Murray Kinsella reports from Edinburgh
THE CATALOGUE OF Joe Schmidt specials continues to grow and the latest one was a beauty.
“A perfect example of one of Joe’s set-piece moves,” is how Ireland centre Chris Farrell termed Jacob Stockdale’s try in Edinburgh.
Source: Guinness Six Nations/YouTube
Striking from a left-hand-side lineout in the first half of their Six Nations win over Scotland, Ireland scored on second phase through prolific left wing Stockdale.
The power play, while seeming relatively simple upon first viewing, had many layers to it.
“We haven’t used it before,” said Schmidt post-match in Edinburgh, but moves that Ireland have used before played into the success of this one.
Ireland start with a five-man lineout on the left, just inside the Scotland half.
As we can see below, scrum-half Conor Murray [circled] starts at the front of the lineout, while openside flanker Sean O’Brien is just out of shot filling the ‘receiver’ role that a scrum-half often takes.
Murray’s presence briefly worries Scotland loosehead Allan Dell, meaning Jonny Gray in behind him has no front lifter [as indicated below] as Peter O’Mahony jumps for Ireland, lifted by Cian Healy at the front and James Ryan at the rear.
O’Mahony gets a clean win in the air and comes back down to ground before popping the ball off to Murray, who has looped around from the front of the lineout to accept the transfer, as illustrated in white below.
Murray’s movement sets O’Brien in motion, breaking out beyond the 15-metre line [red above] to accept a pass from Murray.
As Murray hits O’Brien with that pass [white below], we get a sense of how Ireland are set up off the lineout.
Number eight Jack Conan runs a hard line short off O’Brien [yellow], as out-half Johnny Sexton [red] bounces out behind Conan.
Conan is looking to interest Scottish defenders as O’Brien screens an accurate pass behind the number eight to Sexton.
Once the ball is in Sexton’s hands, there is clever movement from the Irish midfield.
Sexton [red below] looks to straighten up, as Bundee Aki arcs towards the right touchline [yellow], looking to drag defenders in that direction.
The powerful Chris Farrell [blue] is simultaneously accelerating into the space Aki is vacating to make a short carry off Sexton.
Scotland commit into a double tackle on the fast-moving Farrell, with Stuart McInally and Josh Strauss engaging him – two defenders off their feet already.
There is an immediate danger here to Ireland’s ball as Simon Berghan [white below] gets into a decent position to jackal over the ball, looking for the turnover.
We can see that O’Brien, Tadhg Furlong [coming from the back of the lineout] and Conan are arriving in, however, and they manage to rescue the breakdown for Ireland – O’Brien and Furlong shifting Berghan as Conan cleans tackler Strauss off the ball.
“I carried on the first phase and we tried to get quick ball, but it was actually slowed down more than I would have liked,” says Ireland centre Farrell. “But the move still somehow worked.”
Indeed it did, as Ireland struck accurately on second phase.
We know that Murray moves the ball to the right here, but as he gets set to do so, it’s crucial to note what is going on to the left of Ireland’s ruck.
Rory Best, having thrown into the lineout, is lined up to the left of the ruck with Ryan to his inside [circled in yellow above].
Best’s body language makes it look as if he is about to receive the ball from Murray and this is a crucial part of the set-play design from Ireland.
Note in the top left of the shot above how Scotland’s Ryan Wilson [circled in red] is pointing back to the left – he has seen this picture before, very recently.
The ref mic picks him up shouting, “Stay!” Wilson is telling Scotland loosehead Allan Dell to stay on that side of the ruck as Scotland fear an attack back to the left.
This fear is something Schmidt intelligently plays on with this particular attack.
“For Johnny to come back and strike that [right] side of the ruck, we thought might
be an opportunity,” explains Schmidt.
“You can never say for certain that they’re going to be opportunities. Mostly, we would strike on the other side [the left] of the ruck, certainly in some of the plays that we play and they’ve played since.”
Not only is Schmidt intimating that Scotland have stolen a couple of his plays, he is underlining that Ireland’s penchant for using bounce-back attacks at the side of the ruck is a key factor in the design of this particular play.
Click here if you cannot view the clip above
As we’ve discussed before, Ireland use the above play – Schmidt’s Leinster doing it in 2012 – particularly effectively, hitting up from a lineout and then bouncing back against the grain to a forward positioned close to the ruck, running a dummy loop around him.
Best, in the example at hand against Scotland, is ideally positioned to be that forward and Wilson’s reaction indicates that he recognises the Ireland hooker as such.
Last weekend, we saw Ireland run a bounce-back play against England, with Conor Murray taking the loop pass from Furlong and very nearly breaking through.
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Scotland would have watched this intently, as well as being intimately familiar with Schmidt’s other bounce-back attacks.
Even in yesterday’s game, Ireland’s very first attack – eight minutes before Stockdale’s score – involved a bounce-back play after two carries infield from a left-hand-side scrum.
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We can see the Scots react well here after O’Mahony has carried around the corner, as Wilson [red below] and Greig Laidlaw [yellow] indicate the bounce-back, with Dell [white] staying on the left side of Ireland’s ruck.
Though Sexton slips after taking a pass from Conan in this instance, Schmidt has teed the Scots up for what is to come later. The trap has been laid.
As he might describe it himself, Schmidt knew that they knew and he played on the fact that they knew.
Back to the Stockdale try, where we will see how Dell again initially staying on the right affects things on the other side of the ruck soon, while the threat on the left side of the ruck was possibly also key in allowing Stockdale to finish, as we’ll get to later.
The real target of Murray’s second pass is O’Mahony [white below], who is coming around the corner after winning the lineout.
In this split second, O’Mahony is clapping his hands and loudly shouting, “Mur, me!”
The intention is to ensure Scotland identify O’Mahony as the ball-carrier early, attracting their attention to the Ireland back row and giving them a target.
In Ireland’s opening attacks of this game, we saw how Scotland flooded two tacklers into each collision with the Irish ball-carriers and Schmidt’s play design uses that expected aggressive intent against the Scots.
“We felt that if we got the ball into Pete’s hands, that they [Scotland] would feel we would just carry around the corner,” explains Schmidt.
Scotland are certainly attracted to O’Mahony as the probable ball-carrier but there is plenty going on around the Ireland blindside.