I wish lineouts were as simple as “throw it to the tall guy”.

Even then, that’s a little too simplistic because sometimes it can be as simple as “throw it to the tall guy” so maybe I should restructure that sentence as I wish lineouts were always as simple as throw it to the tall guy. If only. In truth, the lineout is way, way more complex than that. There are a few layers to the complexity too, to make it even more frustrating to fully conceptualise. For example, a lineout you call deep in your own 22 will operate under a different environment than the one you call right on the edge of the opponent’s 22. It also has to play into the attacking scheme that the halfbacks have called because, at least for the time being, those tricksy non-forwards are still heavily involved in this game.

I would describe the conceptual layers as follows;

• Micro-Mechanics: This is focusing on things like lifting and jumping techniques, decoy routes and body pictures i.e. do always look like you’re going to be involved in the lineout before the throw, even when you are not involved in this particular lineout be you a jumper, lifter or receiver?
• Macro-Mechanics: This is looking at the entire lineout as a whole rather than focusing on the small details of the lift or the jump – where are you calling the lineout and to whom? Is the lineout part of a maul build, forward strike move or is it to facilitate the transfer of the ball out of the lineout effectively?
• Grand Scheme: The offensive leaders in the team have called a particular attacking scheme that requires the ball to be delivered to a specific place at a specific tempo with X number of forwards involved by phase one, two or three. This will limit your ability to actually get the ball down at the macro-mechanics level because if the scheme calls for two forwards to be on-ball by phase two, they probably shouldn’t be involved in the lift or jump. This will usually require a set lineout scheme to be used with a specific attacking strike play.

In this article, I will focus on the Macro-Mechanics level because this is where the act of calling the lineout comes into play. As a general rule, each lineout you take will be influenced by the one that comes before it because this is a live competition for the ball in a way that the scrum really isn’t anymore. Sure, you can win a scrum against the head but the actual numbers of scrums successfully won clean against the head are relatively low. For example, Benetton have the worst scrum in the PRO14 from a retention perspective at 85%. Even the worst scrum in the league retains the ball more than 8 out of 10 scrums! Ulster have the best scrum in the league from a raw retention perspective at 97%. Now think about how often do you see a lineout turned over? You see it multiple times every single week and sometimes multiple times in a single game. The usual rate for lineout retention – before you even get into “effective” lineouts – runs from 85 to 92% usually.

And yet, even with that competition for the ball, the lineout is still the biggest origin point of tries in the game at the elite level. In the 2021 Six Nations, for example, 44% of all tries scored to date have originated at the lineout. To further underline it’s importance, 75% of Ireland’s tries have come from the same set-piece. So when I say that calling the lineout is an incredibly valuable skill to have in your arsenal, I really mean it. Lineout calling is one of those things that you only really notice when you don’t have it.

So what is “calling”?

At a basic level, it’s deciding on the numbers in the lineout, the pre-throw movement (from a set menu of designs) and the target of the lineout both individually and positionally – basically, who is jumping, who is lifting and where are they doing that.  The lineout leader will give the call to the forwards, the first forward in the lineout (usually the loosehead prop but not always) will give that call to the hooker, the rest of the lineout will walk up to the line, the trigger will be called (this can be verbal or non-verbal) and then the lineout launches. The throw itself can be a variety of different shapes – flat, laser, lob etc, etc – but that’s the basics of what a call actually is.

Boil it down, and a lineout call can be as simple as the following.

Here’s our code; the front of the lineout is called “blue”. The back of the lineout is called “green” and the middle is called “pink”. Our lineout caller walks up late to our full lineout late so they can see where the opposition has stacked their defensive pods in response to our initial set up. 

By calling out “pink” as he walks in, the lineout leader can trigger a quick throw to himself in the middle of the lineout to be lifted by Red #7 and Red #6 as he sees space in the middle of the opposition defensive lineout.

The opposition’s best counter-launcher is Black #6, so they have planted him at the front of the lineout to cut off the simple throw to the front for us. On this occasion, Black #5 and #4 got a little too far away from each other so Red #5 backed himself to get up into the air before Black #5 could make the two steps back to lift Black #4 to counter. It’s a positional mistake by Black #5 more than anything.

The opposition will generally have an idea of what we usually do in the lineout on any given game. They will have been watching us all week going back at least two or three games to see who have we typically used as primary jumping outlets and where we have used them. They’ll also have watched our hooker’s tendencies and made a value call on how good that hooker might be at reaching certain targets.

If a hooker, for example, had a weak throw to the back of the middle or had difficulty throwing a lob, it would make good defensive sense to put an explosive jumper at the front of the lineout to force that hooker into making throws he’s weaker at.

The opposition in our graphic above have done just that but they didn’t fully pressure us by manning the middle appropriately. If they cut off the front – basically make it a race into the air – they should prioritise the middle as the primary counter-launch site. Black #5 was too keen to be closer to #6 so they could choke the middle and, in doing so, got too far away from Black #4 in the middle space. Our lineout leader saw this and called the ball to where the space was and we reacted quicker.

But this lineout is not in isolation.

On the next lineout, we again go for a full lineout because we’re worried about the counter-launch threat of their #6 and #4. A full lineout allows us to play simply without too much deception but the opposition have learned their lesson. They’ve eased up at the front – backing Black #3 to get an effective first lift on #6 who’s facing the hooker waiting for a trigger – and Black #5 is much closer to Black #4. They have adjusted from the last lineout to stack the middle.

Remember, we also know that our hooker has difficulty with pressure throws to the middle so what we don’t want is repeat the last lineout because the opposition is set up to get into the same airspace we’re looking for.

We want to throw to where they are not competing so what does the lineout caller do here?

Our lineout leader will go to a different call, this time based on a trained slide decoy. The call for the slide decoy is, let’s say, “Apple”. When the lineout leader calls “apple”, we know that the first action will be to feint a lift in the middle – pink – but the next action will be the caller running a feint lift to the front while the back lifter on “pink” (#6) gets lifted by #8 and the front lifter on the pink call.

There are two feints built into the scheme – the jump in the middle that the opposition missed the last time and a feint to the safety ball at the front. This will, ideally, cluster the opposition in the middle for the first feint and then drag Black #5 away to the front for the second feint, which should leave the throwing lane in the middle open for a clean throw to #6. If the opposition goes up on the first or second feint, we get the ball as long we don’t blow the throw/lift.

That is lineout calling at a very basic level. Showing the opposition one thing and then, using what you showed them the first time as a bluff, showing them something else on the next one.

On Friday night, Fineen Wycherley was given the responsibility of calling the lineout for Munster against Cardiff.

I thought he did quite well actually. Munster will have put together a menu of lineout schemes for the weekend that looped in with some of the other set-piece attacking schemes and it would be on Wycherley to run the lineout strategically with the tools at his disposal – a strong primary jumper in Jean Kleyn, an explosive back-row jumper in O’Donoghue, a pretty decent (if inexperienced) jumper in O’Sullivan and, of course, himself. The key would be balancing these options throughout the game.

Munster’s first two lineouts were a pretty good example of showing the opposition one thing and then showing them a bluff of that the next time.

Fineen’s first lineout was called to himself at the front and the second lineout used that same motion to draw Cardiff to the front, which left the lane open for O’Donoghue in the middle.

I did feel that Wycherley used himself as a decoy a little too often in the early going. Our first four lineouts had a Wycherley jump feint on three of them and by the fourth, Cardiff had worked out that we were going to the jumper behind the Wycherley feint.

At this point, I’d be looking for my lineout leader to call the next lineout on himself to “reset” the Cardiff defence who had started to watch the space behind the Wycherley feint as the likely target.

On the next one, Fineen used another feint and you can see Cardiff just tracking the space behind without ever really committing to the front feint. O’Donoghue’s jump feint is a little sloppy – he seems to block Kleyn’s route back to O’Sullivan – but this was a complex call that, for me, could have done with going to Wycherley in the middle.

To his credit, Fineen wiped the slate clean on the next few lineouts by removing his feinting action completely, and Munster took all those lineouts cleanly.

Right before Wycherley went off, we lost another lineout but I felt that should have been a Munster free-kick. There’s an extra man in the Cardiff lineout – Cloete doesn’t count as he’s the receiver – so they’ve managed to steal a ball they wouldn’t have gotten near without that illegal lift by their replacement hooker.

When Billy Holland came on, he tightened absolutely everything up to shore up possession and chew minutes. Munster had a lead and were going to try to hang onto it so every lineout was 6 + 1 at least with “maul building” as the primary feature. That meant straightforward lifts at the front or the front of the middle and minute/metre chewing mauls.

The last one lineout lead straight to the game-sealing try, mauled from the 22m line – a nice way to end any game. Holland would have had 60 odd minutes to watch what Cardiff were and were not handling so he came on the field with a mental map of what would work. The change in design at the lineout reflected that – and the score – and is a good example of good lineout calling making things look simple.

Fineen Wycherley did a good job too and will improve with time, especially when it comes to how he uses himself as a jumper when he’s calling.