When Munster announced the signing of Antoine Frisch last week, there were a few raised digital eyebrows in my mentions given that Frisch is, nominally, a #12. How, people rightly wondered, would Frisch fit with the signing of Malakai Fekitoa and the re-signing of Chris Farrell on a two-year deal considering that none of these three players would be considered “depth” signings? All three of these players are Category 1 starters – both currently in Farrell’s case and projected to be given the outlay on Fekitoa’s and Frisch’s recruitment – so how can they possibly all fit together given all three are, nominally, midfielders?

If we make an assumption that none of the three players will be played widely off role or as bench replacements, it is more than possible to use all three players in the same offensive backline build.

To understand how you can blend Fekitoa, Farrell and Frisch together you first have to have an understanding of the roles of the winger in the modern game. The way I look at it, there are two main role groups of wingers – Inside Wingers and Outside Wingers.

Outside Wingers would be subdivided into two main groups, for me;

• Pace Finishers with top-end speed, acceleration, agility and engine to stay active in the wider channels and offer a live threat on transition as the Last Pass – the player you send the pass to before the break.
• Lock Down Edge Defenders with strong kicking tendencies, defensive reading, defensive positioning and a high chase work rate on both sides of the ball.

These wingers are generally smaller – anywhere from 5’8″ to 6’0″ – and do most of their work with their speed, agility and read of the game. The very best Outside Wingers will have large elements of both rolesets in their game and, while every Outside Winger is expected to be both, you’ll usually see most Outside Wingers fall more into one category than the other – usually Lock Down Edge Defenders. This is usually because having poor Lock Down Edge Defender qualities is more disqualifying at the elite end than poor Pace Finisher qualities. In short, it’s easier to get selected if you’re more of a Lock Down Edge Defender because you have to be a really good elite Pace Finisher  – something that is quite rare – to override any failings on the former. A really good example of this would be Jordan Larmour who rose to prominence on the back of strong Pace Finisher qualities in 2017 but has failed to nail down the regular starting jersey for Ireland because of questions on his qualities as a Lock Down Edge Defender.

Munster, on the other hand, have been running with two Complete Outside Wingers – equally good as Pace Finishers and Lock Down Edge Defenders – for the last three or four seasons and it broadly fits with how we’ve been playing during that time as a mostly off-ball side.

If you play without the ball quite a bit, you need your wingers to be really sharp defensively, they need to be hard workers on the chase, really strong aerially while also being comfortable kicking themselves. That’s a prerequisite on that style, as you’d expect, but if you want to be a side that goes deep into tournaments, you also need those wingers to be outstanding Pace Finishers to take advantage of smaller, tighter opportunities that crop up. Think of how many times you’ve seen Keith Earls or Andrew Conway finishing off game-winning opportunities in big games over the last few years. Edinburgh away in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals. Toulon in Thomond Park at the same stage of the tournament a year or two before that.

If you’re going to be playing off-ball during key moments of the game, you need your Outside Wingers to be “complete” like this or you’ll find you’ve got no way to effectively counter-punch the opposition. The Springboks, the best off-ball team in the world, have a similar build with Kolbe and Mapimpi as Complete Outside Wingers on either flank.

But off-ball rugby is becoming harder and harder to play under the laws as they are currently interpreted. You can understand why. In the post-covid world, World Rugby want the game to be free-flowing and high-scoring to draw crowds and create buzz. What World Rugby doesn’t want is the Lions tour of 2019 where both the Springboks and the Lions were playing off-ball rugby because, at the time in the pre-50/22 environment, it was the most efficient way to win.

Something had to change as far as World Rugby were concerned, and it has. For the most part, possession dominant teams have become more and more efficient and effective. It’s still possible to be successful playing off-ball rugby – France are a great example – but the defensive pressure and power requirements on phase play and at the set-piece that are needed in the pack to be able to play that style successfully are beyond the resources of most sides.

Even then, France don’t use two Outside Wingers and I think the Springboks will soon move away from that style also.

That brings us to the Inside Winger. I find the term “blindside winger” to be a limiting descriptor of the role. It’s another name for the #11 jersey, for me, and I like to differentiate between the three main roles that the Inside Winger fills.

They are;

• Power Wingers are big, primary ball carriers capable of running hard, straight, collision winning lines in the wide channels (or the inside tight channels) that compress defenders, win deep edge positions or finish off cluttered try-scoring opportunities.
• Layered Power Handlers are bigger, more durable wingers that are capable of moving inside the ruck to act as handling options off #9 that allow other primary creators to move to wider handling or running positions while also being strong enough to be a live carrying threat in tight collisions.
• Heavy Strike Runners are taller, quicker Inside Wingers that run a lot of the same lines as a Pace Finisher Outside Winger while also using a lot of their involvements as looped options off their wing that can hit the line anywhere inside the first ruck or deep in the second/third layer of the attack. They have to be bigger, strong and more durable to deal with the midfielders or small forwards they will often be running against.

An Inside Winger will usually be 6’2″ or taller with no upper limit on height or weight. You’ll have guys like Duhan Van Der Merwe (Power Winger), Nemani Nadolo (Power Winger), James Lowe (Power Winger/Layered Power Handler), Madosh Tambwe (Heavy Strike Runner), Robert Baloucoune (Heavy Strike Runner), and Damian Penaud (Heavy Strike Runner/Layered Power Handler) who all fit this role grouping in one form or the other.

Using an Inside Winger in your back three gives you more on-ball options as it gives your primary playmakers more ball carrying options on the blindside, as inside runners, looped threats or even as auxiliary handlers that allow a pacey, agile #10 to slide into more space.

That’s because most of these roles are, essentially, a third midfielder and this is where Munster can begin to piece together a build for Frisch, Farrell and Fekitoa.

With Fekitoa deployed as a Power Winger/Layered Power Handler in the back three, Munster can easily slot together all three players without playing anyone wildly off-role. Fekitoa is nominally an outside centre but using him as a Power Winger/Layered Power Handler hybrid will utilise all of his strengths in a system that prioritises longer sequences of possession and multiple attacking threats.

He can be a devasting inside ball option for Carbery, a player well capable of handling the ball as first receiver with a carrying/offloading threat that has to be respected and when you factor in his ability to, essentially, become a defacto outside centre in the same mould as a Virimi Vakatawa when the ball progresses back across the field with Carbery and Frisch alternating as handlers, you realise the possibilities this has. Farrell would be retained as a big-hitting outside centre that can set platforms in the wider channels and impact at the set-piece while Fekitoa essentially plays as another outside centre in that Power Winger/Layered Power Handler hybrid role.

When you factor in a pack build that will likely have small forwards that slide out to the edge spaces too, you get an idea of where you can go with this. Munster would have the power and explosivity to transition to a more complex on-ball style, while still deploying an Outside Winger on the opposite flank to, essentially, play as a second defensive positional fullback in a 12-1-2 defensive alignment outside the 22s.

Do you lose something under the high ball down Fekitoa’s wing? Perhaps, but with a build like this, you only need to cover on the defensive side of the ball because you can kick longer on the reset and only use the box kick when the opportunity arises as opposed to being a primary method of moving the chain of possession up the field.

In 2022/23, the game will be defined by who can boss possession and use possession, while still retaining a kicking game that priorities verticality. When you don’t kick to compete in the air as a primary kicking strategy, your winger selection and backline build has to change and that, for me, means selecting Inside Wingers. In Malakai Fekitoa, we might have the key to the future already on its way.