[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]J[/su_dropcap]oe Molloy made an interesting point on some Virgin Media show a few days ago when he was talking to Ronan O’Gara about how Ireland, flawed as they might have been towards the end of 2019, had a very identifiable way of operating under Joe Schmidt and, for whatever reason, that is not yet true under Farrell.
In some ways, I think that is to be expected. Joe Schmidt was Ireland’s attack coach as well as our head coach for six seasons so his exacting, precise style of play and the incredibly rigorous demands he made of his players in that style of play were both immediately apparent relative to his predecessor and emblematic of how Ireland played over two World Cup cycles. Ireland’s way of attacking was, after all, Joe Schmidt’s way of attacking so it was an easy rhetorical device to link Ireland’s play with Joe Schmidt’s personality.
Who were Ireland under Joe Schmidt? They were Joe Schmidt.
At their best, they were methodical, they were physical, they were brutally precise and, when they really clicked, playing them was like trying to beat a machine who knew all of your moves before you made them before surgically striking a weak spot you didn’t know you had.
At their worst, they were repetitive, too wedded to structure and looked quite like a machine experiencing a kernel panic when key parts of their game were taken away by the opposition.
How could Andy Farrell overturn that level of influence in one year, especially when he was a key component of the previous coaching group? I don’t think it’s possible in that short period of time. There’s also a possibility that we don’t know enough about Andy Farrell the head coach to begin assigning his parasocial personality traits onto this version of Ireland.
Besides, Farrell is neither Ireland’s attack coach or defence coach – he chose Mike Catt and Simon Easterby to implement their vision in both roles – so there isn’t really an overarching, omnipresent way of playing that is immediately recognisable as the “Andy Farrell Way”.
It might actually be fairer to wonder about “Mike Catt’s Way”, as it is undoubtedly his influence that determines how Ireland work with the ball in hand which is generally how a team comes to be defined in the public eye these days.
I think looking for any coach to stamp “his” way of playing on a group is a limited way of understanding the role, both of the head coach or a unit coach. It’s an easy thing to bash a coach over the head with but I think there’s value in a coach not being beholden to playing one particular way. Looking at trends in the game as they currently stand and finding the right people to implement a style that wins today with the group of players you have, not the group of players you would ideally want, is good coaching. Playing easily identifiable rugby from a stylistic perspective that somehow dovetails with a coach’s perceived personality traits is not, on its own, good coaching – it’s pop punditry.
This year, I want to see a development from Ireland from an offensive perspective. We scored a lot of tries in last year’s Six Nations but we tended to tread water on our phases if we didn’t have deep set-piece position in the opposition’s 22. I feel that progress this season – outside of winning at least three games, this one included – will be Ireland showing that they can generate clean breaks and surges in the middle third of the field while also improving their efficiency in transition.
Wales: 15. Leigh Halfpenny, 14. Louis Rees-Zammit, 13. George North, 12. Johnny Williams, 11. Hallam Amos; 10. Dan Biggar, 9. Tomos Williams; 1. Wyn Jones, 2. Ken Owens, 3. Tomas Francis, 4. Adam Beard, 5. Alun Wyn Jones (c), 6. Dan Lydiate, 7. Justin Tipuric, 8. Taulupe Faletau
Replacements: 16. Elliot Dee, 17. Rhodri Jones, 18. Dillon Lewis, 19. Will Rowlands, 20. Josh Navidi, 21. Gareth Davies, 22. Callum Sheedy, 23. Nick Tompkins
It would be easy to look at Ireland’s 32-9 win over Wales over Wales in November and then look at the fact that they’ve only beaten Italy and Georgia since their Rugby World Cup quarter-final win in 2019 and think, man, these guys are rubbish.
It would also be pretty stupid.
Look, there’s no arguing that results for Pivac’s side have not been good enough but, as ever in this game, the margins are pretty thin in my opinion. For example, Wales’ hefty loss to Ireland in the Autumn Nations Cup was built off the back of a disastrous scrummaging and lineout performance in the first half, coupled with two missed Halfpenny kicks in the second half that could have brought them back to within four points with the entire last quarter to play. Throw in two charged-down box kick exits that lead directly to the concession of points in the second half and you get a picture of how the game got away from Wales when, for a period, it looked like they were within striking range. Lowe’s try on 80+ minutes put a handy buff on the scoreline but having watched that game back this week, that was a 7-10 point game that got swollen out to a 20+ game through core failures in the Welsh set-piece.
If the same happens this Sunday, then there could well be a similar scoreline but Wales have different playing pieces in place, as do we. Quinn Roux’s scrummaging performance behind Andrew Porter will not be easily duplicated, and neither will Rhys Carre’s implosion against Andrew Porter that was as much to do with some generous refereeing decisions as it was his complete inability to live with Porter’s power. It got so bad that he was substituted right before a key 5m scrum before halftime.
Maybe that’ll happen again but I wouldn’t imagine Ireland are banking on annihilating the Welsh scrum and lineout as a primary tactic in this one. It’d be nice, sure, but not something you could reliably bank on catching Wales twice in a row on.
My concern for this game is that the side we’ve constructed to start this game needs to play the kind of regular width and extension that we haven’t seen from Ireland consistently over the last year.
Ireland seem to be running a fluid 1-3-2-2/1-3-3-1 system under Catt pretty consistently since he took over our attack and, as I’ve been over before on these pages, that system works best when you can regularly attain and maintain wide-wide ruck position to stretch the opposition defence laterally. Ideally, all of your forward pack would be comfortable in any of the slots but given our selection, I would expect our primary scheme is designed to get the ball to Stander, O’Mahony and Van Der Flier in the wider slots of the 3-2-2 shape with our wingers looping off their wings to provide options in the wide channels.
The looping of the wingers and fullback seems to be a growing part of what Ireland are trying to bring to open up multiple attacking options all over the pitch in certain pinch moments. You could see evidence of it towards the end of last year. Watch the highlighted back three players in the below montage and see how they provide inside and outside shoulder ball options all through the line – off #9, off #10 and beyond.
When I see James Lowe coming back into the squad straight away it makes sense to me because he’s one of the best looping wingers in Europe at the moment, as well as being a reliable guy to hit off structure when you need someone to get a wide ruck position for you.
Lowe is most dangerous when he loops to the middle space of a two ruck progression coming across the field. So, in practice, this means that Ireland are playing across the field off #9 once or twice with the looped runner attacking an inside/outside shoulder in tandem with other options.
In practice, this overloads the opposition defence because what looked like four options at the start of the last phase (a carry by the first receiver who can either carry it himself or hit two or three passing options) becomes five with the late addition of a late runner on the inside shoulder.
If the receiver chooses to carry, the outside options on either side attack the lanes either side of the collision point as offload options while the inside players support the ruck. Lowe is incredibly dangerous in this position as he can break the line, hold his feet in contact and get a short ball away to a supporting runner like a Henshaw, Ringrose, Sexton or Murray.
That ability to overload middle and wide spaces with looped runners is a key part of Ireland’s offensive scheme nowadays. Look at Keenan running another loop route here across a fully extended 3-2-2 shape to offer a holding line – a line that stalls the progression of a defender to a space where you have wider runners – and makes space for a break at best, and allows more space for a wide-wide ruck gain at worst.
Look at the way the Middle Two pod of players splits to let the ball pass through them.
You’ll see Ireland run this split. When the play comes back across the field, Scotland have had to rally across the pitch to cover the width Ireland have obtained so there are gaps for Henderson to find a tip-on pass off #9 and Scotland have to infringe on the next play because Ireland are flowing across the pitch with dynamism.
You see the 1-3-2-2 clearly as Ireland progress across the field on this phase.
And you can see how that progresses to a 3-2-1 on the next phase with Henshaw acting as a looped runner to support the progression back across the field.
Henshaw’s action as the looped runner – because any of the outside backs can run it – puts him in a position to make a critical linebreak.
Add in looping outside backs outside a morphing 3-3-1/3-2-2 structure that can change phase for phase and you’ve got a scheme that can create linebreaks in between the 10m lines.
This, for example, looks like a 3-3-1 two phases after a lineout hit up but Henshaw’s late loop back around opens it up as a split 3-2-2 that had Doris opening up for a possible offload route.
We have that kind of play in our arsenal but it wasn’t really coming off for us last season. I’m concerned that Wales will use Lydiate solely and purely as a stopper off #9 to prevent us from getting the kind of short-range, quick ball progressions that open up our looped plays and looped players.
That ability to win collisions off #9 is still an important facet of what we want to do here to make much of the rest of our offence work – it literally buys time and field position for our attacking units to get into place – so I’m concerned that we might be forced to draw Stander closer to the ruck and use Beirne and Ryan more off #10 in that middle pod.
The four men on the bench – Kilcoyne, Kelleher, Furlong and Henderson – will be hugely important in imposing themselves in these short and mid-range positions in the last quarter of the game. If they can add that power and continuity of possession off the bench, Ireland will have a good chance to produce the kind of penalty opportunities in possession that can win us the game.
