YOU MIGHT FIND this hard to believe but there was a stage in this match when the headline writers were sharpening their pencils, ready to dish out the criticism.
It was that sort of game, Munster doing nothing right, Stormers building a 15-point lead which could so easily have been more – like at least 12 points more.
The turnaround, well you half-expected it, firstly because this is a well-resourced team who have a formidable home record and secondly because quite frankly, they couldn’t continue to be so awful.
So it proved. A key score just before half-time – credit Peter O’Mahony, their captain, for setting it up with a fine take at the line-out – was followed by three tries inside 16 minutes of the second period, the driving maul the source of all their tries.
And with that, you’d be inclined to forget everything that went on before because that, so often, is the nature of sport, where the result tends to gloss over mistakes.
Yet when Munster review this game on Monday, they are likely to be hard on themselves. At least they should be because let’s be blunt, that first-half was a disaster, the scoreline the only kind thing you can say about it.
Somehow Munster had seven points on the board – although it took them until the 40th minute to get it. Even more surprisingly, Stormers had only 15 points chalked up next to their name, despite dominating the period, scoring two tries, seeing a third wiped out after an intervention from the TMO, all the while knowing another five points had been left behind with missed kicks.
Flying high: Mike Haley goes to the sky. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
That’s not all. Twice they turned down the option of taking kickable penalties to instead go to the corner. Each time they left the Munster ’22 empty-handed.
For sure, you have to credit the Munster defence for this – O’Mahony in particular was excelling with a couple of breakdown steals, while Jack O’Donoghue’s willingness to risk his health to dive on a loose ball at a key moment in the half was equally impressive.
That’s where the compliments end because so much about that half was poor, the scrum creaking under pressure, the handling being sloppy; the defending passive.
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From the moment Dan du Plessis broke through their defensive cover with the first attack of the match, the tone of the half was set. Had Ruhan Nel not spilled the ball when he had a two-man overlap, had Manie Libbok not missed a penalty within range, the Stormers would have been in front before they finally did break the deadlock on 10 minutes.
This score was a snapshot of the half, Warrick Gelant with the try, Libbok with the final delivery after the ball had passed through the hands of the entire Stormers front row, their willingness to attack aided by Munster’s willingness to give them space to do so.
Problems continued. Keynan Knox got turned over; Niall Scannell gave away a cheap penalty for a high tackle, and while Coombes and Dave Kilcoyne made a couple of decent carries to ease the pressure, a second try deservedly arrived for the South Africans on 20 minutes when Leolin Zas touched down after hugging the touchline – scrum half, Stefan Ungerer credited for changing the point of attack, Ruhan Nel with the ability to offload in the tackle.
Munster’s response? Carbery kicked the restart out on the full. Later in the half Earls would also send a clearance straight to touch while Carbery would fail to find it from a penalty.
It could have been worse, O’Mahony denying Libbok a penalty with a brave tackle under the posts; O’Donoghue later clearing up after the Stormers trusted their maul when really they should have tapped over the kick to keep the scoreboard ticking over.
Still, as full-back, Gelant, took over the kicking duties, that was precisely what happened just before the half-hour, Stormers moving 15-0 ahead, no doubt cursing themselves for not being further ahead.
There and then you wondered how Munster would turn things around and who would drive that comeback. The answer appeared to arrive on 32 minutes, when Munster finally took the ball into the Stormers ’22 – some great handling by O’Donoghue helping to set Shane Daly free on the left. Earls kept the move flowing, a penalty was won five metres from the line. A turning point? Not then, not after Coombes was mysteriously pinged for an infringement no one in the crowd could see.
And yet despite all this, on 40 minutes, Munster had clawed their way back into the game, Carbery finally finding his range with the boot, kicking a penalty from half-way deep into the Stormers half.
Still, there was plenty of work to do, but Munster did it well, O’Mahony collecting Scannell’s throw, the maul functioning effectively before O’Donoghue got across to score.
By the time the clock had moved onto 56 minutes, it was as if we had watched three action replays of that O’Donoghue try.
Each score stemmed from a driving maul, Scannell getting one of them following a brilliant take by Klyen; Kleyn another after a brave dive for the line; O’Donoghue getting his second after O’Mahony, yet again, had been the leader at line-out time – all the while helped by the fact the Stormers captain, Salmaan Moerat, spent 10 minutes in the bin just after half-time.
Later, RG Snyman would also score from this source – and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Munster were brilliant in this area.
But you don’t get good field position without a good kicker. Carbery, later Ben Healy, duly obliged when the ball was placed in their hands. Again, you don’t get to kick unless you win a series of penalties in the middle area of the park. Credit O’Mahony, O’Donoghue and Coombes for their work here, the game turning on this point. Scannell, too, has to be singled out for the general excellence of his throws.
More than anything, though, you have to credit O’Mahony’s leadership. His team were awful in the first half, dominant in the second. That didn’t happen by accident. In many ways this may have been an ugly win. That doesn’t make it a bad one.
Munster scores
O’Donoghue 2, Kleyn, N Scannell, Snyman
Conversions: Carbery (2/4), Healy (1/1)
Penalties: Healy (1/1)
Stormers scorers
Tries: Gelant, Zas
Conversions: Libbok (1/2)
Penalties: Libbok (0/1) Gelant (1/1) Swiel (1/1)
Munster: Mike Haley; Calvin Nash, Keith Earls (rep: Simon Zebo ’60), Rory Scannell, Shane Daly; Joey Carbery (rep: Ben Healy ’62), Craig Casey (rep: Rowan Osborne ’71) ; Dave Kilcoyne (rep: Jeremy Loughman ’46), Niall Scannell (rep: Diarmuid Barron ’70), Keynan Knox (rep: Stephen Archer ’61); Jean Kleyn (rep: RG Snyman ’58), Fineen Wycherley; Peter O’Mahony (C), Jack O’Donoghue (rep:Jack O’Sullivan ’73), Gavin Coombes.
STORMERS: Warrick Gelant; Sergeal Petersen, Ruhan Nel, Dan du Plessis (rep: Rikus Pretorius ’67), Leolin Zas; Manie Libbok (rep: Tim Swiel ’48), Stefan Ungerer (rep: Godlin Masila ’55); Brok Harris (Leon Lyons ’61), Scarra Ntubeni (Andre-Hugo Venter ‘61), Neethling Fouche (Sazi Sandi ‘61); Adre Smith (Ernst van Rhyn ’65), Salmaan Moerat; Nama Xaba (Marcel Theunissen ’66), Willie Engelbrecht, Evan Roos
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Munster survive the Storm to blow South Africans away with second-half powerplay
MUNSTER 34
STORMERS 18
Garry Doyle at Thomond Park
YOU MIGHT FIND this hard to believe but there was a stage in this match when the headline writers were sharpening their pencils, ready to dish out the criticism.
It was that sort of game, Munster doing nothing right, Stormers building a 15-point lead which could so easily have been more – like at least 12 points more.
The turnaround, well you half-expected it, firstly because this is a well-resourced team who have a formidable home record and secondly because quite frankly, they couldn’t continue to be so awful.
So it proved. A key score just before half-time – credit Peter O’Mahony, their captain, for setting it up with a fine take at the line-out – was followed by three tries inside 16 minutes of the second period, the driving maul the source of all their tries.
And with that, you’d be inclined to forget everything that went on before because that, so often, is the nature of sport, where the result tends to gloss over mistakes.
Yet when Munster review this game on Monday, they are likely to be hard on themselves. At least they should be because let’s be blunt, that first-half was a disaster, the scoreline the only kind thing you can say about it.
Somehow Munster had seven points on the board – although it took them until the 40th minute to get it. Even more surprisingly, Stormers had only 15 points chalked up next to their name, despite dominating the period, scoring two tries, seeing a third wiped out after an intervention from the TMO, all the while knowing another five points had been left behind with missed kicks.
That’s not all. Twice they turned down the option of taking kickable penalties to instead go to the corner. Each time they left the Munster ’22 empty-handed.
For sure, you have to credit the Munster defence for this – O’Mahony in particular was excelling with a couple of breakdown steals, while Jack O’Donoghue’s willingness to risk his health to dive on a loose ball at a key moment in the half was equally impressive.
That’s where the compliments end because so much about that half was poor, the scrum creaking under pressure, the handling being sloppy; the defending passive.
From the moment Dan du Plessis broke through their defensive cover with the first attack of the match, the tone of the half was set. Had Ruhan Nel not spilled the ball when he had a two-man overlap, had Manie Libbok not missed a penalty within range, the Stormers would have been in front before they finally did break the deadlock on 10 minutes.
This score was a snapshot of the half, Warrick Gelant with the try, Libbok with the final delivery after the ball had passed through the hands of the entire Stormers front row, their willingness to attack aided by Munster’s willingness to give them space to do so.
Problems continued. Keynan Knox got turned over; Niall Scannell gave away a cheap penalty for a high tackle, and while Coombes and Dave Kilcoyne made a couple of decent carries to ease the pressure, a second try deservedly arrived for the South Africans on 20 minutes when Leolin Zas touched down after hugging the touchline – scrum half, Stefan Ungerer credited for changing the point of attack, Ruhan Nel with the ability to offload in the tackle.
Libbok converted and the Stormers led 12-0.
Munster’s response? Carbery kicked the restart out on the full. Later in the half Earls would also send a clearance straight to touch while Carbery would fail to find it from a penalty.
It could have been worse, O’Mahony denying Libbok a penalty with a brave tackle under the posts; O’Donoghue later clearing up after the Stormers trusted their maul when really they should have tapped over the kick to keep the scoreboard ticking over.
Still, as full-back, Gelant, took over the kicking duties, that was precisely what happened just before the half-hour, Stormers moving 15-0 ahead, no doubt cursing themselves for not being further ahead.
There and then you wondered how Munster would turn things around and who would drive that comeback. The answer appeared to arrive on 32 minutes, when Munster finally took the ball into the Stormers ’22 – some great handling by O’Donoghue helping to set Shane Daly free on the left. Earls kept the move flowing, a penalty was won five metres from the line. A turning point? Not then, not after Coombes was mysteriously pinged for an infringement no one in the crowd could see.
And yet despite all this, on 40 minutes, Munster had clawed their way back into the game, Carbery finally finding his range with the boot, kicking a penalty from half-way deep into the Stormers half.
Still, there was plenty of work to do, but Munster did it well, O’Mahony collecting Scannell’s throw, the maul functioning effectively before O’Donoghue got across to score.
By the time the clock had moved onto 56 minutes, it was as if we had watched three action replays of that O’Donoghue try.
Each score stemmed from a driving maul, Scannell getting one of them following a brilliant take by Klyen; Kleyn another after a brave dive for the line; O’Donoghue getting his second after O’Mahony, yet again, had been the leader at line-out time – all the while helped by the fact the Stormers captain, Salmaan Moerat, spent 10 minutes in the bin just after half-time.
Later, RG Snyman would also score from this source – and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Munster were brilliant in this area.
But you don’t get good field position without a good kicker. Carbery, later Ben Healy, duly obliged when the ball was placed in their hands. Again, you don’t get to kick unless you win a series of penalties in the middle area of the park. Credit O’Mahony, O’Donoghue and Coombes for their work here, the game turning on this point. Scannell, too, has to be singled out for the general excellence of his throws.
More than anything, though, you have to credit O’Mahony’s leadership. His team were awful in the first half, dominant in the second. That didn’t happen by accident. In many ways this may have been an ugly win. That doesn’t make it a bad one.
Munster scores
O’Donoghue 2, Kleyn, N Scannell, Snyman
Conversions: Carbery (2/4), Healy (1/1)
Penalties: Healy (1/1)
Stormers scorers
Tries: Gelant, Zas
Conversions: Libbok (1/2)
Penalties: Libbok (0/1) Gelant (1/1) Swiel (1/1)
Munster: Mike Haley; Calvin Nash, Keith Earls (rep: Simon Zebo ’60), Rory Scannell, Shane Daly; Joey Carbery (rep: Ben Healy ’62), Craig Casey (rep: Rowan Osborne ’71) ; Dave Kilcoyne (rep: Jeremy Loughman ’46), Niall Scannell (rep: Diarmuid Barron ’70), Keynan Knox (rep: Stephen Archer ’61); Jean Kleyn (rep: RG Snyman ’58), Fineen Wycherley; Peter O’Mahony (C), Jack O’Donoghue (rep:Jack O’Sullivan ’73), Gavin Coombes.
STORMERS: Warrick Gelant; Sergeal Petersen, Ruhan Nel, Dan du Plessis (rep: Rikus Pretorius ’67), Leolin Zas; Manie Libbok (rep: Tim Swiel ’48), Stefan Ungerer (rep: Godlin Masila ’55); Brok Harris (Leon Lyons ’61), Scarra Ntubeni (Andre-Hugo Venter ‘61), Neethling Fouche (Sazi Sandi ‘61); Adre Smith (Ernst van Rhyn ’65), Salmaan Moerat; Nama Xaba (Marcel Theunissen ’66), Willie Engelbrecht, Evan Roos
Referee: Andrew Brace (IRFU)
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Munster Stormers Stormin'