[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]I[/su_dropcap] think that’s fair to say that your flyhalf is usually your best player but not always your best tackler. As with everything, there are exceptions to the rule – Owen Farrell and Johnny Sexton are two flyhalves that are well capable of putting a shot on any player, forward or back – but I think it’s fair to say that most flyhalves will be competent front up tacklers at best.
A flyhalf’s capability to take contact is never more exposed than when they are defending the set-piece in what would be described as their “traditional” positions. On the lineout, this traditional position would be described as the first defender outside the last forward. Here’s a pretty good example of how they’ll look once the ball has progressed from the opposition lineout.
This looks pretty solid but everything that the black team are doing in this lineout scheme is designed to create an isolation for Black #8 on Red #10.
Black #9/#11/#10 are all interesting the tail forward defenders while Black #12’s line off #10 is holding Red #12. If this scheme holds, the Black team will get what they want, which is a dominant collision on Red #10 by Black #8. This can create the most dangerous linebreak of all – a central one – but even if the #10 makes the stop, that contact will rough him up and help to make him less effective as the game goes on.
Even relatively big flyhalves like Johnny Sexton – 6’2″ and 90kg – and Owen Farrell – 6’2″ and 96kg – will be giving up a lot of weight and power when they take contact from forwards in these lineout situations. What if your flyhalf is smaller? What if you’ve got Richie Mo’unga – 5’9″ and 88kg – standing in the #10 channel or someone like Curwin Bosch, who’s 5’11” and 83kg? Do you expose them to bigger, heavier and stronger forwards and midfielders at the lineout so they can take the kind of punishment that makes them less effective attacking options?
In the above image, the weak spot in the chain is almost always your flyhalf. They are usually shorter, lighter and physically weaker than the player they are tackling in these lineout situations so why expose them to that? You wouldn’t have your flyhalf defending a pod of forwards off a ruck if you could possibly avoid it so why would you scheme your flyhalf to take contact off the opposition’s biggest hitters off the lineout in the most gainline critical area of the pitch?
More and more coaches are starting to come to the realisation that you don’t need to expose your best attacking player to defensive collisions that they aren’t suited for.
So what do you do? A lot of sides are now seeing a real benefit in moving their flyhalf to the #13 channel.
This allows the defence to go really strong in the middle space at the tail of the lineout because it’s loaded with athletic, powerful defenders while the #10 becomes a wide or second phase defender.
When you’re defending the lineout, you want your free forwards that aren’t included in the lineout – let’s say your openside flanker – and your tail gunners to “crack the whip” and fill the space along the line of the lineout.
What Does Crack The Whip Mean?
All attacking and defending players that aren’t involved in the lineout must be 10m back from where the lineout is taking place. The minute that ball comes away from the lineout, your extra forwards and the tail defenders have to link up with the backs to create a “seal” at the back of the lineout to meet the potential crash ball over the gainline.
When it’s done right, it should look like a whip cracking from a curled state to a flat, aggressive line – CRACK. When you don’t need to cover the flyhalf, you can be more aggressive with your press and dominate the collision point. The Sharks are incredibly good at “cracking the whip”.
Look at how they get their shape together on the #10 channel.
That’s a dominant stop. Curwin Bosch, their mercurial flyhalf, can be seen running pressing lines at #13 on the first and second phase, far away from the big central collisions.
When the Stormers line up the first phase off the lineout, they’re met by Du Toit (who’s really closed the space from the tail of the lineout), Van Vuuren and Venter, with the 6’4″ André Esterhuizen and Lukhanyo Am closing the door alongside them.
No gainline for the Stormers here and they kick on the next phase.
You can get a real look at the principles of their defensive lineout “whip” here;
Du Toit (#3) gets off the line, Van Vuuren (#2) gets across the space, while Venter (#6), Esterhuizen (#12) and Am (#13) pressure the ball. Bosch can be seen tailing Am’s pressure lines and takes a lot of his cues from Am’s intelligent positioning.
This is the basic principle.
Of course, if you pack the #10 channel, the opposition will react and that’s when the intelligence of your midfield defence becomes even more important. I was alerted to the Sharks’ defensive work by Katleho Lynch – an excellent defence coach – and what he says in that tweet is 100% true. They are connected, they work hard and they shut down space.
Look at that whip crack. Mapimpi makes an excellent read at the tail of the whip and gets the stop on the ball but look at Lukhanyo Am’s tracking and reactions as the ball moves across the line.
He reads the pass into the second layer and adjusts from a stopping position on one player to tracking another inside a second.
Watch Bosch (white #10) bouncing out towards the wing in the aftermath of Mapimpi’s tackle.
Van Vuuren and Venter have chased the ball onto the openside and make the stop on the next phase with Esterhuizen pillaring up on the ruck.
Bosch’s defensive interactions are kept to a bare minimum and when he is called on to act, it’s as a second man in a tackle or as a scragger – someone who presses and slows an attacker for someone else to make the stop.
Bosch’s role in this system is to get width off the ruck as the attacking side progresses across the field. He’s almost defending like a 13.5 – he’s following Am’s cues and the winger reads Bosch’s progress. This is a good example; watch Bosch mirror Am’s defensive approach on this lineout press.
Bosch gets his hands on the ball carrier and does just about enough to slow the man until others can bring him down. At this point, the Highlanders worked out that carrying into the #10/#12 channel against the Sharks is a mugs game unless you have real size and power so their lineout schemes naturally drifted wider. Even on this contact point, Bosch was filing back out to a wide position for the next phase.
When you have a smaller, lighter player you want them defending in space where they can approach runners from lateral positions where they can more easily snag and lasso a leg for a good scrag or a stop.
A big issue with this style of lineout defence is the two/three-phase lineout scheme that targets the flyhalf’s preferred route of always finding width.
Have a look at this one;
Thomas Du Toit (Black #3) is quick off the tail of the lineout but Van Vuuren (Black #2) and Venter (Black #6) crack the whip excellently and earn another dominant collision on the gain line. Esterhuizen and Am bounce out to the open side to allow Bosch to cycle out towards the wing.
But this isn’t the end of it. On the next phase, the Stormers get a good second phase carry from Kitschoff that chops out Esterhuizen. Watch what happens when Bosch does what is natural and files out wide;
The Sharks run out of numbers and the Stormers have managed to Augustus one on one with Bosch, with predictable results.
You can see it here quite clearly;
This is the one great weakness of stacking a weaker defender at 13.5 on a lineout. If the play progresses across the field with enough pace, they can be exposed to the exact scenarios we wanted to avoid.
During the 2019 World Cup, the All Blacks had Richie Mo’unga defending at #13 for much of the tournament. You can watch him here against Ireland in the quarter-final.
The speed of the ball on Henderson’s carry was the killer here but you can see how it made Mo’unga’s life a little easier. He was able to read potential passes into the second layer as the ball went wide and he always had Goodhue to guide his defensive lines.
I think Schmidt saw this tendency and went after it, but Ireland’s inability to generate quick ball on the second phase prevented the kind of access we’d need to hurt Mo’unga. Eddie Jones, however, had more tools at his disposal.
In an interview with Stuff.co.nz, Richie Mo’unga outlined how he was caught out in the opening minutes of the World Cup semi-final.
“I’d been defending at centre the whole World Cup, only off lineouts, and the week before against Ireland had some good success coming out and reading plays out the back and bringing a bit of line speed,” Mo’unga told the podcast.
“I think it was the first lineout that England had, and they had hit around midfield, around halfway and their first phase ended up there.
“And I remember looking and Ford was there, and they had Watson there, and I saw Daly, and I knew they were going to run a second [layer] play.
“And I knew this was the picture I’d seen before, they’d run this many times before.”
“I went to read out the back and … instead of them throwing deep for the second man play they threw the flush ball straight across my face.”
You can see Mo’unga step off just a fraction from where he needed to be, and that gave Daly the gap that he would need to create a linebreak that would ultimately lead to England’s first try.
Mo’unga’s positioning on the edge was probably spot on if, as he expected, England went to the second layer runner (option 1).
But when they went for Option 2 – the pass to Daly – Mo’unga could probably have stopped the break if he’d have been slightly more advanced on his line. Instead, Daly would always have a metre of space to work with as he moved across the field.
Small margins, but they always are when it comes to the intricacies of top-level rugby. I think it’s only a matter of time before we see a lot more teams moving their #10s out of the #10 channel on lineout schemes but, as with everything else, there are rewards and risks when you come up against clever attack coaches and elite players.
