Trying to be a little too smart and getting it wrong.
There were many defining moments in Ireland’s 23-16 loss to Wales, in Cardiff, last weekend. One of them arrived 21 minutes in and with Ireland trailing 12-3.
Ireland turned down a kickable penalty in order to try out a lineout move they felt would take Wales by surprise.
Joe Schmidt’s idea, worked out with Simon Easterby and captain Paul O’Connell, no doubt, was to implement a 13-man lineout that would then overpower Wales at from five-metres out and maul over. Jared Payne and Robbie Henshaw are circled [below] but Tommy Bowe, Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton are in the vicinity.
If the score worked it would be hailed as a tactical master-stroke by Schmidt as he would reverse a well-known Gatland play on his fellow Kiwi’s team, on their home patch.
Addressing the failed set-piece move, Irish lock Devin Toner explained, ‘The first throw, where we tried to go to the 13-man lineout, it was exactly the same as England threw against us but I got at the tail-end of the lineout… We went to do a 13-man lineout. We brought the backs in, they didn’t.’
The Irish logic was that, seeing Ireland commit backs to the lineout, Wales would opt to stay on the ground to defend the initial shunt while their backs ran over to join in. Wales, however, had been itching to attack the Irish line-out all week [the lineout takes place at 32:00 in the video clip below].
Toner added, ‘A lot of teams stay down [when you do that], a lot of teams go up. We were not expecting them to go up.’
Asked about Ireland’s line-out glitches, Toner said, ‘Some [mistakes] were calls, some were throws.’ In this instance, it appears to be an errant Rory Best throw – to Sam Warburton – as the call was agreed upon. Perhaps Best felt he would be throwing to an unopposed Toner and opted for pace of throw over accuracy.
https://youtu.be/yoKdJb5Rbr0?t=32m
While Best will take the lion’s share on the blame for this failure, it must be noted that the Welsh lineout lifters were quicker to react to the throw. From the picture above, it is clear that Warburton is well on his way up, with arms outstretched, before Toner.
Gethin Jenkins and Talupe Faletau also do a better lifting job than Jack McGrath and Sean O’Brien. The picture below shows Warburton [6ft 3in] several inches above Toner [6ft 10in] and closer to the ball.
Toner then compounds the failure by grappling Warburton on the way down and conceding a penalty.
A lot of factors combined, then, for one very costly blip.
‘We all know we let our standards slip last weekend,’ Toner conceded. ‘Losing four lineouts is unheard of. We can’t win a game [when] losing four lineouts so we put a lot of work into it this week. Hopefully it will be alright. It was a few missed throws and a few missed calls. The standards slipped. There is not a huge amount to set right but we did a bit on it this week.
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