[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]hen I saw that Exeter had signed Josh Iosefa-Scott, the 6’4, 135KG tighthead prop from Waikato earlier this week, I wasn’t really all that surprised. I had Iosefa-Scott on my chart of Big Front Five Forwards Currently Unsigned To A Major European Club – that’s the literal name of the Google Sheets page, by the way, if you feel like hacking my Google drive and having a gander of it – so it’s always cool to see those guys get picked up, just like it was to see Chris Cloete show up at Munster Rugby a few years after I first spotted him.
Size matters these days, and Iosefa-Scott has a lot of it. He’s English qualified, which always helps, but Exeter themselves have gone on record that they’ve signed Iosefa-Scott with a view to who he could become, rather than the player he is right now.
“We’ve taken a good look at Josh who, whilst not being what you’d describe as a real front line player somewhere else, is someone who we feel can really bring something to the squad,” Rob Baxter told the club website.
“As people will know, we’ve had great success in the past looking at players of what you would call that Championship level and then developing them onto real quality Premiership and international players.
“As I said, we watched quite a bit of footage of him, and we liked what we saw.”
There’s a lot to like about Iosefa-Smith’s base game; the offensive and defensive physicality that comes with his 6’4″, 135KG frame being foremost amongst them. For me, the main work-ons for him would be his scrummaging at the top level (as you’d half expect with a taller prop) some of his work around the lineout, and his defensive understanding but if Exeter can shave that rough edges off as they did with Harry Williams, they’ll have a very good player who will fit in perfectly with their overall scheme.
Even if the scrummaging takes a while to come around, a guy with Iosefa-Scott’s size profile is worth sticking with. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that even if he never fully sorts out his defensive application, the only way it won’t work out all other things being equal is if he turns into a liability at the scrum as a tighthead at the level that Exeter expect.
I’d put a guy like Alex Fidow (Wellington and the Hurricanes) as a player in the same bracket in that he’s an explosive, powerful heavy ball carrier at 6’2″ and 137KG with similar rough edges at the set-piece.
My point is that their size and weight during phase play is worth sticking with, even if they never become world-class scrummagers, because of the inherent value that size and weight have in the modern game.
You can coach someone to be a better scrummager and a smarter defender but you can’t really coach someone to be a colossal 125KG+ power forward.
There’s an element of risk involved, sure, but it’s worth the investment in the contract, in the time it takes to coach a player up in the areas they fall down in and it’s worth the patience it takes to ride out the costly moments that may come at the set-piece.
It’s an easy thing to lament this kind of size and what some people feel it represents, namely a professional sport that is getting bigger and stronger every year that is best played by bigger and stronger players. Yet, even in this case, the signing by Exeter is entirely in keeping with their established role selection and I would imagine that they hope Iosefa-Scott will be a smart, cost-effective, like-for-like replacement for Tomas Francis.
Exeter use these heavy component players throughout their pack construction. If we look at their role breakdown against Leinster in the European Cup quarter-final from earlier this year, we can get a good picture of what kind of pack build they like to go for;
Loosehead #1: Ben Moon – Heavy Support Forward
Loosehead #17: Alec Hepburn – Heavy Support Forward
Hooker #2: Luke Cowan-Dickie – Ball Playing/Heavy Power Hooker
Hooker #16: Jack Yeandle – Heavy Support Hooker
Tighthead #3: Tomas Francis – Heavy Support Forward
Tighthead #18: Harry Williams – Heavy Power Forward
Lock #4: Johnny Gray – Tighthead Lock/Power Forward
Lock #5: Johnny Hill – Tighthead Lock/Power Forward
Lock #19: Sam Skinner – Loosehead Lock
Flanker #6: Dave Ewers – Tighthead Lock/Power Forward
Flanker #7: Jacques Vermeulen – Half-Lock/Power Forward
#8: Sam Simmonds – Strike Wing Forward
Flanker #20: Jannes Kirsten – Half-Lock
If Iosefa-Scott works out, he would slot right in as a Heavy Power Forward build in that Exeter front five, either starting or off the bench which, if anything, would improve the efficiency of Exeter’s forward platform in all facets of the game. Size is important to Exeter in most of their forward slots because it allows them to use Sam Simmonds as an offensive centre-piece in their overall scheme.
Where the likes of Iosefa-Scott, Harry Williams, Tomas Francis, Johnny Hill, Dave Ewers and Jacques Vermuelen are tall and heavy, Sam Simmonds is relatively small and some might even say “undersized” for the modern game as a back-row forward. Simmonds is just north of 100KG and 6’0″ tall. His role for Exeter is closer to that of a midfielder during phase play, a quick, agile carrier off the base of the scrum and a traditional hooker at the tail of a maul. Size-wise, Simmonds is closer to Bundee Aki than, say, a Marcell Coetzee or a Gavin Coombes but it works for Exeter because they stack enough size and power around Simmonds that he doesn’t need to play a role he isn’t suited for.
The role sets Exeter select elsewhere in the pack – and the size needed to fill those roles appropriately – affords them the freedom to use players like Simmonds successfully. This size dovetails in with their use of Henry Slade as a playmaking midfielder (alongside the bigger, more robust Ollie Devoto), their selection/recruitment in the back three and their overall game plan. Sam Simmonds can be the player he is at Exeter because of the role set of those around him. As the man himself said after breaking a Premiership try-scoring record against London Irish;
“As a team, we’re striving for greatness and the players do so much for me. They’re putting me in those positions and credit to them for helping me get the record.”
Essentially, by front-loading size in the pack – or specific units of the pack – it can afford you the space to play with more freedom in certain role sets and more “expansivity” as a collective unit.
This is the fundamental error inherent in the thinking that equates size with a lack of ambition. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive and I would go as far as to say that size allows you to play with more ambition in the game as it currently stands in 2021.
To illustrate this, I think it’s better to visually separate forwards from the layout that they are traditionally viewed on teamsheets or matchday graphics, which is fundamentally tied to the scrum. I have started laying out teams in this manner for my own analysis and when we lay what I think would make a pretty good Munster forward selection (starting and finishing) you can start to see the thinking behind the recruitment of a player like Jason Jenkins.
A few of the fits are a bit janky here – O’Byrne as a heavy support forward, for example – but it gives you a decent picture of how to assess forwards outside of terms like “lock” or “blindside flanker” which apply to old ideas of what a jersey number means as those relate to where a player is when a scrum happens.
Ideally, you will have more power forward build players than support forwards with whatever wide forwards you can afford to use based on your attacking scheme.
When we look at the layout of the team that played Connacht in the Rainbow Cup in mid-May after a late withdrawal from Gavin Coombes due to illness, what do we see?
First of all, way more support forward builds than power forward builds and a guy like Kleyn forced into more of a ball-carrying role than I feel best suits his skill set. He can play that role, to a degree, but I feel his best role is as a pure tighthead lock geared heavy support forward who focuses on helping offensive collisions to be won and winning defensive collisions himself. Our midfield pairing of De Allende and Goggin essentially ended up in primary ball-carrying roles due to the lack of effective ball carrying forwards and that, in turn, limited the width we could attain on multi-phase sets in combination with the weather as the game entered the last 20/30 minutes.
So if it seemed like everything Munster did against Connacht as the game progressed seemed “narrow”, it’s largely because of our ball carrying rotation from the start and off the bench. Most modern defences are good, very good, so you need that size and ball carrying dominant forwards to allow you to play with the freedom of width.
Far from limiting expansion, a player like Jenkins who will essentially come in and play like heavy ball-carrying lock with 6/7 on his back is exactly the type of recruitment that will allow Munster to continue to build our attacking plans around.
