Scotland didn’t choke on Saturday.

They were choked out by an Irish defence designed specifically to attack the fundamental pillars of their attacking strategy. To my mind, there were a few key areas where Ireland had to watch out for against Scotland – unmanaged transition events and big openside plays, where they have good depth around the edges. I was pretty comfortable with how we stacked up player for player in the tight exchanges from a physical POV and that we had the backfield and edge defence agility to recover any kicks that Scotland would send over the top of our blitz.

Here’s a good example of Ringrose’s ability to read Russell’s body language and Scotland’s four flat runners early and then recover the ball from the edge of the defence.

Yes, it was obvious that Scotland didn’t have the depth outside Russell to do anything but kick here – something Ireland will have prepared for in advance – but Ringrose, Larmour and McGrath had this well covered, as they did with most of Russell’s offensive kicking in this game.

How we handled our transition defence and Scotland’s big openside plays set the tone for the manner of our eventual victory.

Openside Plays

I mentioned the danger that Scotland posed from their openside plays pre-game, especially their positional set up for them, and Ireland handled the vast majority of Scotland’s attempt to build these superbly. The two forms of play are often linked with Scotland and Ireland took a risk in giving Scotland sub-par transition opportunities – managed transitions – to hurt their overall cardio and allow us to defend proactively.

Scotland’s first big openside play opportunity came off the back of an unmanaged transition from Jordan Larmour. It was in the perfect position for Scotland to play off. The first action is something we saw consistently in these edge spaces – a heavy contest at the breakdown.

Cian Healy makes a go for the ball but gets cleaned out by Hogg and Gray. The ball is slowed by his attempted jackal and it gives Ireland a chance to build our openside defence at a good pace.

The big worry when this ball leaves the breakdown is our outside edge. Russell is in the exact position you’d want in this scenario; floating outside Gilchrist with lots of passing options to hit in the midfield.

There are two key elements to this defensive set from an Irish POV.

One – Sexton patrolling the backfield in Larmour’s absence and being ready to step up into the space between Ringrose and Aki if needed.

Two – Best trusting that Furlong will have Watson on his inside shoulder if he’s used as a carrying option by Gilchrist. If Best doesn’t spike directly into the Scottish passing lane outside Russell, then the Scottish flyhalf will have the time needed to fling a wide pass to the midfield, where Scotland have the handling/offloading to cause a linebreak.

Ireland will have known that Russell usually gets possession in these scenarios so Best will have realised the importance of pressurising the space he has to work with. Let’s look at how it plays out.

Best reads the pass from Gilchrist without sitting back on his heels or crabbing to the side and accelerates into Russell. He doesn’t have to take man and ball – I mean, it would ideal – because all he really has to do is prevent Russell from launching this ball any deeper than the first man off his shoulder, Allan Dell.

Dell isn’t even looking for a pass outside, but Ringrose tracks on his outside shoulder just in case. Scotland love width on these plays so you want to threaten the passing lane when you advance when the ball is in the air. Ringrose manages to threaten that pass but also recover to snare the carrier before he can get momentum. Look at where Dell is heading though – for that 1/3 space we spoke about pre-game.

Scotland want to launch again so do we stand off the tackle player to fill the field or attack the breakdown?

Have a look;

A strong jackal attempt from O’Mahony, who takes three forwards out of the attacking line to clean him out. Attacking the breakdown on these set-ups is vital because they draw Scottish forward runners out of the attacking structure, create breakdown transitions of our own and reduce the options that Russell has to use in the attacking line. We shut this down well.

Here’s another example where we were lucky to get away with it; again off ground conceded from a poorly managed transition. Murray kicked the ball up the field in the manner described here but we didn’t handle our transition defence as well as we could have.

The ball came to Seymour, who transferred the ball to Hogg in the middle of the field – that’s bad news. We did a great job of kicking to Hogg in the trams to avoid this kind of scenario.

Scotland did a good job of tracking Best and Stander on the chase back and right before Hogg started his cut infield, he spotted a slight isolation on Rory Best.

Hogg attacked the separation between Stander and Best to get Scotland back up to the 10m line but Scotland’s transition structure off the breakdown is really poor.

They lost Barclay, McInally and Watson to the ruck so their next phase was always going to be a setup ruck but, crucially, it moved Scotland infield to a more central ruck position where they are less dangerous.

Best challenged at the breakdown and drew two Scottish forwards to the breakdown.

If I’m Gregor Townsend I’m asking Stuart McInally if he’s needed on this ruck or would he be better staying with Barclay in the screen. I ask that because when Laidlaw went to Barclay’s side in the aftermath of this ruck, Ireland could completely bypass Barclay as a possible option.

Scotland go for an inside ball off Russell, which Henderson eats up, even with Barclay trying to latch.

Hogg gets the ball away to Laidlaw, who hits McInally. We have it covered well but Scotland have their preferred attacking launch position (around the 15m line) back again and we haven’t managed to attack the ruck position. This is a dangerous situation, even on the halfway line.

Scotland are going to go through Russell to Taylor, with three decoy blockers in advance and Watson as a possible carrying option for Russell/Taylor.

The pathway here is going to be through the backs, but Scotland have players in place to “chop” at out guys as we drift across the pitch to track the ball. We need to pressure the North/South spacing between our defensive line and that yellow line while trying to avoid the Scottish decoy blockers.

Look at Gilchrist, Dell and Watson search out our drifting defenders to create space on the edges.

In the end, Taylor’s pass is way too ambitious – he wanted Maitland on the edge rather than the smart ball to Sam Johnston. We could well have tracked across through Van Der Flier and Ringrose, but we didn’t manage this transition as well as we did elsewhere.

Managed Transitions

A managed defensive transition is where you kick possession away to a set point so you can move your defence into a positive position to stop the counter-attack and force a negative position on the opposition.

Most of Ireland’s managed transitions came from the boot of Conor Murray kicking down the tramlines to Stuart Hogg.

Here’s a good example of a managed transition with a positive outcome (retained possession).

Murray kicked to Hogg on the tramlines and then filled the space around directly in front of him with defensive players and stacked the openside with a positive defensive picture.

Here’s Scotland’s transition picture on this kick;

By kicking to Hogg in the tramlines, we remove him from centre field, where he’s got the pace, explosivity and agility to really hurt us. By kicking to him here, we get to stop him attacking back down the tramlines.

Now, when he attacks us, it’ll likely be across the field or passed (as it was in this instance) infield. Every step that Hogg takes laterally, gives us a defensive advantage because he’s moving across the field while we’re moving up the field. Every long, slow pass infield (lateral by nature) allows up to advance up the field to pressure the receiver.

When Hogg tries to run back in the direction of the kick, he gets swallowed up by Conan and Stander. Scotland, as they tend to, will always look for position around the 15m line but they’re doing so here in a negative context.

At the end of the above GIF, you can see real examples of Irish line speed from Josh Van Der Flier cutting off Scotland’s wide play and forcing their carriers into big, negative collisions. This was a good way to deter Scotland from getting the ball wide and forcing their runners into the teeth of our big defenders.

Once Scotland came infield, they started to lose one on one contests pretty comprehensively. Furlong, defending at C, batters Gilchrist around the corner of this ruck.

Scotland end up kicking the ball away on the next phase. Van Der Flier pressures Russell, who kicks the ball straight to Larmour.

This was another managed kick transition win that fulfilled two purposes – hurt the cardio of Scotland’s tight five by getting them moving, setting up positive defensive collisions and generating positive transition events off Scottish errors.