Offloading in vogue as Munster join the party

The final round of Heineken Champions Cup pool games always provides drama.

Although the format is different to what we're used to, the changes in seedings throughout the weekend provided a lot of excitement within the games.

The current format, with an added qualifying round of 16 teams, doesn’t make the competition as ruthless and teams that have lost half their games have managed to sneak into another round.

Our Irish teams strolled through to the qualifying round which they haven’t managed to do in recent years. However, to get to the same quarter-final stage, they are going to need big wins across two legs.

The noticeable thing during the weekend was the quality of rugby played by the four provinces.

Munster showed a definite change in ambition in Thomond Park on Sunday.

Those inside the playing group will tell you that it’s always been within them and maybe with the team already having qualified, being at home in Thomond Park and an increase in crowd capacity, it might have aided the whole thing coming together that bit easier, but you can’t deny the change in attacking strategy.

Maybe their disruptions from South Africa and with Covid-19 have finally been put to bed.

Led by Ben Healy’s control around the pitch, Munster threw more offloads than I’ve seen in a while. Offloading is something we come to expect from Leinster and Connacht, while Ulster have been better at it than Munster as well, through the likes of Hume, McCloskey, and Lowry.

However, Munster showed that they are also more than capable of moving the point of contact and speeding up their ball. When you think back to their performance away against Connacht, Sunday was a complete contrast in attacking intent.

Offloading in attack isn’t a completely different