[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]I[/su_dropcap]t’s amazing how meaningful a brand new tournament can become after a resounding defeat against England. Nobody is going to be telling stories about the magical Autumn Nations Cup of 2020 in a few years but that long perspective isn’t something that Andy Farrell can consider this week. A comprehensive defeat in Twickenham where Ireland would have to sift through literally hundreds of collisions to find a few they won will do that to you. If you think the questions and concerns that simmered to the surface in the aftermath of last weekend were difficult to answer comprehensively, you don’t want to see a world where Ireland labour to a narrow win over Georgia this Sunday or, god forbid, slip to an unthinkable defeat.
The Autumn Nations Cup means little but below expectation performances against teams that we should be beating like Georgia combined with “this is your level now” defeats to England and France in the last month will be enough to sour the vibe around the national side until the Six Nations.
Andy Farrell could have made things a lot easier for himself this week by calling up guys like Craig Casey, Gavin Coombes, Harry Byrne and Scott Penny for a debut against Tier 2 opposition but, in a way, I think he’s right to avoid changing things up too much.
Wales struggled to break down Georgia last week. Some of that was the weather – close enough to what Munster experienced in Glasgow – and some of it was the little snag moments that show up when a bunch of new players and debutants slot into a new environment. The cohesion just isn’t there when a bunch of new guys come into the matchday squad and, while it doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to lose, it can make for underwhelming performances – something Andy Farrell (or Wayne Pivac) can’t really afford.
Farrell wants to avoid the issues that hit Wales by sticking to the group that has been training together since the Six Nations restart for the most part and those players are the ones who’ve been rewarded with selection ahead of our (likely) final game against Scotland.
Georgia: 15. Soso Matiashvili; 14. Akaki Tabutsadze, 13. Giorgi Kveseladze, 12. Merab Sharikadze (c), 11. Tamaz Mchedlidze; 10. Tedo Abzhandadze, 9. Vasil Lobzhanidze; 1. Mikheil Nariashvili, 2. Shalva Mamukashvili, 3. Beka Gigashvili, 4. Nodar Cheishvili, 5. Lasha Jaiani, 6. Beka Saginadze, 7. Tornike Jalagonia, 8. Beka Gorgadze
Replacements: 16. Giorgi Chkoidze, 17. Lexo Kaulashvili, 18. Giorgi Melikidze, 19. Giorgi Javakhia, 20. Mikheil Gachechiladze, 21. Mikheil Alania, 22. Demur Tapladze, 23. David Niniashvili
You hear a fair bit about Georgia’s scrum but it’s the most overrated part of their game.
The vast majority of penalties Georgia conceded against Wales last weekend came in the scrum and, while it isn’t automatic that Ireland will duplicate Wales’ scrummaging success, especially with Bealham starting at loosehead, I wouldn’t expect it to be an area that Ireland will be too concerned about, despite our opponent’s reputation.
I’d be far more concerned with Georgia’s maul defence or, to put it another way, Ireland’s maul attack. I had a look at Ireland’s lineout issues against England here but I avoided speaking about the maul because of its relevance to this game. I’ve been over this quite a bit before but my base theory is that your lineout is your maul and your maul success or failure reflects the quality of the lineout that precedes it.
Simon Easterby spoke about the Irish maul at a press event this week.
“Often that challenge in the air can just off-set a jumper landing, so it might be a challenge in the air which to the naked eye that looks like nothing but it forces the jumper to land maybe half a metre, a metre, away from the position where he thinks he’s going to land, away from the position that his guys coming into support him think he is going to land.
“That doesn’t change us getting our stuff better, and making sure that we’re on top of our things and deliver more accuracy and more effectiveness in our ball-winning and our maul attack.”
That “aerial bump” he’s talking about is a very real thing in building solid mauls. If you sustain a challenge in the air while coming back down from the peak of the jump that isn’t enough to award a penalty, it can still blow the early part of a maul attack. Why? Because if you come down away from your launch point, your lifters and the waiting drive component of the maul have to readjust their feet to receive you and that gives up crucial early space to the defensive side. Whoever wins the first key shove of momentum usually wins the maul so that early landing is crucial for the offensive side. When I talk about a “strong jumper” as a lineout archetype, one of the primary qualities is being able to resist that kind of aerial turbulence in a way that a smaller, lighter jumper might not.
Let’s have a look at what Easterby was likely talking about and jump to a close range Irish lineout late in the game against England. We’ll ignore the scheme for now and focus on the important bits – it’s a pop feint to the tail of the lineout with Henderson being lifted by Connors stepping in from the receiver position and James Ryan from the back.
Look at how the contact from Itoje moves Henderson off position and how that creates negative space. England win a crucial early shove and get dominant binds on O’Mahony while completely taking Connors out of the shove.
That leaves England with a dominant defensive position that forces Murray to go directly to Farrell to get any decent gainline from.
Connors is exposed at the front of the lineout to strong English counter-shovers and he’s got too much space between the drive component of the maul and the main “builder” of the maul, Henderson.
This translates into space for the English countershove to power into while Ireland reset after the aerial bump from Itoje. They do not have to wait for us to tighten up after Henderson’s landing and, as a result, they can power straight through onto an isolated Will Connors and Peter O’Mahony.
Connors can’t live with the pressure coming through and loses his power position. He’s out of the shove. Peter O’Mahony tries to compensate but he overextends. Herring is close to following the same path.
Our touchline side of the maul has collapsed and England can drive us infield and backwards. Not good.
Sometimes it isn’t even as subtle as that.
Itoje’s contest completely tilts Ryan in the air and our maul build is in tatters before he’s even hit the deck. This kind of thing is what Easterby is talking about and if we want to impact the Georgians on Sunday, we have to improve our work here in both the lineout and in our maul builds.
Georgia might not be the strongest scrummagers relative to their reputation but I’ve been really impressed with the quality of their maul defence which, oddly enough, has a lot of the hallmarks of their scrummaging of old.
Look at their set up before the Welsh landing here and keep an eye on the hook bind they get on the lifter’s leg.
They aren’t lifting the leg, they are compressing it to make driving forward that bit more difficult. They get good low body positions and never lose their collective bind. Wales threw eleven men into this maul and Georgia stopped it dead with 5m to spare with nine counter maulers.
The same principles apply to this maul in the second half. Look for the strong low scrum bind on landing, the leg hooks and the scrum like shoulder bind from the fringe defenders. Even when Wales get some purchase on the touchline side, Georgia manage to reset their bind and stop a secondary shove.
The space is really available on the infield side if you can commit enough Georgian defenders and in better conditions, there was an opportunity to get this back to Williams with workable attacking space for him to exploit. These maul break opportunities will be there all day and, with McCloskey and Farrell, we have the size to create problems for Georgia’s number management on full, close-range lineouts that turn into maul contests. They can’t afford to leave their midfield one on one with McCloskey and Farrell so they’ll have to leave a forward over.
I expect any kind of consistent Irish phase play to produce penalties so how will Ireland look to attack the Georgian maul from close-range? We can’t just bypass it – we want to make a statement of where where are after last week. We’ll need to secure the ball (obviously) but our maul tactics need to focus on where Georgia have been shown to be vulnerable.
We don’t want to take them on in a straight shove. We don’t want to try a touchline surge either because they’ve shown how strong they are there in finding the touchline and recovering from a small gain.
We want to run them infield.
What does this mean? It means we take a lineout around the middle (or tail) and immediately shove infield towards the posts. This will naturally draw their scrum-like bind in and to the side, which leaves space for us to then go forward.
The action must be infield and, when we have the Georgian’s side on, we go forward. That’s what England did. Look at the direction of these mauls – infield produced momentum and left Georgia out of position for the secondary shove.
The same will work for Ireland. They are strong and organised when you try to run right over the top of them straight from the landing but their primary maul defensive technique is vulnerable to infield lateral action. How Ireland perform here will tell us a lot about where we are technically and tactically at lineout time.
If we’re smart, we’ll win and win well. If we try to muscle up on them without a plan, this will be tighter than it needs to be. Let’s find out where we are, eh?
