Ireland are a lineout team. In truth, everyone is a lineout team but we are particularly reliant on this set piece as a launch point for everything that we want to do as part of our wider kicking and counter-transition strategy.
That’s not unique to Ireland. A good, efficient lineout platform acts like an ever-tightening noose around the neck of the opposition if you’re dominant and can act as a tourniquet if you’re struggling. Without a stable lineout platform, it’s incredibly difficult to win any rugby match and success or failure in that set-piece correlates a lot more with losing than “no scrum, no win”.
Travelling to New Zealand for a three-test series with the All Blacks is such a tough ask because it’s the tail end of our season but the beginning of theirs and, let’s put it this way, they’ve been poring over our lineout detail since November and finding ways to stress our flow of possession.
It’s rare enough that any team has a true implosion (sub 50%) at the elite level but if you can pull the opposition anywhere below 90%, you’ve got a good chance of hooking one of the two or three lineouts they really can’t afford to lose.
As I wrote in last week’s Green Eye;
The All Blacks will know how crucial the Irish lineout is to our success in the last year.
Leinster/Ireland’s counter-transition strategy is paired up with a hugely effective – and cohesion-dependent – lineout strike package as the core engine of Ireland’s game. When you look at the only mid-cycle coaching change that Andy Farrell has made to date – replacing Simon Easterby as the forward’s coach – I think it was primarily to do with Ireland’s relatively poor lineout work to that point.
“The lineout is important, actually” isn’t news to anyone reading this but one of the key factors to Ireland’s underperformance in the first year or so of Farrell’s tenure was below-par lineout work.
For me, anything below 95% at test level is leaving yourself exposed. A little too close for comfort win over Scotland at home in the 2020 Six Nations pre-shutdown saw our lineout run at 90% on 9 throws. Against England a few weeks later, our lineout ran at 88% on 14 throws and we ended up losing the game reasonably comprehensively. In the Autumn Nations Cup later that year, we lost to England (76% out of 13 throws) and France (82% on 14 throws). It undermined a lot of what we were trying to do and the Autumn Nations Cup loss to England felt like the game where Farrell understood that he had to make a change. Ireland’s lineout since then has been far simpler but it doesn’t need to be super complex, it just needs to retain possession and provide a launch point.
It’s important to establish this for the purpose of this article because James Ryan – our pack leader and lineout caller – had this to say about Ireland’s lineout during our loss to the All Blacks last weekend.
“Last week, I thought we struggled at times (in the lineout). I thought our winning was good at times, for our exits or when we got into their 22, but we probably struggled a little bit around the amber or the middle of the park, and they got up to compete a good few times quite well.
“So for us, it’s just making sure that our drill is as good as it can be so that we can be as good as we can be in that part of the game because we couldn’t really launch the way we wanted.
“We couldn’t properly put our best foot forward in terms of our attack and in terms of our starter plays because of the set-piece at times. That’s one that we need to fix for this week.”
Our lineout completion rate on Saturday was just 82% on 17 throws. First of all, that’s a lot of lineouts. The average number of lineouts in the last few Six Nations is, roughly, 25 per game across both sides. A rough and greasy bit of maths will tell us that you should expect to have approximately 12 lineouts for each side depending on, well, a lot of factors so with absolutely no context, 17 is quite high. New Zealand had 15 lineouts (successfully completing 78%).
Lineout numbers have been in and around that average per game since the ELVs in 2009. Pre-2009, there was an average of 31 lineouts per game so, in a move to speed the game up, the then IRB took away the territory gained from passing back into the 22 and exiting to touch (and depowered the maul, even if that was later reversed) so kicking for touch decreased, lineouts went with it and, weirdly enough, the core foundations of Munster’s game at the time evaporated with the stroke of a pen.
I’m still super salty about that.
But I digress.
When you’re only completing 82% of your lineouts against a team like the All Blacks, you’re spurning the possessions that you need to just to keep them contained, let alone start scoring the points you need to actually beat them.
Why did Ireland’s lineout go wrong? And why is there a conversation about Ireland’s lineout calling in the aftermath?
Before we get to that, we need to look at Ireland’s lineouts. Where they were, how we got there, how many guys we used and what was the outcome?
| Lineout Number | Lineout Origin | Lineout Position | Lineout Numbers | Lineout Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | All Blacks Tactical Kick | Inside Irish 22 | 5+1 | Retain |
| 2 | Irish Penalty Win | Inside All Blacks 10m | Full | Retain |
| 3 | Irish Kick Pressure | Inside All Blacks 22 | 5+1 | Irish Free Kick |
| 4 | All Blacks Exit | Inside All Blacks 10m | 5+1 | Lose |
| 5 | All Blacks Tactical Kick | Inside Irish 22 | 5+1 | Retain |
| 6 | Irish Penalty Win | All Blacks 5m | 6+1 | Retain |
| 7 | Irish Penalty Win | All Blacks 5m | 6+1 | Retain |
| 8 | Irish Penalty Win | Inside All Blacks Half | Full | Lose |
| 9 | Irish Penalty Win | Inside All Blacks 22 | 6+1 | Retain |
| 10 | All Blacks Kicking Error | Inside All Blacks 22 | 5+1 | Lose |
| 11 | All Blacks Exit | Inside All Blacks Half | 5+1 | Retain |
| 12 | All Blacks Exit | Inside Irish Half | Full | Lose |
| 13 | Irish Penalty Win | All Blacks 5m | Full + Back | Retain (first throw lost) |
| 14 | Irish Penalty Win | Inside All Blacks 10m | 5+1 | Retain |
| 15 | Irish Penalty Win | All Blacks 5m | 6+1 | Retain |
| 16 | Irish Penalty Win | All Blacks 5m | 6+1 | Retain |
| 17 | Irish Penalty Win | All Blacks 5m | 6+1 | Retain |
Just like it was in the Six Nations, our favourite lineout structure when things are going well is the 5+1 with Van Der Flier acting as the receiver behind the lineout and, sometimes, at the front of the lineout ahead of Porter in a disguised receiver position. A 5+1 with the back five build that we selected for the first test has Porter and Furlong as the two bookends with a three-man jumping core of both locks and Peter O’Mahony as our jumping core. Van Der Flier is a non-jumping receiver. He has jumped in a lineout the odd time but he mostly only lifts or acts as the “ripper” in a maul or as the pop passer in a maul feint.
So 5+1 suits that pack build down to the ground. The 6+1 is more limiting offensively but it gives you more jumping options with Doris in the line and gives you a bigger maul “punch”. Ireland tends to use the 6+1 closer to the opposition try line or when we’ve had a few wobbles or close calls on our 5+1 schemes.
When Ryan is speaking about the “amber” part of the field, he means the middle quadrant outside both 22s. The red zone would be inside our 22 and has specific lineout structures and calls to use in that context. The green zone – inside or close to the New Zealand 22 – would have specific lineout schemes and calls within those schemes designed to maximise the chance of scoring a try.
Your “amber” calls are a mix between the two states. If Green Zone is all about maximising offence and maul drive, while Red Zone is all about ball security and exit platform, Amber Zone plays are a mixture of both states.
Pre-game, you would have a lineout “menu” that you go through to use against certain opposition depending on their strengths and weaknesses. You’d have certain calls to use against a “tall” opposition or a heavy, maul dominant unit. Your lineout caller then uses those lineout calls as they see fit throughout the game in collaboration with the halfbacks.
Your calling structure would take primacy over the offensive call from the halfbacks. The #10 might call a strike play but, unless the lineout move is heavily integrated into that strike play, the lineout captain has autonomy on what lineout to call. The lineout has to retain the ball first and foremost so the lineout captain has to read the opposition’s counter-launch threat and then make a call on the structure (4+1, 4 flat, 5+1, 5 flat, 6+1, 6 flat or full lineout with extras) and then decide on the lineout scheme pre-throw.
Ireland tends to use a Walk-Up trigger as our calling structure starter.
You’ll see this when the jumping core arrives late into a lineout. At a base level, when the Walk-Up reaches the line of the props the lineout scheme goes ahead as told to the loosehead prop who, in turn, told the hooker. This is a pretty good example from late in the game.
This was a “dead” lineout in that the match was lost and the All Blacks contesting wasn’t as vigorous as if it was, say, it was a two-point game but it’s a good example of a walk-up in structure, the lineout caller reassessing based on the opposition motion and then calling an option bases on what you see.
Teams might have any number of options on any given scheme that they disguise with a code. So, say, if your general code for the first option on your schemes is something small (like a number, or the word “short”) and the code for the second option is something big (like a number over 3 or “tall”) you can control the tempo and cadence of the lineout while moving your pods to where the opposition isn’t defending.
Go back 17 minutes from the lineout above and you can see how the same lineout scheme and structure can be read “wrong”.
The exact same walkup in the same zone but with the original option used during the initial call without an adjustment.
Ryan sent Beirne up at the front in a zone guarded by Retallick and paid the price. There’s nothing wrong with the throw or the launch, really, we just threw the ball to a heavily guarded area. We adjusted on the next one but by that stage, it was too late.
One of the biggest issues in Ireland’s lineout and calling structure is that we’re a fundamentally “small” lineout team at the moment. Ryan is our tallest lock at the moment at 6’8″ but he’s not the explosive jumper he used to be a few years ago and that limits his effectiveness as the caller, in my opinion. Injuries and a good few extra KG are the main culprits there, I suspect but whenever I look at Leinster or Ireland having a bad day at the lineout, Ryan is a constant feature.
Look at these two lineouts lost more or less in the same zone using the exact same 5+1 build with the trigger going when the lineout captain hits the line.
On both occasions, Ryan isn’t at the peak of the jump when he needs to be but it’s not all on him by any means. I think, as the lineout captain, he needs to be a more varied caller himself to get the most out of our schemes. I think our lineout needs bigger, taller options to avoid getting scragged like this but our current back five selection patterns don’t really allow that. As part of a jumping trio of Beirne and O’Mahony, Ryan is the weak link from a lineout role perspective. We need him to be our strong, banker ball guy leaning towards of the front of the lineout given his current size but he can’t be that player as the caller – he pretty much has to be in the middle of the lineout. So if he isn’t as explosive a jumper as he was and we’re selecting a half-lock build player in Beirne in the second row with O’Mahony in the back row, we’re immediately unbalanced in the lineout against bigger, taller units.
With Ryan in the middle of the lineout calling, we’re prone to being slow in the air for a lot of the ball we want to maul and launch off further back. New Zealand were able to stress our chain of possession when Ryan was the focal point from the middle to the back.
We retained this, for example, but purely through luck. Barrett attacked the middle space with the intent that whatever the target, he could into the air before Ryan, who was behind Barrett.
The solution? A change in the back five. We need to select bigger and taller.
If Ryan is to remain the caller, we need to a bigger selection for our 5+1 schemes to allow more simplicity and potential for variation. Right now, any opposition side can mark Ryan and then squeeze the option because they back themselves to get up ahead of Ryan in the middle. That’s what the Bulls did, more or less, in the RDS for the URC semi-final.
Then, when we look to shore up our scheme with a 6+1 or full, our other options, we bring in Jack Conan – who’s a relief jumper at best with his own explosivity issues in the air – or Caelan Doris, which limits our hitting ability in midfield and puts more pressure on Sexton to get closer to the defensive line.
Peter O’Mahony gives us strong combo-flanker lineout options but, at 6’3″, we have to work harder to get him a clean throwing lane especially when he’s being attacked by a super-sized lock. In context, this was a mad option for Ryan to call so close to our tryline with the game still in the balance but O’Mahony made it work – just about.
Ultimately, I think we need a half-lock. Someone who can give us height and lineout dominance in the back row at 6’6″ or above while selecting more height and length in the second row. Ryan, for me, would be better off being the front and front middle banker option at this stage but that might require someone else to call the lineout. Normally, that would be Henderson but his injury issues have hampered his ability to build anything long-term in our lineout structure.
For this weekend, it’ll take a big turnaround for Ireland to shake off what the All Blacks learned about us last week. Hopefully, James Ryan can learn that too.
