham caused carnage - we were all worried about him at 15 defensively but it actually meant he had more space and attack and he duly took it. He's got a lot of bravery in the air too.

I was sitting right in the corner of Munster's first try and I was annoyed by the decisions at the time, and am just annoyed having seen what happened. First of all VDM definitely touched it down on the line and didn't carry it over - 22m drop out. 2nd of all Pyrgos was being screamed at by the ref yet still did it - stupid. 3rd of all Murray body slammed Pyrgos off the ball after which is a penalty - if you're going to reverse a pen for a mild barge why not that? 

The thing is, this in a microcosm is why Munster won - VDM touched the ball on the line but his body language was basically 'oops I might have messed that up'. If he had immediately picked the ball up and ran to take the 22 the linesman probably wouldn't have said anything - by reacting as he did he made the linesman question it. Conversely Earls would have seen the Murray off the ball and immediately went for the quick tap before more could be made of it.

Beirne's dramatics was disappointing but it was still stupid from Schoeman, despite that incident happening regularly in every game. What's most frustrating is were totally on top by that point with all the momentum - I think if we kept the penalty we would have won. Schoeman had also put in a huge performance by that point.

So in conclusion it was hugely frustrating to lose but there were a lot of positives too. We desperately need to qualify for the Champions Cup again though - we've shown we deserve to be at the top table.

You sound like you can take a few more positives than Glasgow can, I can't even bring myself to watch it yet!

I'd say much more positives, but an away trip to Sarries is a big ask!

Forgot to mention the Edinburgh negatives - we looked great when we upped the tempo bit unfortunately that wasn't the norm. Pyrgos has come under stick and deservedly so. It must have been a tactic but his box kicks were awful. We deliberately chose not to compete in the air in order to have a dominant collision, which is fine, however his box kicks were always so short we were basically just giving them possession back 10m away every time. If we don't compete the kicks need to be long and high and land just outside the 22. He also had a kick on the full and gave away the stupid penalty for the first try.

I also don't think it was right to avoid kicks to goal - Cockers said VDW wasn't completely comfortable from wide out but yes become a very good kicker. So early in the game against a mean defence - take the points.

JJ was quiet too - he's done well in the champions cup so far but just doesn't have the class at the highest level. Hopefully bennett can get back close to his previous form.

VDM did touch it down over the line but the ref and touchy judged it had been knocked backwards over the line by an Edinburgh player.

Watching the replays it is very 50/50 and could be given either way.

However, the bodyslam by Murray should have been penalised. You can't not penalise that when you do penalise the shoulder bardge by Shoemann. If you are not penalising Murray then at the very least you need to call Earls back from the quick tap as he ran into the space caused by the Murray bodyslam.

However, when all is said and done, we need to look at ourselves as to why we lost. The refused kicks at goal were going to be tough but in hindsight should have been attmepted. But the two big things were Shoemanns supidity (theatrics from Beirne aside), Shoemann just should never have done that and he asked for what happened (his team-mates did not)

The biggest contributer do our downfall was Pyrogs though. He made Frodo the ponderous look like the Flash on Red Bull! When we played with pace we had Munster abosultely rattled. The issue is we only played at pace for about a dozen phases of play through the whole game. The forwards had the ball well presented by Pyrgos jsut stood there with his fot on the ball.

Also, a big shout out to John Barclay who had a great counter ruck early doors which seemed to set the tone for Edinburgh's pack.

So in closing, I ask you again Flouder boy. With an Edinburgh backrow of Barclay, Bill and Mish with Ritchie on the bench, can we please send Bradbury along the M8 (only until Mata heads off) and in return we get Geroge Horne???

tigertattie wrote:

However, the bodyslam by Murray should have been penalised. You can't not penalise that when you do penalise the shoulder bardge by Shoemann. If you are not penalising Murray then at the very least you need to call Earls back from the quick tap as he ran into the space caused by the Murray bodyslam.

It could very well have been called back but maybe the ref used his discretion here as well. Pyrgos could, and possible should, have received a Yellow card for his professional foul (just as Beirne had done earlier) and could have put Edinburgh under a lot of pressure.

Quite possible.

God knows what Pyrgos was doing. At least 2 times you hear the ref telling him to leave the ball and yet he goes to slap it!

I know Earls got MOTM for his two tries, but Munster should retrospectfully hand it to Pyrgos.

eirebilly wrote:

TheMildlyFranticLlama wrote:Absolute heartbreak. We should have won that game. Munster defence was amazing, but we really needed to show more ambition, we were much the better side when we played quickly but would always return to Pyrgos slowing things down again.

Commiserations there buddy. It was a great game and I also feel the Edinburgh should have won.

Pyrgos, was just so slow, it was horrible to watch. When Edinburgh moved the ball quickly they were outclassing Munster and stretching them badly. I cannot fathom why he would be so slow and allow Munster to set their defensive line time and time again.

Cheers billy, you're right there it was an absolute cracker. And, gutting result for us lot it may be, it was a seriously impressive lesson from Munster on what it takes to win these kind of big games. In fact, your lads have something of a habit of pulling our pants down in knockout games at the moment! Something I really hope we can start to learn from.

It is definitely time we started seeing more of Shiel, by the time he got on the pitch he was darting about like someone had set his boots on fire!