Reasons to be cheerful about where Irish rugby is going

Leinster won the arm wrestle. Eventually. For long periods of the United Rugby Championship (URC) match at the Aviva Stadium, Munster were the more threatening team. A disappointment for the away side will be a power fade in the final quarter for the third game in succession following the draw against Ulster and even allowing for the win over Racing 92.

However, there is merit to the opening hour of their work. Shane Daly’s try had a whiff of the whiteboard. Seán O’Brien turned Leinster’s line-speed in defence against them; the move finished off by good timing in passing and running lines.

Shay McCarthy, Daly and Ben O’Connor looked dangerous on counterattack. Gavin Coombes and Alex Kendellen put in a huge shift, knew their detail and caused problems. Without Jeremy Loughman, Jack Aungier and Tom Ahern, Munster were light in the front five, and they paid for it in the final quarter.

Andrew Porter got on top of the scrum, the penalties came in clusters, and Alex Nankivell was sent to the bin for an accumulation of team transgressions. Imagine what Edwin Edogbo would have added in the final 20 minutes.

Pressure rather than ill-discipline saw Munster cough up penalties. South Africa are the best in the world at it. They squeeze teams physically. Bordeaux did it to Leinster in last season’s Champions Cup final.

On Saturday, Leinster did it to Munster. While the previous two matches were about the ability to score tries, this was a game where Leinster had to roll up their sleeves and fight their way back in. It was evident early on that a win was not going to come from attacking enterprise.

It was physical and route one first. Once they had Munster under pressure, Leinster were ruthlessly efficient in the opposition 22. Some of the commentary afterwards suggested Porter knocked on before Ryan Baird’s try. I don’t see it that way.

Porter was over the line, held up, with perhaps only his boots still in the field of play. The ball came loose and travelled backwards towards the post. To single out a moment like that as the reason Munster lost is rooting around in the wrong area and does their performance a disservice.

Leinster must look to integrate an attack that’s sharp and slick by playing off a direct power game and platform provided by the pack. There have been elements of both in the last three matches without a fully blended approach.

Against Munster they looked a number or two down in attack, largely because of the work Munster did at the breakdown. Commit bodies to the ruck and you end up short out wide. The encouraging thing is nobody panicked. They kept squeezing and finished on top, which is exactly what a coach wants to see. Not playing well and still winning is a good place to be.

Jamison Gibson-Park was the point of difference, creating two tries. One was out of thin air, putting the ball on a platter for Tommy O’Brien to walk in, the other more run of the mill for Charlie Tector. Scanning and execution blended seamlessly.

Strange as it may seem for a team that lost, but Munster will be arguably the happier if they can make a tweak here and there and ignore the external distractions.

This is the most settled they’ve looked in a while. With only Tadhg Beirne and Craig Casey called into the Ireland squad, that will likely continue over the weekend. They need to fix the final quarter issues. Manage the scoreboard earlier by taking three or six points and they’ll face less pressure in the end game.

At home this weekend with a settled team, they need to show that Saturday wasn’t simply about being fired up for Leinster. Stepping back from the derby, one theme runs through all four provinces and leaves me reasonably positive about Irish rugby without getting carried away.

The quality of the catch-pass, and of the skills generally, has been very evident. Oddly, Leinster are the laggards here. Ulster, under Richie Murphy, and with Mark Sexton running the attack, showed a cutting edge.

They’re still waiting on a first URC win, so the results haven’t followed yet. There is growth in the way they are playing again, skilful and ambitious, but they will want the results to follow sooner rather than later.

Connacht’s development is clear in Stuart Lancaster’s second season. Against Zebre there was a fluidity about who played first receiver: Ciarán Frawley, Sam Gilbert and Mack Hansen mixing and matching as the game unfolded.

At one point Gilbert and Hansen exchanged two or three passes, back and forth, just keeping the ball alive while all the time eating up yards of territory. When you’re not worried about who stands at first receiver, you can get the ball in hand quickly, move it and try to capitalise on the space elsewhere.

Frawley’s Irish ambitions will be directly linked to his game management. Gibson-Park is so intrinsic to the national team that most outhalves will play as his foil, in the same way that French 10s do alongside Antoine Dupont.

At Connacht the scrumhalf doesn’t dictate and with so many players taking the ball at first receiver, Frawley must always be thinking about the shape required, whether he touches the ball first or not in any given sequence of play. He’s the brains.

With so many reactive players around him, someone must stay detached from the doing part. That means spending a moment scanning when others are filling the first-receiver slot, thinking about where you’ve been and where the game is going. A lot of it is feel. It’s a shame we won’t see more of it before the Ireland camp.

Leinster will make wholesale changes for Galway, with Joey Carbery one of the few survivors. Fintan Gunne should step in at nine. He is like Gibson-Park, yet different in his sniping around the fringes. Carbery will manage the game; Gunne will test the boundaries.

Ulster stay in South Africa and will draw from that display against the Bulls. They showed grit and quality and will need to do so again.

What links it all is a philosophy that is starting to permeate Irish rugby: keep the ball alive, accept the uncomfortable offload and don’t take the ground as the only option. It forces players to be more thoughtful about how they play the game. That can only be a good thing.