[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]T[/su_dropcap]he making of any young prospect flyhalf comes down to a battle between three competing and intertwined qualities.

Think of it as a Venn diagram with three circles. The first circle has on-ball athleticism – your ball carrying, your pace & acceleration, your strength, your step, your eye for a gap, your length and accuracy off the boot, your kick variety, your passing sharpness, range and accuracy off both sides. The second circle are your mental attributes – game planning, your tactical intelligence, your goal kicking bottle, your leadership qualities and, ultimately, your ability to control the game in your team’s favour. The third circle has durability written in big letters and, while it’s simpler than the others, it’s vitally important because if you’re not able to stay fit, you won’t get the repeated reps you need to improve on the training field and on the pitch.

In the middle of this Venn diagram is “Dan Carter During the 2005 Lions Tour”. Think about it – for the main bones of his career, Dan Carter had all of the above in spades. He had an outside break, he could score tries, he could nail clutch kicks, he could drive a team around the pitch and he had the durability to do all of those things at a very high level for a long time; enough for 112 All Blacks caps, 141 Crusaders appearances and then a decent end of career shift in France and Japan, where (at the time of writing) he’s still playing at 38 years of age.

Only the very best players will be able to pair up elite on-ball athleticism with elite mental attributes at the highest level and then have the durability to stay at that level for enough time to be effective.

Very few players fall into that category in the professional era alongside Carter, in my opinion; Jonathan Sexton, Owen Farrell, Beauden Barrett, Johnny Wilkinson, Ronan O’Gara are right up there when we consider all three of the main criteria and guys like Owen Farrell and Handré Pollard are right up there in the conversation.

The vast majority of young hot prospect flyhalves usually start off with elements of on-ball athleticism and the mental attributes that make them stand out at age-grade level with durability being the big question mark. We differentiate between “hot prospects” from other, lower potential players, because, by the time a player is eligible for elite professional rugby, a “hot prospect” will have shown a collection of attributes down through the age-grades that makes them of interest to a province in the first place.

At age-grade rugby, any young #10 that has a good few on-ball athleticism qualities combined with a smattering of mental attributes – usually goal kicking – will be of interest to the people who select and progress young talents. It is then up to the professional coaching set up – and the player themselves – to round out their skillset and develop the young player into someone who can be of use to province and country.

When it comes to assessing Jack Crowley, we have to assess his on-ball work under the same terms. We’ve looked at his defence – a separate element of judgement, hence the entirely different article -but a good flyhalf is primarily judged on what they do when their team has possession.

What about his on-ball athleticism and mental attributes? What is the balance?

After watching Crowley quite closely over the last few weeks, I’m pretty comfortable in saying that he is on-ball athleticism dominant with decent to good mental attributes. Durability remains to be seen as he develops into his career but the initial signs are good – he’s a sturdy young lad who looks pretty well put together physically, even a year out of school. Quite simply, he wouldn’t be playing 1A AIL for Con if he wasn’t.

His excellent run with Cork Con this year in the AIL came, as it sometimes does, with a bit of bad luck to another player. When Aiden Moynihan suffered a bad injury against Terenure College in November, that opened up a spot for the then 19-year-old Crowley to step in for some serious game time at the pivot for the AIL champions.

That didn’t lead to a downturn for Con. Prior to the shutdown, they were 14 for 14 in the league with Crowley racking up a tonne of minutes as starting #10, usually alongside Duncan Williams. A player of Williams’ quality can only help a young player like Crowley and his game time impressed Noel McNamara enough to make Crowley his starting outhalf for the Six Nations.

It’s not hard to see why. Athletically speaking, Crowley has enviable gifts and he seems to have the coolest of cool heads on his shoulders. A case in point.

Under pressure on a chase down with a heavy-hitting midfielder steaming up behind him. Does he panic? No. He glances back at the tackler, steps off his right, pivots his body around then steps off his right again to beat the player before exiting strongly up the field.

He’s quick, he’s agile, he’s strong and he’s confident. When you have a guy who mixes those qualities together you’ll have a player who is well capable of expressing themselves on the rugby field. His stand out try against Scotland in the Six Nations is even further proof of that ability to express himself.

When the ball comes to him in the backfield – where he mostly defends – he’s got the speed, agility and power to really hurt teams on transition.

Look at the step off his right (again) and then the fend to getaway. Then that big fend right at the end on a fullback that had a positive angle on him.

Not every flyhalf has the wheels or the intent to pull this score off. In that regard, Crowley really stands out. He looks like he’s got the ball in him to play anywhere. One of those natural athletes that wouldn’t be long drilling a shot into the top corner with a soccer ball or pucking a sliotar over the bar with a hurley in his hand.

Look at the way he stands up the first tackler before bouncing out to give the pass away before contact.

You’d get the feeling that Crowley would be a baller wherever he played – 10 or 15 – but I think playing at the pivot suits him better.

He’s not a bit afraid to go to for space wherever he sees it and if he takes a few lumps in doing so, that doesn’t seem to bother him. Every flyhalf who makes it to the top level in 2020 has to have this ability to challenge the line in their locker. You don’t want to be crashing the ball up too often – I mean, you’re looking to go through a gap rather than crash it, but you know what I mean – but if you’ve got no ability to break the line at first receiver, it won’t be long before opposition sides recognise this and start blitzing onto your passing options.

Crowley’s pace and athleticism inform his work with the ball in hand, sure, but he’s far from a “crash ball #10”. His first instinct is to pass and create, rather than run-down blind alleys. He’s a patient player in that he seems to know when to demand the ball and when to let the ball play out in front of him from what I’ve seen at international age-grade level.

You can see him “dipping” twice at the ball here before demanding the ball on the third phase to get the ball released wide. He’s got the gas to keep up with the break but knows enough to not look for the ball too early or too often.

Passing is a real strength of Crowley’s, as you might expect. He seems strongest of his left side to me, but I haven’t noticed any real dip in his pass quality off his right. For the Irish u20s, Crowley mainly ran plays behind a screen and then open before resetting as part of the width that Noel McNamara had Ireland running with.

Crowley would typically stand quite tight to the first carrier behind the screen (Phase 1) for the Irish u20s before sliding out for the next “open” phase as the link man between the ruck and the wider pod of forwards. It was in this “open” position (phase 2) that we saw the most amount of variation from Crowley. He could carry, he could hit either forward runner or he could split the pod to hit a screened midfield runner.

You would often see Crowley running a close screen route like this.

He’d then slide to the open space on the next phase and assess his options once the ball comes back. With his natural running ability, he’s always looking for gappy alignments.

If we play through the phase, you can see the process – slide screen and then assess in the open.

When the ball came back from the ruck, Crowley could see where space was developing and went right for it.

There’s that step off the right again – I’d like to see him adding a left step to his game as he progresses professionally – and the English forward has to make a good stop to prevent Crowley slicing right up through the middle.

But again, Crowley isn’t a crash ball #10 – he assesses where the space is and has a pass to go after it.

And he goes right to the gainline on most of these phases too. He’s always looking to commit the defender before releasing the ball out or hitting inside runners.

Look at how he waits until the last second before popping the pass back inside to the late runner.

Crowley’s a brave passer too and with that comes risk. He loves to go right to the point of contact with a double pump pass to draw out the blitz before hitting the carrier or the screened runner at the very last second. When it works, it’s devastatingly effective.

Crowley just skates across the line and finds his passing target.

When it doesn’t, losing possession is common and this was a factor in all of Crowley’s games for Ireland to a certain extent. When that gets scrubbed from his game as much as possible – he can only control his pass, after all, not the receipt – it’ll take some stopping.

You can see Crowley’s gainline work in sharp focus on this phase.

A flat, accurate, at pace pass across the line to a big ball carrier…

… that he doubles up with a quick reset, a pump feint, and then a brave pass right before contact.

That pace and agility across the line coupled with accurate, rangy passing and awareness of his passing motion (pump feints, delay passes) make Crowley a dangerous player. One area of the game where I feel Crowley can improve is on the tactical side of the game, game management and phase building part of his game but that is something that you would expect to come with time and further exposure to top end environments.

His on-ball athleticism coupled with his intelligent and varied work in open/link positions are enough to mark Crowley out as a serious prospect.

In the final part of this series, I’ll cover Jack Crowley’s game management and kicking game.