HEINEKEN CUP QUARTER-FINAL/Munster 33 Northampton 19:MUNSTER MAY have been without their Roy Keane Factor, captain Paul O'Connell, but this was more than compensated for by their Heineken Cup Factor. Tony McGahan had forecast they would produce "something special" and the defeat to Leinster the week before had further helped concentrate minds. Perhaps we should long since have learned that Munster's performance the week before another big Euro foray should always be discounted.
On a glorious day which demanded positive, creative rugby, Northampton won the toss and played with the breeze. Munster would probably have played into it anyway, and quickly set about rediscovering their mojo of the quarter-final dissection of the Ospreys exactly a year ago. They began like a whirlwind.
The superb kicking of Ronan O’Gara and Tomás O’Leary, and the chasing of Ian Dowling, Jean de Villiers and the ageless Alan Quinlan, allied to their pressure game and the venom of their forwards’ lineout drives and recycling, put them on the front-foot.
Such has been the unrelenting and consistently high standard of all the old warriors up front the baby of the pack, on his first Heineken Cup start, was the 29- year-old James Coughlan. He had a stormer and Stephen Myler will probably have gone to sleep with a vision of Coughlan in his face. His pace around the park and control off the base also enabled David Wallace to revert to his more effective openside role in a far more balanced backrow.
Alongside them, Quinlan was again immense, superb under high balls, carrying hard and annoying Courtney Laws and co to distraction, while Wallace was at his rampaging best, an auxiliary ball-carrying back as well as making hard yards closer in, where he was also a muscular defensive presence.
The return of Keith Earls, as expected or at any rate hoped, transformed their back play. His pace and footwork transfixed the Northampton defence and gave Paul Warwick the space to hit the line with his superb timing for the first of their two tries in the dominant opening half-hour. And yet, with unnerving reminders of a week before, Northampton struck to take the lead on half-time.
That had come after almost two minutes of exhaustive rugby, with possession exchanged three times, and Northampton going through nine phases of direct, hard running by Roger Wilson, Neil Best, Dylan Hartley and co, and finished off classily against a bedraggled defence with Dowling on the deck.
The thought occurred that the old warriors up front might not be able to maintain such a high tempo but with Earls moved to the wing following Dowling’s departure, so Munster concentrated on field position and set closer targets with the wind.
Their defence had to remain big, for Northampton are no Gloucester or Sale. Well-coached and organised, with big players and great spirit, they’ll be around for years to come. They just lacked the experience for occasions such as this, the kind O’Gara has in bucketloads.
Here, he gave a veritable masterclass. His restarts and aerial bombardment gave his voracious chasers all the targets they could have wanted. Attacking the gain line in customary fashion, his distribution was flat and pacey for Earls and co to run onto it, and he was the orchestrator in chief of Doug Howlett’s first try.
Then, in the second half, he simply turned the screw on Northampton and gave the old warhorses the go-forward momentum to keep them young.
With his back garden feel for the Thomond Park wind, and spotting that Chris Ashton had felt obliged to play quite flat due to Munster’s first-half width, he arrowed three monstrous, huge, spiralling, one-bounce touchfinders into the visitors’ 22, each like an injection of fresh energy into his team, and especially the old warhorses up front.
And each a dagger to the heart of the Saints.
The first followed another big scrum by the increasingly dominant Munster juggernaut. Clearly, bringing Paul McCarthy back on to the coaching ticket six weeks ago had has the desired effect, and the influence of Jerry Flannery as scrum leader in his first back-to-back outing of the season was pronounced.
He helped Marcus Horan put the squeeze on Euan Murray, and after John Hayes, Donncha O’Callaghan – immense too in O’Connell’s absence – and O’Driscoll held up a defensive Northampton maul for an attacking scrum, Munster obliterated the Saints.
That was a huge psychological moment, which kept the Northampton backrow honest on the next put-in and was reinforced when O’Leary ran hard at the 10 channel for de Villiers to take a line through Stephen Myler and James Downey like a knife through butter. The sight of four players on the turf was like a sketch out of a comic book.
Northampton wouldn’t go away, but with O’Gara maintaining territory and keeping the scoreboard ticking, there are always moments when one of the old warhorses comes up with a big play at a key time. And there were few more significant than Wallace not only standing up his opposite number Best on the charge, but ripping the ball from him.
The clinching try followed. With the pack’s go-forward momentum and O’Leary’s pace off the mark a key factor in all the tries, Howlett’s brace were close-range yet classy finishes. Many wingers might not have finished either, especially the first when Bruce Reihana had the angle on him but he adroitly spun through the tackle, and he showed incredibly soft hands to gather O’Leary’s superb offload for his second and Munster’s game-clinching fourth try in a reprise of the 8-9-14 try which breached the All Blacks.
In winning the second half 20-3, this was typically intelligent Munster cup rugby at its best, applied with brains, bravery and belief. As potent as ever.
Match Statistics
SCORING SEQUENCE
2 mins:O'Gara pen 3-0; 5 mins: Warwick try 8-0; 11: Myler pen 8-3; 16: Myler pen 8-6; 23: Howlett try 13-6; 29: Myler pen 13-9; 40: Clarke try, Myler con 13-16; (half-time 13-16); 53: de Villiers try, O'Gara con 20-16; 56: Myler pen 20-19; 58: O'Gara pen 23-19; 68: O'Gara pen 26-19; 75: Howlett try 33-19.
MUNSTER: P Warwick; D Howlett, K Earls, J de Villiers, I Dowling; R O’Gara (capt), T O’Leary; M Horan, J Flannery, J Hayes; D O’Callaghan, M O’Driscoll, A Quinlan, D Wallace, J Coughlan. Replacements: L Mafi for Dowling (42 mins), N Williams for Coughlan (62 mins), T Buckley for Hayes (70 mins), N Ronan for Quinlan (72 mins), B Holland for Ronan, P Stringer for O’Leary (both 79 mins). Not used: D Varley, J Brugnaut.
NORTHAMPTON: B Foden, C Ashton, J Clarke, J Downey, B Reihana; S Myler, L Dickson; S Tongauiha, D Hartley (capt), E Murray, C Lawes, J Kruger, P Dowson, N Best, R Wilson. Replacements: B Mujati for Murray (56 mins), S Geraghty for Myler (66 mins), M Easter for Dowson, J Ansbro for Clarke (both 72 mins). Not used: B Sharman, R Dreyer, I Fernandez Lobbe, A Dickens.
Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales).
