Munster coach Anthony Foley knows that to sustain the province's European Champions Cup campaign through to 2015 with more substance than an abstract mathematical equation the Irish province must beat Clermont Auvergne at Stade Marcel Michelin.
The French side’s home record – they’ve won 83 of their last 85 matches – underlines the magnitude of the task. Foley though has to find a balance between tweaking and refining patterns based on last weekend’s defeat at Thomond Park, addressing mental issues and a mini injury crisis, managing a cranky bunch of players and also looking at how the officiating impacted on what his team was trying to do.
That's quite a bit of juggling. A change in referee from Nigel Owen to Wayne Barnes means a different emphasis, so while it's possible to peddle all the gripes from the Thomond Park match, they're less relevant when there's a new sheriff in town.
In eight days Foley and his management team have concentrated on trying to turn a bunch of players who were second best physically and, uncharacteristically, appreciably below the general standards set this season into a focused cadre, armed with the mental, physical and technical impetus to transform a losing team into a winning one.
This is a snapshot of what he’s been thinking about this week.
SETPIECE
ISSUE: "You've got to scrum straight, don't you? You can't have a loosehead [prop] coming around on your tighthead and then your tighthead getting penalised for going down because he is being pushed down. [Clermont were] dropping players on our front lifters [at the lineout] in terms of [them] trying to set up mauls.
"Not alone is it illegal, it's dangerous. If you are dropping a fella that is 120kgs on top of another fellas head, it's not a nice feeling and we just don't want that to happen. It's up to the refs and their bosses to take the information we are giving them and see what they can do with it. That's the process we are in. SOLUTION: "We have got to get our job done at set-pieces, be cool, calm and collected and when we get into the flow of the game we have got to up the tempo and make sure there is a pace on the game. I know from previous experiences, in particular Toulon last year and Clermont in the semis the year before, when the game is at a knife edge it becomes stop start and we have got to try and make sure that doesn't materialise.
"We need to play the game that is of our pace and hopefully we can achieve that. In and around the breakdown we need to make sure that we're getting clean ball and nobody touches Conor Murray. "
PATTERNS
ISSUE: "Fortunately or unfortunately we didn't show a huge pile against them. So we have a lot of what we pencilled in to do last week ready to go again this week. A lot of the areas where we felt we let ourselves down was just around turning over the ball, giving up cheap ball, off lineout or in general play. Even turnover ball we got from them we turned it right back over to them.
"We kicked a lot of balls out on the full. We made very uncharacteristic errors from our part that we wouldn't have seen in Europe. That was the most disappointing thing. We never allowed ourselves to get a platform to attack the way we wanted to." SOLUTION: "They're small things around everything we do and how we prepare for the game. The quality of player we have is more conversational [in addressing the issues]. They know what went wrong, they self analyse the game, they'll go through their own roles in it.
“There are no hiding places in here. We just need to be very precise in what we are doing. Do it at a tempo and a pace we are very comfortable at doing.”
ATTITUDE
ISSUE: "Look, going into [these fixtures] we looked at it as a [one] game the two matches and from my point of view we're at half-time. They're ahead of us. We have a chance to rectify it if we can. You work hard to get into a position and you just let them out of there without making them sweat. I think we did that a lot in the first half and it was very frustrating. It's all execution.
“Everything is about winning the ball and making sure you apply pressure, make them defend.
“In the second half when we built multi-phase, even though it wouldn’t have been the most glamorous we ended up with penalties.
"In the first half if we got that possession and brought them through phases, kept the scoreboard ticking over and applied pressure, getting closer and closer and making them panic, [that was the way to go]. Unfortunately they were able to keep us at an arms' length; two scores, three scores clear." SOLUTION (incorporating a reference to a question about Castres' win at Stade Marcel Michelin): "They (Castres) would have a different mindset, a different way of thinking about the game in France than we would, they would have a different structure in place.
“It is good to know that a team can go there in a high value game and win. It’s important for us to treat this as a new game, understand where we are, understand that we can still come out the other end of these back-to-back [matches] and stay on top.
“Hopefully get into a position when it comes to round five and six that we can get out of our group.”
ACTIONS / WORDS
ISSUE: "Yeah you need to say the right things. You don't need to get too carried away, we're all hurting. Nobody wanted to lose at home last Saturday. It's not something we accept as a norm. You mightn't even need to train this week. These fellas want to get back out and have a go.
"There's no guarantee that that will get us the result on Sunday. Hopefully we can get something back on them because they definitely did a number on us on Saturday." SOLUTION: "It's about getting the little nuts and bolts in line to make sure that you can achieve that. At the moment we are still in the process of getting our heads right and into a place where we can produce that performance. I am looking forward to it, was looking forward to the last game as well.
“When you play sides like Clermont, Saracens, Sale you look forward to the challenge of the occasions and the tactical battle. Unfortunately we came out second best in that. We have a chance to rectify that, go down there to a very intimidating, passionate ground, something similar to what we have here in Thomond Park, and produce a performance.”
