VIDEO: Munster can win by playing smart

Four times his Grenoble side have played Toulon, three times they’ve won. The secret is simple.

At Grenoble, we have played Toulon four times in the Top 14 since we made our way back up, and have managed to beat them three times.

Are we are good as Toulon? Definitely not, but that’s the key. We didn’t have to be; we just had to be better than them for those 80 minutes between the first and the last whistle.

While Munster don’t have the players Toulon do in terms of international caps and World Cup winners, they do have a very strong culture, love and history in this competition that rarely fails to inspire them. The stats verify that because this is Munster’s 11th Heineken Cup semi-final, which is now the record for any team, surpassing Toulouse.

Last season, their first under Rob Penney, they were a side in transition and a rebuilding phase, yet they managed to upset the odds in London defeating Harlequins and were very unlucky not to beat Clermont in their semi-final in Montpellier.

There was plenty of debate about the effectiveness of the game plan last season but watching Munster now, they look very assured in their attacking shape, and while they haven’t been blowing teams away (apart from Toulouse, obviously), I have been impressed with a lot of aspects of their play. They can travel to Marseille with genuine hope.

However, Toulon have hit form in the past month. They clocked up 46 points and four tries away to Perpignan in the Top 14 last Saturday with only five players likely to play against Munster this weekend. There is real depth to their squad and despite missing Andrew Sheridan, Seb Bruno, Ali Williams, Bakkies Botha, Chris Masoe and Joe Van Niekerk against Leinster they were still able to field a star-studded team with a powerful bench which included Freddie Michalak and Bryan Habana.

That performance against Leinster was very impressive and many believe if they play to that level they will retain their Europe champions tag and also bring the Brennus back to the Cote d’Azur for the first time since 1992.

Munster will have learned a lot from the Toulon versus Leinster quarter-final. Leinster never got the opportunity to implement their plan because their lineout malfunctioned badly and their ball carry and clean out was inaccurate and not aggressive enough.

This meant they couldn’t maul Toulon apart from one occasion late in the game when they drove over for a try, and with the breakdown being so poor, they couldn’t build the phases they wanted to test Toulon’s fitness.

Munster’s scrum is definitely as strong as Leinster’s, and maybe a little stronger, particularly if BJ Botha can avoid the scrutiny of Wayne Barnes and shear across onto the Toulon hooker Craig Burden.

Toulon will rely on their size and power to try and dominate this area but Munster will look to change the point of their pressure late and isolate certain parts of the scrum in different areas of the pitch.

At lineout time I expect Munster to win more than 90% of their own ball as their system is very slick, and Paul O’Connell reads the opposition defence brilliantly and invariably picks the best option to throw to. As we saw with Ireland during the Six Nations, once a maul is formed and the ball is transferred to the back, it’s almost impossible to stop it without conceding a penalty. Munster must use this weapon against Toulon as it’s certainly a weakness for them and they can become ill-disciplined in this area.

Munster have been the competition’s most effective side at the breakdown, winning more turnovers per match (12.1) and achieving the best ruck success (97%), which is a great achievement given they aren’t the most physically impressive side in terms of athleticism. This is credit to the work on the training ground and in the video room by their coaches and the players’ work rate and diligence during the games.

On Sunday, they will have to target Steffon Armitage who has won the most turnovers in the competition with 17.

He was a nuisance against Leinster in this area and even when he doesn’t win the ball, he slows it down so much that the next phase is very difficult.

If I was Munster’s management, I would try and get their ball carriers to target him and force him to become the primary tackler rather than the assist tackler, which is the position he is most dangerous from.

Once he is on the ball jackling, he is next to impossible to clean out. But it’s vital the ball carrier works very hard on the ground after the tackle to be a moving target and give the first support a free shot at cleaning him out before he attaches on the ball and uses that to give him purchase.

Another vital lesson is that Leinster had planned to play at a high tempo and back their fitness but weren’t able to hold onto the ball long enough to achieve that. But Munster — along with having a very high ruck success rate — have also built more phases than any other team and hold the top three spots in the competition stats for ball carries so far, with Casey Laulala (64) James Coughlan (60) and Paul O’Connell (59) being their go-to men.

Getting into good attacking shape is much easier when you win that first gain line or collision and Leinster tried to get to midfield on the first phase off lineout ball.

This is a hard thing to do as they rush up in defence off full lineouts very quickly and we found that it’s much better to attack the space between the back of the lineout and the first back defender, which will be Jonny Wilkinson or Matt Giteau.

Once you get a gain line there and quick ball, it’s a race for both sets of forwards around the corner, and this will always favour Munster.

Munster’s defence is very well organised but they face their toughest task yet this season as Toulon are capable of running over or around you.

Toulon, along with Clermont, have the most strike power left in the competition and Munster will need to concentrate for 80 minutes. If they do that, and they tap into the spirit they have shown consistently in Heineken Cup in the past, they have a chance of another huge scalp.