What do defence’s love? Well, besides smashing people backwards and stripping the ball? At a structural level, defences love predictable targets that they can advance onto in straight lines for an optimal amount of steps until contact.

In more practical language, a defence likes to have time to set their feet before launching themselves forward in a straight line (shortest distance to any target is in a straight line, be that a ruck or a tackle) and advancing forward for an expected number of steps towards their target. You want time to spot the target, confidence that you are running directly onto a potential target in a strong position and that you are running towards an expected target at an expected depth.

As an attack, we want to take all of these things away from the defence. We want to make them uncertain of their footing, we want to switch their targets as they’re running and alter their depth perception so we drag them into spaces we control rather than always taking the ball into spaces the defence control. We want to boss our collisions so we take multiple defenders off their feet and force them into getting up and down. 

The first thing we have to do is accept that all parts of our attack are intertwined. Our attack isn’t just our passing and movement, it is intrinsically linked with our collision points and ruck. They cannot be viewed as separate entities because each action rolls over to the next phase. Positive action rolled over onto another positive action rolled onto another means higher quality attacking pictures and more obvious options for our creative players. If you can stir up the defence – move them off structure, prevent them from picking targets and bend their defensive routes to the ball, you can score tries against anyone if you have the accuracy.

Here’s an example of what I mean. This sequence of phases kicked off from a 22 drop out by Ross Byrne.

We’re Ireland focused here so we’ll get really picky on each phase and assign marks for each action.

PHASE 1:

First off, excellent kick by Byrne – really good hang time and accuracy. Earls take is really strong and that leads us to the collision point where he does a good job of keeping his legs pumping against Villiére. Earls really needs his forwards to help him dominate this collision with multiple French players in his orbit.

Ruddock is too easily bounced off his support line by Ollivon here for my liking and that plays a part in burning Kelleher and Beirne at the same ruck. Ideally, I’d have loved Ruddock dominating this collision point to get a strong latch on Earls to help build the ruck before Earls hits the deck – this could help to tie in Le Roux along with Ollivon but that ultimately fell to Beirne and Kelleher.

Le Roux is still alive on this defensive play from a French perspective. We have lost three forwards and two backs to this collision point while France have only lost one forward and one back.

Le Roux can pillar up after freeing himself from Ruddock and this takes away the break option from Gibson-Park.

A sub-optimal action on a collision point leads to a potential avenue of attack closing before we’ve recycled the ball. These small moments add up so even though the raw stats show a First Arrival at the ruck, they don’t tell the whole story in context.

PHASE 2

Let’s get a behind the posts view for the next phase. Ireland burned three forwards at the previous ruck so that naturally tugs at our prefered attacking structure on the next phase. In an ideal world, I think the three-pod off #9 is Beirne, Furlong and Stander with Furlong as the pass target in the middle.

France have more defensive numbers on the openside than we do and that plays a part in how the next phase plays out. Healy, for example, has to crab across from his position in the midfield Two-Pod to fill in at the Three-Pod off #9. This happens regularly enough, of course, because we can’t always have the exact shape we want, but it plays a role in how a phase plays out.

We went to a screen pass behind to Byrne in this instance which I would mark as a good decision purely because it was better than the alternative, which would have been crashing off #9 into a packed French line, allowing Le Roux and Ollivon back into the centre of the field and stressing Beirne, Ruddock and Kelleher into another cleanout.

What was Byrne looking at when he called for this ball off Stander? I think it was something like this as the play developed. With the numbers arrayed in front of him as he could see, he had Willemse floating in a free position plus Henderson running an expected line. Ideally, we’d have Healy offering himself as part of a two-man pod with Henderson but he’s been tugged over because of the previous phase.

Without Healy to pin the cover, Byrne has to use the threat of his own break – his offensive gravity, so to speak – as the pinning action on Willemse (Blue #5) and Jelonch (Blue #6). Can Byrne threaten the space around Willemse enough to freeze the French lock and drag Jelonch over to cover?

Not really, no, but he actually does a pretty decent job of sticking Willemse with his on-ball motion. Couple that with Henderson weaving off the line he started the phase on and you have the guts of a decent phase here.

Let’s play it through.

First off, this is a forward pass from Byrne to Henderson missed by the officials so we can’t ignore that. Second, Henderson dominantly loses this collision as Jelonch is able to cover across the gap and stick him with a perfect stop without getting trapped in the ensuing ruck.

Willemse follows through on Byrne but you take that risk when you go to the line.

Byrne had three options on this phase – the pass to Henderson that he ultimately chose, a carry himself or a 10m (≅) to Henshaw running in the second layer behind Henderson and on a positive angle to Fickou (Blue #12).

I think Byrne commits to the pass to Henderson relatively early. You can see it in his stride management as he goes to the line. I think he makes the pass decision here.

If he’s passing to Henshaw, he’d have to open his body up a little more with an aggressive jab step towards Willemse so Henderson doesn’t clog his passing lane to Henshaw. Maybe that pass opens up a break for Henshaw – I’d fancy his chances against Jelonch (Blue #6) stepping back across and Fickou (Blue #12) but it depends entirely on the quality of the pass from Byrne to Henshaw. If it’s on Henshaw’s inside shoulder, Jelonch stops him. If it’s too far on his outside shoulder, Fickou stops him.

I’m not sure Ross Byrne’s passing is at a high enough level to make this connection. That isn’t to knock him – I think there are only three or four players in the Six Nations that have this kind of pass in them. Henshaw is a little deep too, to be totally fair, and Henderson’s weaved run has made passing this ahead of Henshaw difficult.

Regardless, we still have possession but the defence has won these two phases from a collision perspective and a “numbers in the line” perspective.

PHASE 3

Our friend Bernard Le Roux (Blue #4) has tracked across the field fantastically well since the first phase and he finds himself heavily involved in the next phase. Furlong, Stander and Ruddock have worked across the field to form a three-pod. Ireland win the collision relatively well at this point. Check out Le Roux getting a solid front-on check on Stander to separate him from his pod and preserve the 2 on 1 tackle on Furlong.

When we release after the ruck, France go to their system and shoot up on the short side to threaten a possible pass from Byrne. Byrne isn’t presenting a picture to alarm France but his short ball to Keenan works out really well – Keenan rides two tackles and Van Der Flier creates an excellent collision point by trapping Le Roux AND Marchand on the floor. With Fickou and Jelonch trapped on the short side, Ireland has an opportunity to get the ball wide to where there must be numbers.

PHASE 4

We took a set-up collision off #9 instead- which is a consistent issue with this Ireland side going back for more than two years now – and it was an average one at that. Ruddock lost the gainline but Furlong’s power threat drew in Willemse who went off feet to finish the tackle. Still, the three French forwards had not tracked back with the flow of play – cardio dropping off? – and that meant that with the two forwards in the Ruddock/Furlong/Stander collision, there must be space on the openside if we can flow through the 3-2-2 structure.

James Lowe’s tight line as a heavy first receiver – you saw this repeatedly during the game – compresses in three French forwards which means that Ireland have flashing green lights to go hard on this phase. Gibson-Park finds Byrne who splits the Middle Two-Pod to Henshaw, who has Ringrose in the second layer and a Wide Two-Pod of Kelleher and Beirne.

Ideally, your second playmaker steps in at this position to dominate the moment, so to speak. Kelleher’s animation on his pinch route is quite poor, in that he doesn’t sell anyone that he’s a possible passing target to Ringrose because his hands are in a run position, not a catch position. Ringrose would have watch Villiére stepping up into a block route all week in the video room but I’d like to see him back his pass off his left to Earls or even try stabbing a kick through for him to chase up the line. Instead, we don’t back our pass and lose the moment. There’s a balance to be struck between worrying about an intercept and backing your skillset when a window of opportunity arises.

The structure created an opportunity because we managed to eventually unbalance the French defence and shift them away from their own defensive structure with Lowe’s late decoy line off the ruck and every action and pass thereafter was exactly what it needed to be.

We produced another series of moments a few minutes later. Watch for the principles we spoke about.

1. Furlong’s pass to Byrne is absolutely perfect and one of the best passes of the entire game.
2. Byrne, Lowe and Henshaw all chained their passes incredibly well up until it came to Ringrose. Ringrose – wary of the last opportunity spurned – was ahead of Dupont laterally so should have attacked the edge of the line before passing to Earls to hold Dupont and preserve the tramline instead of running traffic onto Earls by passing too early.
3. Beirne lost his collision with Willemse but was not helped too much by Furlong initially but mainly Ruddock who, for me, needed to be much more aggressive in this position to get us this ball.
4. The ripped ball leads to a compression in the French defence which was only added to when Ruddock got separated from his cleaners on the reset carry. Only an excellent cleanout by Healy and Stander saved this from being a French penalty.
5. When we retained the ball, France were completely compressed around the collision point – unintentional, but we’ll take it – and Byrne should have attacked the space to draw defenders onto his line and away from the lines of his potential pass targets.
6. Instead, he slung the ball to Lowe, essentially running a defender onto him despite having a usable screen of forwards. With no outside pass options, Lowe kicked out on the full under pressure.

Why not use our screening forwards here instead of taking what seems to be the “obvious” option? If we can attack the space between Ollivon and Dupont, we can hold both of them and open up a better quality look for Lowe or Connors by putting Penaud on an island of space with multiple deep options around him.

Instead, we give the French defence a static target (Lowe) that Penaud can attack in a straight line, despite giving up a tonne of space on the openside.

Until Ireland can improve our passing and our use of space – essentially balancing when to run to beat the defender and when to let the ball beat the defender – we will continually struggle to execute the opportunities we create against teams we can’t easily dominate in collisions.