[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]W[/su_dropcap]hat does an inside centre do? What does a second-five do? What does a second receiver do? How are they different? Are they different? The short and slightly obnoxious answer is, “it’s complicated”. The slightly longer and vaguely less irritating answer is “whatever your attacking scheme dictates they do”.

If you want your “inside centre” to be a constant crash ball and short-range pass option – think Stuart McCloskey or Sonny Bill Williams – then that player has to be suited to executing that role. That doesn’t mean they have to be a 6’4″ monster – being a 5’7″ monster, like Ngani Laumape, would do too – but they have to be able to do the basics of their role, like getting over the gainline consistently, committing defenders to a static position and having an excellent short-range passing game out of the tackle or right before contact.

You would also look at a “second-five” in the same terms of role fulfilment. You wouldn’t expect someone like Romain Ntamack when he plays at #12 for Toulouse, for example, to play the same way as Ma’a Nonu or Brad Barrit do in the same shirt. You’d probably expect Ntamack to play pretty much like you would expect him to play at #10, right?

In my mind, the qualities needed in that second five-position are almost identical to that of the #10 with, ideally, a bit more defensive robustness in the primary defensive line and at the set-piece coupled with a bit more freedom/ability to attack the line based on what the player sees phase to phase.

For me, the perfect visualisation of that “second-five” role is probably Owen Farrell in his role for England. He’s got the passing and kicking range of a #10 but also the physical qualities to be an effective ball carrier when he wants to vary his output and make an impact in defence. I’m also convinced that Handre Pollard would be a world-class operator as a second-five for pretty much the exact same reasons if he were to be deployed there regularly.

When I’m assessing players for this position, I like to use “circle theory”. My “circle theory” is based on the concept that you can build an effective offensive midfield trio (10/12/13) by representing a player’s passing and carrying ability as different diameters on a circle.

The better a passer you are, the wider the circle. The more dangerous a carrier you are, the longer the circle. This doesn’t have to be raw power, it can also reflect your footwork, acceleration and footwork to beat players and get over the gainline.

A well balanced #12 – someone about as good as carrying as he is at passing – would have a circle that looks like this.

A Henry Chavancy, to give you a picture of a player who might fit this kind of balanced skillset. 

Now, to up the complexity a bit, if we divide the pitch from posts to posts into four quarter-spaces, we can see the importance of being able to cover the pitch effectively with the lateral and forward radiuses of your attack. Your forwards and their role set plays a key part in this attacking construction but we’ll stick with the backs for now. 

Here’s a layout with a facilitator at #10, a well balanced inside centre, a big hitter at #13, a playmaking #15 and a power winger at #11.

For ease of visualisation, I’ve left out the other winger (who I’d be looping around in this instance) and every single forward just to give a rough idea of the real estate that a player has to work with and I’ve set this from a wide ruck position to make it easier to read left to right.

Why is filling the quarters important?

Because each quarter is an area of theoretical defence – that is to say, each zone has to have effective defenders in line with where the ball is capable of going in any one sequence of passes.

If we removed all the forwards (shudder) and just had backs vs backs, the ability to bridge these quarters to get the ball in the areas where it would do the most damage – the furthest distance laterally from the previous ruck – so the most effective attacking unit will be the one that can sell threats in every quarter of the field.

You can see this quarter filling in all the great teams.

If I were to layout Leinster’s Heineken Cup-winning team from 2017/18, for example, that featured an outside backline of 10. Sexton, 11. Nacewa, 12. Henshaw, 13. Ringrose, 14. Larmour, 15. Kearney, in this theory, it’d look like below.

Look at Ringrose’s wider passing radius and how it blends in with Leinster’s overall coverage. Kearney might not have been at the peak of his offensive powers at that point but he had the size and physical impact to show up as an offensive threat around Ringrose and Nacewa. Ringrose, in particular, had a wide passing range and even though he was the outside centre, he could often be seen rotating in as a primary handler. Nacewa’s lack of top-end pace for a winger wasn’t really an issue for Leinster as he acted almost like an auxiliary midfielder for them at times with his tough ball carrying and wide passing range.

So what’s the benefit of a “second five”? In theory, a second-five in tune with their role will act as a bridge between the Close/Middle Quarters and the Strike/Run Quarters at a basic level in an overall scheme that aims to play with a certain kind of width. That doesn’t mean you need to play with a second-five to get width – a world-class hitter at #12 allows you to play narrow or with width depending on the demands of the phase – but if you want effective width and tempo most of the time, you would use a second five style #12.

In this layout, I’ve added a Big Hitter #13 outside a Second Five #12 with strike running wings and a fullback.

The Second Five’s importance is laid out pretty starkly here. They have to be effective carriers, yes, but their main selling point is their relationship with their #10 and their ability to stitch the play between the central setups and the wider striker runners.

When we move the quarters around – they are ruck position-specific – we can see the benefit of having two wide radius pass options. In this play, we’ve split our receivers and the opposition have to recognize that there are viable wider threats that have to be accounted for while

The interplay between the #10 and the Second Five is the most important part of the position. They have to play into each other and can’t step on each other’s lines. One really good example of this relationship was James O’Connor and Matt Toomua’s relationship for the Wallabies at 10/12 last year.

Both are good, pacey steppers who can challenge the gainline and both are also excellent decision-makers. Watch the way they cover each other’s attacks phase for phase.

When O’Connor is out of position after an attack, Toomua is exactly where he needs to be to stitch the next phase together. They start the set-piece next to each other but they cycle between making attacking plays, covering for each other off #9, drifting behind screens, sliding the ball wider when needed and linking up themselves when the phase cycles around and they’re both alive on the play.

Australia can hit off #9 to move around the ruck position while keeping multiple passing, running and kicking options open.

Toomua can play off O’Connor, O’Connor can play off Toomua – they are splitting the receiver roles in open play because both players know what they should be doing on almost every phase.

One of the biggest actions each player has – and Toomua in particular – is a strong dart step before contact that takes him right up to the gainline to commit a defender. This action stands up the outside defence too because they have to worry about the agility of Toomua’s break  – he’s not going to run over most guys but he probably can step and offload around them – which creates a passive area for Toomua to find a heavy-hitting forward or give him real estate to pass the ball back into.

On the first example, you can see Toomua using that dart step and the outside pinch of Paisami to find O’Connor running a tight screen with a pocket runner.

On the second example, you see Toomua waiting until the last possible moment to feed the heavy runner before piling in to support the ruck. That action alone creates a surge ball situation where Australia can play through other players and it leads to a try, despite the scrappy ending to the video.

If you look at O’Connor and Toomua in this game – the 16-16 draw in Bledisloe I from October 2020 – they both passed more times than they attacked the line.

#12 Matt Toomua – 18 passes, 14 carries
#10 James O’Connor – 25 passes, 15 carries

That balance is crucial for a backline system that runs with a second-five style player at #12. If Australia chose to deploy Matt Toomua as a crash ball operator, his passing radius would decrease but it wouldn’t make his ball-carrying any better. If anything, without an effective passing threat, it would get worse and decrease the team’s attacking radius as a result.

A crash ball second-five doesn’t work because it decreases the penetration ability of his #10 too. Why? Well, if the #12 has 20 possessions and carries half of those without setting a pattern of won collisions, the #10 can’t roam into the second layer too often or commit to varying his game with breaks because he doesn’t know the pattern of the other handler.

Is he buried in a ruck or is he stacked in a wider position after his last carry?

If a team is to be successful phase for phase, the opposition has to wonder about the pattern – are they off #9 or #10 – and worry about their ability to transport the ball to the wider, less defended areas while also selling effective physical threats in every quarter along the way.

Essentially, if these three floating defenders in the middle quarter of a big openside sequence do not have to worry too much about the carrying threat of the second five – because he has shown that he carries more than he passes and when he carries, he can mostly be stopped by one covering defender without too much issue most of the time – they can migrate into the Strike and Run Quarters with less hesitation and break the chain of possession to the strike runners.

This often translates to situations where;

• The wingers and midfield have fewer offensive touches in phase play in their preferred quarters.
• Your hitter midfielder ends up taking static ball as a crash ball runner off #9 in the middle quarters.
• Your #10 ends up with a wildly unbalanced possession

A top-end second five will stitch plays together through effective use of cascading actions. If he has shown that he is a varied passer – in both the short, medium and long-range spaces – he opens up space for his own darts at the line if he has shown that he cannot be easily defended regardless of what he does.

In the below moment, Toomua had already shown the All Blacks that he could effectively utilise three radiating options here. He can dart at the space on the gainline himself, he can hit Tupou on the short ball or he can screen the ball back to O’Connor, who can either (a) carry the ball himself or (b) release the ball to two other runners.

So Toomua’s cascading decisions before this point have shown the All Blacks that there are five options to worry about in the remaining two lateral quarters of the field because Australia had shown that it was incredibly likely.

If the All Blacks have to worry about all of the options, then every one of those options becomes more viable. If Toomua had shown that he would carry more often than not in this circumstance, he could be easily defended by the defender closer to him so the outside defenders could be more aggressive in their line speed (to lessen the impact of Tupou’s carry) and their drift across to cover the space could be done with more numbers to make any pass into the screen more complex.

The second-five cannot be a crash ball option more often than not because if he is, that decision tree closes off options for the rest of the attacking system.