ronk wrote:Munster from 10 years ago knew how to win a semi and had spent years learning. This is a different team and inexperience at this level showed. They were Munster from 15+ years ago.
Absolutely Ronk. This European Cup has been a great campaign for Munster [on the pitch, that is – Foley's death obviously overshadowing it]. As Erasmus said at the start:
"When you look at the matches you try to find an easy game, but then you quickly realise that Munster will probably be viewed as the easy game for the other teams in the Pool. That's a perception we have to change."
That perception has completely changed in the space of one season. It's a huge turnaround.
With regards to Munster "not having a Plan B", it's the sort of criticism that's easy to say and hard to implement. Munster have had a really successful season thus far through their 9-10-12 kicking game, which has been always effective and often excellent.
A lot of that is based around Conor Murray, but Bleyendaal and Rory Scannell have been really sharp too. Murray was missing for this one, Scannell shipped a bad knock in the last match and didn't look fully fit [personally speaking, I didn't think there was a chance he was going to play given how bad he looked coming off against Ulster] and Bleyendaal had a poor-ish game for the first time this season.
CJ Stander didn't look 100% fit and hadn't played since the quarter-final. He is and has been such a massive part of Munster's game with ball in hand over the last three seasons that he is irreplaceable.
This is Erasmus' first season in charge and he has devised a blueprint that has allowed them to be really, really successful – I think it's 23 wins and 5 losses. At this point last season, they had 14 wins and 12 losses in their record.
They
do kick a lot of ball: in European competition this season, they have kicked more than their opposition in all bar one game:
vs Glasgow
19 kicks | 10 kicks
vs Leicester
37 kicks | 10 kicks
@ Leicester
20 kicks | 16 kicks
@ Racing
30 kicks | 30 kicks
@ Glasgow
24 kicks | 20 kicks
vs Racing
27 kicks | 22 kicks
vs Toulouse
28 kicks | 23 kicks
vs Saracens
37 kicks | 34 kicks
That kicking game has been a large part of their successful season thus far. This is one of the few times that it didn't work. Erasmus has built from quite a low base and has had less than a season in charge – if they were to throw away the playbook that had got them to where they were and start trying to play some super-slick wide-wide game that they don't really practise and certainly haven't mastered, the result probably would have been worse rather than better.
