Post by Jamie Crawford on Jan 20, 2015 14:27:33 GMT
After the almost perfect Pool stage, the Knights enter the knockout stages of British & Irish Cup with a home quarter-final fixture against 2012 winners Munster ‘A’. “Almost perfect” is being pedantic as the only way we could have bettered six wins from six games would have been to get a winning bonus point in every match instead of five out of six of them!
The Knights have the B & I Cup form going in to the game after finishing first, Munster ‘A’ finished eighth and so only just qualified this season but we have seen it in the Championship since automatic promotion/relegation started. A team that is easily top of the league entering the promotion play-offs often finishes runner-up and so doesn’t get promoted. Munster ‘A’ may be playing the long game and doing just enough to qualify for the Finals.
That said, I’m not sure that the Pool stage stats will provide an accurate picture of what to expect but there’s nothing else to go on. In the Pool stage the Knights scored 204 points and had leaked 122, Munster ‘A’ scored 149 points and leaked 112 points. Munster ‘A’ were second behind Worcester Warriors with four wins and two losses.
Despite Munster ‘A’ finishing eighth, Utility Back Rory Scannell was the sixth top points–scorer and only three points behind third (third, fourth & fifth were equal). Scannell has had a strike rate of 81%. Our own Dougie leads the kicking table with a strike rate of 96% from 23 kicks. Connacht’s Shane O’Leary and others have a 100% strike rate but O’Leary took the most kicks of them with 11, less than half of Dougie’s total, so they are not regular kickers.
Back Row Jack O’Donoghue followed by Wing Greg O’Shea were Munster’s leading try scorers.
Munster ‘A’’s defence of the try-line was second only to Worcester Warriors'. The ball only crossed their try line 11 times compared to the Knights leaking 16 tries. Over 36% of Munster's were scored by the back row but our try-scoring was better, recording 28 tries scored to Munster’s 15. Again the Back Row were the most prolific try-scorers followed by the Wingers. No team managed to score four tries against Munster ‘A’. We’re likely to win if we can shore up our defence and maintain the rate of try-scoring. Munster ‘A’ try-scoring has been fairly even throughout the game but they have conceded twice as many tries in the second half compared to the first.
Let’s be the first team to score a winning bonus point against Munster ‘A’ in the B & I Cup, perhaps one or two in the first half followed by three, two or more in the second.
Bristol welcome Yorkshire (Leeds) Carnegie to Ashton Gate on Friday 23rd January
Elsewhere on Saturday 24th January:
Rotherham Titans play Leinster in Yorkshire
Worcester Warriors welcome Pontypridd to England
Previous British & Irish Cup winners
2009–10 Cornish Pirates 23–14 Munster A
2010–11 Bristol 17–14 Bedford Blues 375
2011–12 Munster A 31–12 Cross Keys
2012–13 Leinster A 18–17 Newcastle Falcons
2013–14 Leinster A 44–17 Leeds Carnegie
C'mon Knights.
DONNY, DONNY, DONNY...
