Every lineout is a balance between safety in numbers at the line and arraying your attacking options off the lineout.
Think about it; when you have six or seven players standing in a lineout pre-throw, you’ve got decoy jumping options, you’ve got bailout options, you can maul the ball for a gain before doing whatever you’re schemed to do. It’s safe.
Here’s a relatively simple example of a 5+1 lineout.
There are two points of deception here – Ryan’s jump out after the trigger and Stander’s lift feint that throws off the Scottish counter launch. Henderson gets lifted by Healy and Furlong before Van Der Flier steps in to snap over the ball and build a maul.
All five players in the lineout are involved, and the +1 (Van Der Flier) adds a non-moving component that completes the action. What I mean by this is, all of the players in the primary line (Furlong, Henderson, Stander, Ryan and Healy) are all involved in lineout action, be it lifting, escorting, feinting or jumping and, when you’re in motion, you can end up out of position when it comes to securing the ball off the jump. Van Der Flier has no movement whatsoever so he’s able to be in the exact right place at the exact right time for the job in hand. Essentially, Ireland used all six players in this lineout so you can see why there’s a lot of security in these kinds of numbers.
On the flip side though, it gives you fewer offensive weapons across the field. In the above example, Ireland had Caolan Doris as a midfield hit option but he was the only forward included alongside the outside backs. The more forwards you can get into the attacking line outside the lineout, the more assets you have for manipulating the opposition. With opposition phase defence getting better and better, the lineout gives you a number of expansive options to work with if you are willing to risk the numbers for it.
The Four Man Lineout
Over the past few weeks, Ireland have started using a drastically shortened lineout to maximise their offensive options in the backfield.
To understand why we must understand what you are defending on these set pieces. It is not players necessarily – it’s space that a player may occupy. With a full forward lineout – 7 on 7 – the outer field becomes more spacious but, in some ways, easier to defend because the spaces are quite clearly defined once you know what the opponent’s threats are.
Here’s a full lineout being defended by a conventional set up. The ball is thrown to Green #6 lifted by Green #1 and Green #8 at the tail of the lineout. Green #6 throws down to #9 coming hard on the arc and passes to our big ball carrying #12 running in the vicinity of the first opposition back in the line. This is Zone 1.
Green #11 gives us an inside option to hold Red #2 and Red #7 as they “flex” into position as the defensive line advances to the ball carrier.
If #12 spins the ball back to the #10 behind the screen, the defensive play shifts to Zone 2 and if the ball goes wider than that it runs to Zone 3 with care being taken on any Zone 2 rucks to watch for the reverse play to the resetting lineout forwards.
As the play progresses, the defensive progression is obvious depending on the position.
Zone 1 Possession
Zone 2 Possession
Zone 3 Possession
This is a pretty rudimentary attack off the lineout, in fairness, and relies on the Green #12/#13 screen stalling the opposition progression from in Zone 1 straight off the launch. If you’re the defence, the equation is pretty straightforward in following the ball into the zones while the ball is in the air and preparing for contact when it’s not. In this instance, the lack of defensive numbers improves the clarity of movement for the defenders.
What happens if we drastically change the midfield picture by loading it with extra players?
With this setup, you make it more difficult for the defence to plan their zone progressions because there are so many options. The opponent also has a decision to make about who to include in the lineout because slow-moving front five lineout specialists in the defensive zones become more of a liability the more numbers there are.
In the above example, you have five radiant options for Green #9.
They can;
- Carry the ball themselves
- Pop the ball to Green #14
- Pass to Green #12
- Pass to Green #13
- Pass to Green #10
All of these options are legitimate for this first phase, so the defence has to plan for them. The spacing of the heavy carrying screen (Green #8 and Green #12) demands a defensive cluster and any pass out the back to the #10 will stall players in Zone 1.
That creates a cascading overload in the subsequent zones as the Green number advantage flows across the field. If you take a ruck, it exacerbates the alignment issues and leaves a big mismatch problem back in the direction of the lineout (your locks and lifting props, if that’s what you’ve chose to use in the lineout)) if you properly extend the ruck to the edge.
The only issue is the lineout itself. You can see some of the issues below;
The action here is actually quite good but the throw is slightly off where it needs to be in my opinion. From a risk perspective, the opponent can track your pod structures quite closely because there’s literally nothing else for them to watch. This is always the downside with these lineouts. Ultra quick lifters and jumpers that have great cohesion and elite speed over the ground are the key to this scheme.
In this example, O’Mahony spotted the spacing around Jones and triggered the launch at that spot.
We want that quick launch to get our #9 away and assessing his options. On this lineout, you had the following picture for Murray to aim at.
It paints a picture of some uncomfortable Welsh defenders, to be honest. Everything about Ireland’s set up compresses Zone 1 and any successfully committed screen creates big opportunities in the wider zones.
Murray chose Conway to carry this. Why? Well, I think he saw a bit of space in behind Ken Owens and felt that committing Lewis (Red #3) at the tail would give Conway a look at cutting up Owens one on one with the outside defenders committed to the massive offensive numbers.
Even then, look at the potential mismatch it produced on the blindside after the first ruck.
It’s a scheme that we’ve used in both games so far to mixed results but you can see the basic premise behind it here.
A quick lineout launch, a well resourced central ruck and then pre-made assets in the wider channels to make plays on targeted areas. You can see how the number advantage stays in place right up until the far 15m line, even with the ruck.
It’s only a matter of time before lineouts go down to a tightly drilled unit of three lineout forwards to further generate these ideal positioning scenarios. Knowing exactly what assets you have in play on any phase is the best possible way to scheme for set plays. That’s hard to do during phase play for any number of reasons, with losing more players to a ruck than you planned being chief amongst them.
What other part of the game do you know for certain where your attacking assets AND key defensive targets will be before play starts?
That reveals the allure of the Four-Man lineout.
