I remember a few months back when Eddie Jones – that man again – caused a tonne of consternation by selecting Manu Tuilagi on the wing against Australia. Why would you select someone who has played most of his rugby as a midfielder on the wing? It genuinely flummoxed a lot of fans and pundits alike. Number Orthodoxy is a hell of a drug to kick, I’ll tell you that. Tuilagi went on to have a good game against Australia and, for the most part, played really similar to how you would expect to see him if he was selected in the midfield. In truth, it doesn’t really matter what number he was wearing. Manu Tuilagi would still be Manu Tuilagi.
It’s such a powerful concept that we end up looking at players through the lens of whether “they can do a job” in a certain backfield position and that thinking is just all wrong, in my opinion. If you have the power and dynamism to play in the midfield, the exact same qualities will work equally well one slot further out. It’s often said that defending at #13 is the hardest place to do so, but I think you could just as easily say the same thing for the wing in the 50/22 era. I think the overlap between defending at outside centre and on the wing, certainly when it comes to defending off the set-piece, is quite significant. If we look at the recent Six Nations, seven of the top 20 players who have missed the most tackles are wingers or outside centres. Names like Darcy Graham, Elliot Daly, Juan Ignacio Brex, Nick Tompkins, Kyle Steyn and Garry Ringrose are all who I would expect to see on this list because to defend edge spaces is, for the most part, to end up defending acres of space with a big numbers disadvantage at some point during a game.
When you are engaging in close range collisions, it is way, way harder to miss tackles because the tackles come to you, for the most part. In the edge spaces, every footstep and heartbeat of time counts so it’s way harder to end up slipping and sliding off tackles or being bypassed so that you aren’t even in a position to even attempt one.
Those missed tackles don’t make them poor defenders, however. Personally, in the modern game, the idea of an edge back – outside centre/winger – being a lockdown defender is of secondary value. It’s something that is nice to have, rather than being a deciding factor if you’re playing a high-possession game, as everyone will be attempting to play in the next two or three seasons. Off-ball teams need lockdown defenders to make that general strategy work but on-ball teams must have different priorities.
They need to be competent defenders in these spaces, of course, but if I was running a high possession game and you put two edge players in front of me, one – let’s call him Paddy Murphy – with elite, lockdown edge defence and average attacking output and one – let’s call him Johnny Madden – with just good attacking output and average defence, I’d be picking Johnny Madden every single time.
I’d take a missed tackle or a badly lost collision every other game if it meant better offensive output. But what is that offensive output? When it comes to the edge attacker, everything an outside centre is expected to do is equally expected of a winger and vice versa. If you look at the number of players who are now equally at home in the back three or in midfield – most notably Damian Penaud, Gael Fickou, Semi Radradra, Reiko Ioane, Virimi Vakatawa just to name a few – you can see a few trends developing when it comes to a size profile.
All of these players are 6’2″+ and all of them are listed in and around 100kg. So we need these players to be comfortable carrying the ball and forcing physical compressions – an inside compression as opposed to an outside compression – but we also need them to have the pace and handling ability to be able to unlock the space outside them with a top quality short and mid-range passing game.
That’s the top line game of the Edge Runner midfielder but what is usually not present in these players is the kind of breakdown support work that marks out a guy like Garry Ringrose and others as top quality operators. This is because you want your Edge Runner to be the one that needs to be supported at the ruck or giving the last pass before a try. You don’t sign a guy like Semi Radradra, for example, to have him hitting rucks as over 25% of his involvements.
Some of Gary Ringrose’s best work during the last 12 months from an Irish POV has been the blending of his role to be less of an offensive centre-piece in favour of a more subtle support role as a bit of a playmaker, a bit of a ruck support player and with some good attacking moments – usually involving his pace and elusiveness – around those key tenets of his game.
An Edge Runner will have the size and power to commit defenders inside, the pace and agility to beat them outside and the short and mid-range passing game – offloading and making sharp passes inside the 15m tramline – to open up a killer blow for a Pace Finisher or scoring themselves.
That brings us to Shane Daly.
Munster’s Shane Daly has long been spoken about as an option at outside centre but, despite this, he’s played the vast majority of his rugby in the back three – either at full back (28% of his starts) or on the left wing (68% of his starts).
Could he be a success at outside centre for Munster? What’s stopping him? Well, I think he’s got the raw materials to be a really good Edge Runner there. I’ve liked what I’ve seen from him as a short range passer – offloading, essentially – but I’ve yet to see too much of his mid-range game. He’s developed a really good kicking game as part of his skillset over the last few seasons as a fullback and winger and that’s always a good weapon to have in your back pocket.
Defensively, I wouldn’t have too many concerns on him relative to anyone else in the position but what would concern me would be his weight. He’s 6’3″ – which is right in line for the profile we’re talking about – but he’s listed at 92KG fairly consistently across the IRFU and Munster Rugby website so we can assume that he’s in and around that, more or less.
I think for Daly to be a consistent option as an Edge Runner or even to get back into Ireland consideration as a winger, he needs to move as close to 100KG as he can without (a) losing the pace he has now or (b) increasing his risk of soft tissue injury, which often comes from adding extra KG onto your frame. The same would be equally true of Liam Coombes, who has played most of his limited minutes this season for Munster in midfield.
I know it seems like my solution to everything is “more size” but in some players case I think it would play against them; Conway, Earls, Nash, Campbell, Haley, Carbery, for example but for a guy like Daly, I think he has the frame for it and it would immediately bump up an area of his game that I think needs a bit of work – his carrying and direct running.
Too often this season I’ve seen Daly hunting for the outside break with a shuffle step that sees him getting scragged and stopped more often than not. He’s backing his pace and foot speed to sit down defenders to effect the break he wants but I think an extra few KGs would be enough to make that threat before he ever touches the ball, as long as those KGs don’t take away too much of his lateral movement, pace and elusivity.
The closer he can get to that 100KG mark, I think the more effective he will be either as a winger, a centre or both. Daly can be an Edge Runner that adds real value to Munster and Ireland in the next few seasons.
