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Monster Healy penalty clinches victory for Munster in 82nd minute
By PA
Ben Healy’s last-minute penalty saw 14-man Munster snatch a dramatic 30-27 Guinness PRO14 victory at Scarlets. Leigh Halfpenny kicked nine penalties to break Scarlets’ record for most penalties in a match, surpassing the previous mark of eight set by Stephen Jones and Byron Hayward.
Halfpenny’s efforts appeared to have condemned Munster to defeat, particularly when Peter O’Mahony was red carded in the 68th minute after picking up two yellows.
However, the flanker’s dismissal proved the catalyst for a remarkable reversal of fortunes.
Jack O’Donoghue, Chris Farrell and Kevin O’Byrne scored tries for the Irish outfit, with JJ Hanrahan adding a penalty and conversion. Healy also added two conversion and two penalties.
With respective scrum-halves Gareth Davies and Craig Casey intent on kicking the ball at every available opportunity, the opening 15 minutes were easily forgotten with neither side threatening the try-line.
Scarlets got on the board when Halfpenny made no mistake with two straightforward penalties in quick succession to give his side a 6-0 lead.
Munster suffered a further blow when their skipper O’Mahony was sin-binned for charging into a ruck and taking a man out off the ball, and in the flanker’s absence Halfpenny kicked another penalty.
O’Mahony was still absent when Munster picked up the first try of the game – a strong run from Andrew Conway paving the way for a try for O’Donoghue.
Hanrahan converted before a fourth penalty from Halfpenny gave Scarlets a 12-7 interval lead.
After the restart an error from Hanrahan gifted the Welsh region a platform. The outside half sent a touchline kick into the dead ball area for Scarlets to capitalise with another Halfpenny penalty.
Hanrahan atoned for his error by kicking a penalty but Halfpenny again responded with three further penalties as Scarlets became increasingly dominant.
Munster rallied to score their second try when Farrell finished off a period of pressure to force his way over but there was a sting in the tale as O’Mahony was sent off for again charging into the ruck as Farrell placed the ball over the line.
Halfpenny kicked the resulting and record-breaking penalty from half-way before Healy responded with one to keep Munster in it.
Remarkably they then scored another 10 points, with O’Byrne finishing off a driving line-out which Healy converted before the replacement outside-half held his nerve to fire over the match-winner.
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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