Ireland’s lineout work against England was Very Not Good.

You don’t need me to tell you that if you watched the game. It was as bad a lineout performance as I’ve seen since I’ve been analysing rugby in public since 2015, to put it in context. The bare statistics are bad enough. Ireland had 14 structured lineouts and lost five of them. A deeper look at the lineouts shows that only three of our 10 “successful” structured lineouts had a positive outcome – as in, where we retained possession in a controlled fashion. We conceded three tries directly off our own throw and consistently coughed up good attacking platforms to blown lineouts.

Where did it all go wrong?

To get to that, we have to look at the basics of lineout work.

Most teams break down their lineout into three distinct target areas with subdivisions of those. You’ve got Two (the front), Four (the middle) and Six (the tail).

I’ve broken down the individual spaces inside all three launch areas because a lot of teams drill their movements based on five (or six) micro positions in those subsections. Are you taking the ball at four going backwards? Then that’s D ball. Are you taking the ball at 2 going forward? Then that’s A ball. Are you going for a dynamic long ball to the tail? That’s E ball with variations for when you’re throwing beyond your structured jumpers.

Lineout forwards are judged on a few different qualities but one of the key ones, in my opinion, is their efficiency of movement when moving from their start position to their launch/lift positions. How many steps does it take you to get from start to launch? It’s got to be as few steps as possible because if it is, you’ll likely beat the counter-launch into the air and win clean possession – that goes for lifters and jumpers.

Throwing is, obviously, a vital component of the lineout, with a number of different throwing mechanics and timing components required depending on the target. Throwing to Two needs a hard, flat throw to beat the counter-jumper. Throwing to Four C or Four D is harder, for me, than a long throw to 6E and beyond because of the shape required to get above any front counter-jumpers. You almost have to “lob” the throw to get it above the front jumper and have it land with your target 10/11 metres away.

If the hooker’s throwing mechanics are off, you’ll see the ball “wobble” in the air as opposed to a clean spiral. This can be for a few reasons – poor hand position on the release of the ball being one of the main ones – but it slows the ball down and, as a result, gives the counter-jump a chance at attacking the ball because the ball is in the air for half a second longer.

If the throw is off, you risk losing the lineout. If the lifters are off, you risk losing the lineout. If your footwork is inefficient, you risk losing the lineout. If the rhythm between hooker and target is off, you risk losing the lineout.

I haven’t even got into feints, lifting pods and timing schemes so you can appreciate how many things there are to go wrong in a lineout, especially with a set of new calls and movements. When are these most likely to go wrong? The first time they’re aired in the preseason.

Does that excuse Ireland’s lineout implosion? Absolutely not. It was an unacceptable confluence of lineout choice, throwing, movement and launching combined with excellent English counter-jumping. It was a perfect storm of shit hitting the fan under pressure if you’ll excuse the visual.

Let’s have a look at where we went wrong.

Lineout 1

Position: Halfway
Numbers: Six with VDF as the receiver
Status: Offensive
Target: 4C
Outcome: Successful take and maul

This is pretty good. It’s a nice strong lift from O’Mahony and Kleyn on Henderson and the maul build is pretty good. I think Itoje could probably have been pinged for starting his counter-maul on the wrong side but I’m not too exercised about it given the final score.

You get a good look at England’s two-pronged lineout defence in this clip. England only had two lineout jumpers (Itoje and Kruis) but they did a great job of squeezing our throws from 2B and 4D on most of our lineouts. They had two men in the air on this throw and it made targeting 4C (coming forward in Four) a tough throw for Ireland to hit but we did well. This is Best’s best throw of the day from a technical POV too, for my money.

Lineout 2

Position: Halfway
Numbers: Six with VDF as the receiver
Status: Offensive
Target: 4D
Outcome: Turnover

Our next lineout really set the tone for the rest of the game. The first thing that I notice is the quality of Best’s throw – it’s all over the place from the minute it leaves his hands. That gives Itoje every chance of competing at the tail with either Henderson or Kleyn.

Ireland’s scheme on this lineout is very heavily stacked towards the tail of the maul, with our three main jumpers lined up in a sequence.

Our likely target range is anywhere from 4C/D to 6E.

England’s tight defensive structure gives them space to attack our potential jumpers with Itoje and Kruis patrolling the middle space.

The space between O’Mahony and Stander gives Itoje a fair idea of the target.

That’s a little far for Henderson or Stander to get a lift on O’Mahony, so there’s a good chance that it’s going to be Kleyn or Henderson. With that rough calculation, Itoje can gamble on position and time his counter-jump to Best’s throw. In that context, it doesn’t matter if it’s Kleyn or Henderson – Itoje will have a chance if the throw or launch is off.

The throw is poor and I’m not sold on the quality of the launch either. It’s a poor scheme but it happens – how we reacted on the next throw was key.

Lineout 3

Position: Halfway
Numbers: Seven
Status: Offensive
Target: 4D
Outcome: Possession retained but off-plan.

We’ve changed up our structure on this lineout by pulling Van Der Flier to the front, but it’s the same basic line up as the previous throw with O’Mahony, Henderson and Kleyn at the back end of the lineout.

This is something that I’ve seen Henderson (and Ireland, to be fair) do quite a bit. In the aftermath of a blown lineout, we tend to go back to a slightly different structure but the same basic target.

We’re going for 4D and Henderson being lifted by Kleyn and O’Mahony without much in the way of deception except for Ireland being slightly closer together because of Josh Van Der Flier’s addition to the line. Itoje goes after the same position and disrupts well. Best’s throw isn’t great but Henderson’s launch pod is a bit off again.

For me, Josh Van Der Flier’s animation at the front of the lineout – with Murray in a receiver position in line with him – didn’t do enough to keep Kruis interested.

You can see Kruis disregard Van Der Flier as a target early due to Healy and Van Der Flier’s casual body positions. Does Van Der Flier look like he’s going to be jumping here?

No. Kruis doesn’t think so either, and he drops back to pressure Four with Itoje, making for a congested throwing lane for Best to aim into.

Lineout 5

Position: Just outside English 10m line
Numbers: Six in the line with VDF as the receiver
Status: Offensive
Target: 6E
Outcome: Turnover.

This was one of the newer schemes that we broke out for this game. Again, England counter-attacked with two counter-jumpers, but a lot of our work looked sloppy to me on this particular one.

Without knowing how they drilled this in training, Healy looks a little slow to respond to O’Mahony’s run to the tail. He can’t be up O’Mahony’s ass on this route or he won’t have space to step into the lift but he looks a little late to the launch to my eye. Itoje and O’Mahony get into the air at the same time – albeit with Itoje in front of O’Mahony, which is salvageable from an Irish perspective- but the throw isn’t where it needs to be, in my opinion.

O’Mahony is straining to reach forward to take the throw, which isn’t what you want on any launch. You can get a better look at the ball falling short on this clip.

It’s a metre or so away from where it needs to be.

Henderson’s feinting to draw Itoje from the tail isn’t what it needs to be either. His initial action to “lock” Itoje into marking him was decent but from there, he just doesn’t sell Itoje that he’s the target.

He’s not even looking at Best so it’s hard to take his launch pod seriously and Itoje disregards him pretty quickly.

Lineout 6

Position: 9m from our try line
Numbers: Five in the line with VDF as the receiver
Status: Defensive
Target: 6E
Outcome: Turnover. Try conceded on the next sequence.

At this stage, the Irish lineout was in disarray, as you’d expect. Our calls seemed to be extremely ambitions – always looking for the back half of the lineout – but you’d expect that. There’s not much point in throwing bailout schemes in the first serious game of the preseason but the further the ball has to travel, the more there is to go wrong.

As we’ve seen, Ireland have a tendency to repeat elements of a previously blown throw so we went for a variation of our fifth lineout on this defensive set up. Do I think we run this scheme in the same positional situation against Scotland a few weeks from now?

Not a chance.

But if we do, we’ll need much better feinting.

Neither Kleyn or Henderson did a good job of selling any of the feint positions of O’Mahony along the way here.

That frees up Kruis to deduce, once Ireland had rotated through the feints, the only option left was the tail and he got into the air before Henderson.

Watch Van Der Flier at receiver here too. He’s not selling any of these feints and it helps Kruis’ lifting pod settle on the tail. That helped England steal this lineout cleanly and build a platform that would help them extend their lead beyond two scores.

Ireland would go on to concede 21 points directly from possession lost on our own lineout in key defensive positions. It’s very hard to win any game – even a preseason friendly – with that kind of unreliable platform.

Without a lineout, there’s no launching point to get your carriers into the game the way you want, especially when we only had three scrum positions to work with.

The issues we saw here were so wide-ranging that there’s no easy fix. Everything from the calling to the throwing, to the animation in lateral movement, to the launch timing wasn’t what it needed to be.

It’ll need a big week to rebuild confidence and turn the set-piece around.