Sharks provide the fireworks as sorry Munster fail to fire in Limerick
HIGH POINT: Munsters’ Ben O'Connor and Racing 92’s Arthur Roche contest a high ball on a low night for the home side. Pic: INPHO/Dan Clohessy
No shortage of fireworks outside Thomond Park. Everything inside was a damp squib.
Clayton McMillan’s side had come into this URC tie with their heads up despite managing just the one league win in their opening four games. This puts an entirely different spin on the first bloc of the season as the club game goes into a five-week hibernation.
Tradition dictates that we go full cliché and call this a Halloween horror show. If the Sharks struggled at times with the soft sheets of rain that coated the Limerick night then Munster just never got to grips with the conditions and with themselves all night.
The Sharks are no mugs. They won in Lyon and in Cardiff before ending their tour with a win here that was designed for the conditions. They had less ball, less territory but kicked far more and they had game breakers that Munster lacked.
Job done.
Munster had leaned on youth again, with ten players aged between 20 and 23 in the squad, through a combination of design and necessity. The flip side is that they had lost only two players to Andy Farrell’s Ireland squad. They should have been much better than this.
An attendance of just 10,403 is another indicator of how far the club still has to go.
Munster should have actually struck first. A lovely JJ Hanrahan kick ended an opening game of kick tennis. It fed into a concerted period of pressure in the Sharks 22, but Alex Nankivell spilled when trying to punch in from two metres out.
That kicked off a long and frustrating spate of errors through most of the half, and beyond.
You name it, Munster just couldn’t do it. They lost lineouts, botched an exit, botched a mark, had a kick blocked and had an attacking maul stole. All inside the next 15 minutes. Mostly, though, it was a litany of knock-ons that tore to shreds any hope of momentum and gain.
Here was another case of possession being a curse rather than a blessing in modern sport. Munster had 61% of it in the opening period and 71% territory but they fell behind after 15 minutes and could have easily conceded three tries in that 40-minute spell.
Gianni Lombard opened the scoring. The Sharks’ exhilarating 19-year old full-back Zekethelo Siyaya burned two red shirts when returning a kick and, when the bounce beat him and two Munster defenders, it was Lombard who profited.
The out-half couldn’t convert his own score and it could have been much worse for Munster before that with tighthead Hanro Jacobs having a try stopped short by what the TMO confirmed was a double movement from close range.
Siyaya should have got on the scoresheet 24 minutes in when he spotted a dogleg then kicked behind the cover. His moment of glory was denied only by a ball that bounced off his shin near the end line before ricocheting dead.
Munster just couldn’t get out of their own way and they saw another siege come to nothing close to half-time when Fineen Wycherley knocked on. It was no surprise then when Hanrahan opted for the three points to leave it 5-3 at the break.
McMillan’s side huffed and puffed a bit on the restart but with minimum effect, Gordon Wood’s kick-chase creating an opening before his hasty offload ended it. As with the first-half, it was more a case of spills than thrills.
Lombard stretched the lead to five with a penalty after Ox Nche folded Kieran Brookes at a scrum, but the Springbok loosehead dirtied his bib shortly after when tackling Jeremy Loughman high and off the ball. Yellow it was.
Should it have been a 20-minute red? Maybe.
Munster soon had other worries, Emile van Heerden stealing a lineout and sending his captain Nick Hatton rampaging through the backfield. The No.8 was stopped a metre short but Ivan van Zyl was the cavalry coming over the hill in the nick of time.
Lombard’s conversion made it 15-3 with the final quarter to go.
Not an enormous advantage but it felt like an impregnable barrier here given the conditions, Munster’s difficulties and the ease with which the Sharks had gradually dominated the collisions and turn the screw at the scrum.
A sobering night for Munster.
B O’Connor; S McCarthy, G Wood, A Nankivell, R Russell; JJ Hanrahan, B O’Donovan; J Wycherley, M van der Merwe, K Brookes; E O’Connell, F Wycherley; S Edogbo, J O’Donoghue, B Gleeson.
J Loughman for J Wycherley, E Edogbo for O’Connell, G Coombes for Gleeson and A Kendellen for S Edogbo (all 47); J O’Riordan for O’Donovan (54-58 and 71); M Ala’alatoa for Brookes (56); L Barron for van der Merwe (60); C O’Shea for Hanrahan (62).
Z Siyaya, E van der Merwe, S Hartzenberg, E Hooker, J Williams, G Lombard, J Hendrikse; Ox Nche, E Bester, H Jacobs; J Jenkins, E van Heerden, T Maversere, M Tshituka, N Hatton.
T Du Toit for Jacobs (50); S Lewies for Jenkins and V Tshituka for Maversere (both 53); I Van Zyl for Hendriske (59); C Dawson for Lewies, D Landsberg for Heerden and L Mnebelele for Bester (all 63).
B O’Connor (WRU).
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