Keeping the ball alive, and winning as a result, should force rugby people in Ireland to reframe how we implement our collective strategy.
Before the gap widens any further.
Proof is in the Champions Cup quarter-finals: five French teams, two English and Leinster.
One of our own is at the centre of this mini-revolution in the sport. Ronan O’Gara works off the philosophy of how he would want to play if he was young enough to do so. O’Gara’s methodology was embedded during his time at the Canterbury Crusaders. It helps that he has Tawera Kerr-Barlow and Victor Vito – All Blacks, naturally – to shape the offence at La Rochelle.
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La Rochelle players are able to make decisions under pressure. It also helps that they have ginormous forwards like Will Skelton but every one of them remains true to the idea of keeping the ball in play as much as possible.
In any attacking moment a player has three options: kick, pass, run. How you are programmed to play or how you are set up by the coach will have a profound impact on your instinctive reaction just before you get clobbered.
Until Ireland’s victory over England put a nice gloss on the Six Nations, the team was dangling between two systems; the multi-phase structured approach and what is being explained as “heads up” footy.
The coach’s role has evolved from providing players with absolute clarity of their role to helping them see what is in front of them, so they can properly consider the pass and run options and with experience make the right call more often than not.
Ireland became unbelievably successful by removing the responsibility of making a decision. The kick to compete idea was embedded. It was automatic. The box kick does not yield that sort of profit anymore. So why keep doing it?
To my mind, coaching is even more important if you want to perform like La Rochelle or Exeter or Toulouse. The one crucial element to heads-up rugby is tempo.
Leinster, being brutally honest about it, at the moment, only know how to wipe out inferior opposition
I imagine Rog peppering his sessions with that word because what is drilled into players eventually becomes apparent on the field.
Equally, an insatiable desire to outwork the other team delivered a wildly entertaining last 16 of the Champions Cup. See Toulouse’s end game against Munster and Exeter rolling up their sleeves after going 14-0 down to Lyon.
Inferior opposition
I never felt either club would be stopped. The calmness and control they exerted under the stress of elimination was the mark of greatness.
Leinster are either undercooked or nicely rested for their tilt at the reigning English and European champions. We’ll know which it is at around 7.45pm Saturday night.
The sane, reasonable person will look at Leinster’s opponents and predict the same result as the previous two campaigns. Exeter are a markedly different club to Saracens but that turbo-charged approach is there in spades.
But they can beat you on whatever terms you offer them.
Leinster, being brutally honest about it, at the moment, only know how to wipe out inferior opposition. When asked about preparations for Toulon last week, Leo Cullen mentioned the Montpellier game late last year. Not Munster nor Ulster but a club currently 11 in the Top 14 with seven wins from 13 matches.
Leinster travel to Exeter’s patch without a tune-up. Not that I was certain Toulon and Eben Etzebeth were a mere stepping stone. I actually thought they might win.
The sane, reasonable person watching Exeter’s response after conceding two early tries against Lyon, before tying the result in a neat bow before half-time, will know that Rob Baxter’s team are relentless.
They resisted an all-out power game, using their maul as a dummy ploy to ignite a wide attack and they kept pulverising the French defence until the big men wilted. The box kick was part of a complement of options to relieve territorial stress, not the primary weapon.
The coaching on display – like those attacks that are called and executed during a multi-phase sequence – is what separates them from other English clubs. It could be the reason why an understrength Leinster come up short.
Up to 2018 Ireland were hugely successful around retention of possession due to highly efficient rucking strategy. Exeter is the evolved version of this in that they move the very same quick ruck ball through the hands. Or they stampede over the gainline with Luke Cowan-Dickie, Dave Ewers, Jonny Hill and Sam Simmonds.
Their variety of first receivers is what rugby has become in 2021 (well, for the successful teams). Henry Slade has been one of my favourite players since I retired back in 2015. Even then I wanted England to shape their midfield around him. But he is one of several creative options.
Dedicated drills
The way they play demands an enormous work rate by players off the ball and all the fundamental skills on it. The third person arriving at a ruck is the scrumhalf. The way they play requires months, years even of dedicated drills.
I expect a throwback to Hagler versus Hearns in the opening exchanges at Sandy Park. The trick is to stay in the fight because Exeter will score tries.
What we will not witness is Simmonds, the best backrow in the Premiership, and Hill, England’s giant lock, going toe to toe with Caelan Doris and James Ryan. The Lions coach is also being denied a straight battle between Slade and Garry Ringrose.
What a shame. Not just for Warren Gatland but possibly for Leinster’s chance of progressing.
Exeter are motivated by unfinished business
Considering Scott Penny, Will Connors, Dan Leavy and Max Deegan are also injured, it will be astonishing to see Leinster name an international backrow in Jack Conan, Josh van der Flier and Rhys Ruddock.
To reach the semi-final without Ryan and Ringrose on the field would be an incredible achievement. One to stand beside all they have done under Leo Cullen but Conan, Robbie Henshaw and Ryan Baird will need to bring that extra-terrestrial form because Exeter are motivated by unfinished business.
In December 2017 Leinster broke them with the sturdiest defensive system anyone had seen for years. It was supposed to be their coming out party as a European force. Instead, it showcased what Stuart Lancaster was building in Dublin. A week later Leinster kept Exeter scoreless in the second half to turn 9-17 into a 22-17 victory.
That was then. Defence remains essential but, for me, attack wins this bout. That is where the game currently exists.
La Rochelle winning in Gloucester provides as good an example as Toulouse in Limerick when it comes to keeping the ball alive. We could point to some spectacular offloading after contact but, for me, it was the measured decision-making by players with ball in hand that proved the difference.
A lot of that is down to coaching. Working day in, day out to empower players to perform at pace. Rapid, mind-numbing pace.
Last weekend we saw two teams: those who box kicked to attack and those who used it as the last resort to manage a situation. Now we cannot expect Munster to all of a sudden adopt a high-tempo approach but Leinster are primed to do it, and this is their opportunity to show that last season’s defeat to Saracens – when they were manhandled to a shocking degree – was an aberration.
The game of the season is coming.
A journeyman
That Munster’s knee-jerk reaction to losing CJ Stander is to sign Springbok lock Jason Jenkins should worry anyone who cares about the game in Ireland.
The sight of three or four South Africans in the Munster pack next season is an unnecessary slap in the face for Thomas Ahern and Fineen Wycherley. It tells them they are not considered good enough.
There is no other way around this.
If it is all about winning – and I get that; my Leinster team kept Johnny Sexton benched until he was 24 because we had Felipe Contepomi – but why not go for broke and sign Pieter Steph du Toit? The news that Jenkins’ signing was permitted over Du Toit, for half the price, means that winning is not the ultimate priority, and neither is development of players unearthed in Waterford and Bantry.
No thanks, says Munster, we want a journeyman Blue Bull currently playing in Japan. This big, athletic lock is being dressed up as backrow cover while Ahern is supposed to be the future of the province alongside Gavin Coombes and Craig Casey.
Maybe this is the last South African to be signed but I suspect Munster are only getting started. So long as they are allowed to keep doing it.
