You have written an article on Sir Wayne Smith’s Black Ferns and the romance of the 2021 Rugby World Cup, then backed it up with Pat Lam’s Bristol Bears averaging over five tries per game in the English Premiership – both gesturing towards a rosy attacking future for the game. Then along comes Alex Sanderson and his aptly named Sale Sharks to spoil the party. Wagging a reproving finger, and twisting the signpost until it points in precisely the opposite direction.
It is the eternal dialogue in which the charm of rugby subsists: play through the backs or the forwards? Ball in hand against ball to boot? Make a living via attack or defence? In two significant games played at the same time but in different leagues on Friday evening, the URC and the Premiership mounted the case for the defence.
Leinster, for so long the standard bearers for attacking precision and multi-phase innovation, ground out a win against injury-depleted Munster at Thomond Park, while Sale produced an even more spectacular display to knock over the Bears at their Ashton Gate home. The combined score was 34-0 to the two away sides at half-time and it did not get manifestly better in the second period of either game.
The big fat zero in that scoreline tells you all you need to know about how the outcomes were achieved. The Bears had been averaging a riotous 38 points per game before the Sharks entered their feeding ground, but they were held scoreless over 80 minutes. Instead of outgunning Munster with the pyrotechnics of their running and handling, Leinster showed their new mean streak under Jacques Nienaber and squeezed the home side to death with a boa constrictor defence. It was slow and not at all pleasant. At times, you could hear the bones of the Limerick men cracking.
The South African makeover at Leinster is nearing completion. The province have only conceded 15 tries in nine rounds of URC play so far, and kick the ball away at an average rate of 28 times per game, third in the league. The typically high stats for ball-in-play time in Leinster matches have dropped to the point where they lie a lowly 11th on the URC ladder.
The addition of gnarled ex-Clermont and French international tight-head prop Rabah Slimani has even persuaded the men in blue to scrum for penalties, for goodness sakes. At Thomond Park, only seven of the total of 19 set-pieces produced clean ball – seven resulted in penalties [with six awarded to Leinster] and another five were reset.
The Sharks win the fewest number of rucks per game of any side in the Premiership [70] and they do not care much about quick ball from them, at over four seconds per pop. They kick on the same number of occasions as Leinster [28, second in the Prem] and they have moved up to second in the league for tries conceded after nilling Bristol.
It remains a very different, but very effective formula for winning games of rugby. As Lam commented ruefully to BBC Sport after the Friday evening shutout:
“The big thing when we play Sale is to get ahead on the scoreboard, [but we] fell behind, gave away penalties, missed opportunities, [there was] sloppiness and we just weren’t a reflection of what we’ve been like for the year.
“We won’t dwell on this too much, we spoke about it as a group, some great experience for the players, but we now move pretty quickly to Saracens away – something the Bears have never done is beat Sarries away so what a great challenge, probably couldn’t have asked for a better game to move on to.”
Saracens, barring Saturday’s thrashing by Bath, are almost as stingy on D as Sale and they used to be coached by the same man [Alex Sanderson], so it will be a timely test indeed for the West Countrymen.
Let’s take a couple of hints from the game in Ireland and expand them with examples from Ashton Gate.
This is the new Leinster Way under Nienaber. Defenders do not worry about cutting a couple of extra attackers loose on the edge of the pitch. They advance straight upfield in a condensed line, looking to make double tackles in midfield and backline hits behind the gain line. After only two phases of play, the Munstermen find themselves 25m behind the spot where they built the first ruck.
The Sharks began the game with a very similar theory, offering the apparent space outside and then brutalising the ball-carrier with double tackles when the ball bounced back into midfield.
The pressure forces Bristol scrum-half Harry Randall to change tack and kick instead of running, and the ball sailed straight into touch, giving Sale a lineout on the Bears 22.
The same pattern was repeated a little later in the first quarter.
The Sharks first eat the apparent space out wide, then three consecutive carries are stuffed by double tackles in midfield. When Randall went to kick on the fourth phase, his kick was charged down by a spread-eagled Jonny Hill.
It was a perfect example of the misfortunes which tend to follow sides who are backed into a corner, and forced away from their natural gameplan. As the Sale forwards coach Dorian ‘Nobby’ West put it succinctly on TNT Sports, “we are taking metres off them every carry, getting line speed, big shots, two-man tackles, slowing their ball down.”
When Bristol attempted to force the issue in the wide areas, the Sharks closed down the running lanes exceptionally quickly, just like Leinster on the west coast of Ireland.
Sanderson was candid as always in a BBC interview after the game had finished with a 38-0 victory for his charges.
“I am a bit emotional because of the significance of the performance in the mid-point of the season, where we were five weeks ago. It is Christmas and you make sacrifices.
“I said to the boys, ‘everyone makes sacrifices’, so you want to make it worth it and they have for me, they have made my time worth it with that effort.
“If you want to beat teams as good as Bristol, or any in the upper echelon of the Premiership, your set-piece is key as is your defence and you can layer things on the back of that.”
The dialogue in the English Premiership between the clubs based squarely on the strength of their set-piece, kicking and defence [Bath, Sale, Saracens and Leicester] and those who want more from their game with ball in hand [Bristol, Northampton, Harlequins and Gloucester] is ongoing. The hard edge of professional pragmatism exists in a dynamic – if volatile – balance with the need for a more visionary flight of romance.
The leading province in Ireland, and the foundation stone of the national team in Dublin is a crucible for that same conversation. After several seasons as global thought leaders in a possession-based attack, the Springbok volte-face at Leinster is almost complete. The same players who wove the threads of those innovative attacking patterns together are now pouring the greater part of their rugby lives into a suffocating defence and frenzy at the breakdown.
Will the Leinster experiment pay dividends on the biggest stage of all, in the Investec Champions Cup? Will England stick to their guns and continue to encourage movement, ball distribution and high ball-in-play time in the Premiership? It is only one month until the Six Nations, and that will tell us a whole lot more about the chemistry in the great rugby laboratory.
