Rucking gets a raw deal.
As a skill, it’s probably the second most important one you have after passing. If you’re a forward, I’d take a good rucker over a good passer if that was the only difference between the two but, you know, I’m a bit of a dinosaur that way.
A good ruck should be looked at like the key to creating all the fancy attacking stuff that gets endlessly reposted on those Rugby Boiiii Instagram pages where they hilariously tag the player involved, hoping they’ll notice them. It’s not happening lads, give it up.
I’ve looked at ruck staging before, but I found the actual technicalities of the ruck itself to be the most fascinating part of this past Saturday’s game against Fiji.
Not in a good way mind, no, most of Ireland’s attacking ruck ball was quite poorly executed but that’s always good to look at too.
The biggest issue, for me, was our lack of rucking pace and unfamiliarity with where we expected the rucks to be. That leads to a lot of turnovers against a side as physically strong as Fiji and we coughed up 6 or 7 penalties in their 22 as a result.
These are all fairly standard occurrences when you make 13 changes to a side and have new combinations at 9/10.
If I was to pick one facet of the game that kept this game close, it would be Ireland’s trouble in securing our own ruck ball.
To define what makes a good ruck, we have to first look at the components of what actually constitutes one. It’s not just one thing – a good ruck is a multi-faceted thing with a lot of moving parts.
- The carry
- The presentation
- The clean out
- The guard
- The halfback action
If any of these are off, you won’t get that dynamic ruck ball that gets you space, forward movement and time on the ball.
When we got dynamic ruck ball we opened up Fiji exactly as expected. Have a look here;
This is an excellent one-two punch into the Fijian defence and it’s all built on dynamic ruck ball. Everyone knows their role and all the roles are executed perfectly. Kearney’s presentation on ruck one is good, as is Conan and Rudduck’s power clean. That sets up Dillane for the big hit on the recycle – which he does – and you can see how all this benefits Marmion, who has lightning quick ball to work with.
No surprise that this is a Joe Schmidt Lineout Play.
When you produce a three or four phase special off lineout ball, it tends to be much easier for players to follow along the process and remember their ruck roles. They should do at least – because they are drilled on this stuff over and over again.
“Where are you on ruck three of this play?”
If you don’t know, Schmidt tends to find someone who does.
Look at this three ruck sequence. Again, it’s directly off a lineout.
Everyone knows their roles, the cleaning out is quick, precise and ensures clean ball for Marmion to spread the ball. Two phases after this GIF ends, we’d score the first try through a Carbery break and a Sweetnam finish.
You can see why Schmidt places so much emphasis on his lineout plays (and scrum plays to a lesser extent) because with enough repetition and attention to detail, you can almost predict what the landscape is going to be after ruck three or four. When you know where your cleaners are going to be, you can carry hard knowing that the guys behind you are going to clean out over the top of you and then it’s onto the next phase. It’s freeing.
Ireland’s problems against Fiji came in the loose phases and off scrum ball.
A lot of that came down to Jordi Murphy. I’m going to try hard not to single the guy out here because I quite like him as a player but I think he was up against it in this game at openside. Let’s not forget that he’s only just coming back from a rotten knee injury either – that does effect the things I’ll be looking at here.
Here’s the first example;
McCloskey targets the 10 channel for a big hit up and, as the openside, Murphy is going to want to be the over the ball on the next phase – that’s what he’s there for in sequences like this. On this play, Ireland want to bring in Botia to the 10 channel to cover Volavola against McCloskey/Farrell and then hit wide into the wide space on the openside.
To to that, they need to get a dynamic ruck off that first carry.
Murphy’s role in this GIF isn’t what I’d want from my openside. He’s there a little late, first of all, but it’s his work when he gets there is the bigger problem. Farrell has started a good clean prior to Murphy’s arrival and has the angle on Botia. Murphy needs to encourage Botia in the direction that Farrell is pushing to take him off his feet and out of the game (or win a penalty). Instead, he braces Botia against Farrell and gives him time to turnover the ball. Not great.
In fairness, Jordi would win a defensive turnover a few phases after this;
Which leans into my theory that he’s a much better defensive ruck player than he is an attacking one – and yes, there’s a big difference.
When Murphy knew his role on lineout plays, he was generally able to attack whatever was asked of him – his rucking on these plays was generally very good. It’s when the ball was in unexpected places that it exposed him.
Look at this example of a similar problem;
Spot it? Same problem as the Murphy clean out for Jack McGrath – he’s messed up his initial angle and he’s actually working against Toner in this scenario. In Almost Maul situations like this you have to go in the same direction as the weight – Farrell is leaning in the same direction as Toner is shoving so ADD to that and force Fiji to the floor. When you push in the opposite direction in this scenario, you are helping Fiji stay on their feet.
In this next example, Murphy has one specific job to do but messes up technically;
Murphy gets into position first after Marmion hits the deck but almost approaches the position like he’s a defensive player in this scenario – he’s way too narrow and wide over the ball to survive a counter shove. In this scenario as the openside, Murphy had to brace onto Marmion’s shirt, and then spread himself as wide and long as he could get away with without going off his feet -almost like he was scrummaging.
That way, he could use his core and his legs to fight against Fiji’s counter-ruck straight up the middle. He doesn’t have to hold both of their counter-ruckers off indefinitely, just enough to give Ruddock a chance to back him up.
Do that, and Ireland probably hang onto the ball. Instead we were turned over.
It wasn’t just Jordi making this error either, it must be said.
Ruck Components
Like I said earlier, a ruck isn’t just the clean out.
This break by Conan in the second half was a good chance for momentum after Fiji had equalized.
Let’s look at Dillane and Murphy’s role in the resulting Fijian penalty;
Good carry from Conan but a poor presentation. Botia is essentially another back row over the ball for Fiji so Conan’s break has put him in a vulnerable position. As a cleaning out player, this is a Kill Zone; you have to wipe out the man who’s trying to steal your brother’s ball. Neither Dillane or Murphy approach Botia with the kind of pressure I’d want in this scenario.
For a start, both are a little too far behind the break and this again highlights Murphy’s support pace as an attacking cleaner as Dillane is hindered slightly by white #14. He has to do better here – Dillane too – and the break is over.
Clean ball here and there was a try on for certain.
It would happen again a few minutes later;
This isn’t all Murphy’s fault – in fact I would be asking Devin Toner how he wasn’t making this clean initially – but it did show up his openside deficiencies from an instinct POV. I’d want my openside running where Toner is, especially when he’d know from Leinster and Ireland that Toner cleaning out a nuggety seven from close range is a recipe for disaster. From there, he’s just a little too wide to be a good support cleaner and when you see an openside trying to pull a guy off the ball from the ground, the ball is already lost.
Not aggressive enough in this instance.
Eight minutes later he’d have another shot, but the outcome was the same. After an excellent Healy break and offload to Ruddock, Ireland absolutely needed this ruck cleaned out. Murphy was the first man there;
He doesn’t get the job done. Yes, Matawulu hinders him (marks to Jordi for that subtle boot back) but in the end he’s trying to clean out Nagusa in full jackal at the top of the triangle – just imagine trying to push over a pyramid by pushing the pointy bit at the top – which is a near impossible task and just poor attacking ruck technique.
There were a lot more examples of our poor ruck work in loose phases but I think you get the point. This isn’t to single out Murphy – he just happened to be the common denominator in all the GIFs I pulled – but it goes to show the value of roles in a backrow. Remember, Murphy was filling the O’Mahony role here even though he was wearing #7. He was jumping in the lineout on both sides of the ball, mauling, carrying way less (4carries to Ruddock’s 17 and Conan’s 16) and working position on defence (less tackles) so his issues on the loose attacking ruck became all the more glaring. He did very well in the lineout, won three good defensive turnovers but the attacking ruck work wasn’t what it should have been.
But it wasn’t just him – neither Dillane, Toner, Porter, Herring or McGrath covered themselves in glory at the ruck either and, as a result, Ireland struggled to convert their dominance on the ball into points.
