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Should teams follow Gatland and worship at the altar of mobility?

Roar Guru
16th September, 2019
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Roar Guru
16th September, 2019
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The votes have been comprehensively cast – this will be the Rugby World Cup with the greatest focus on mobility to date.

Discussions around the loose forwards’ structure over the last two years have seen the focus move from playing dual six-and-a-half-like players to the dual open-side model.

Although it should be noted that Scotland, Wales and Australia run very different models with the same structure, New Zealand and England’s combinations look similar, while Ireland and South Africa lean towards the more traditional. What is not in dispute is the increasing trend to homogeneity in the back three in general play.

But worship at the Alter of Footspeed has claimed some high-profile victims.

Devin Toner is a notable omission for Ireland. This is the one I don’t get at all. Noting more than half the tries of the 2015 Cup came from the line out and knowing that this set piece has been Ireland’s most important attacking launch pad of recent years, reserving Toner’s A1 seat on the plane should have been a no-brainer. It was not to be.

New Zealand’s 108-Test front-row stalwart Owen Franks likewise stays at home and keeps his proud record of never having crossed the whitewash in a Test match in tact. His honorary presidency of the front row club is surely to follow for this reason alone.

But it is the locks that are the new super stars of game. These big men have had to develop the fastest over recent years with set piece a given, physicality a must, but wider ball skills now expected. Surely there has never been a Rugby World Cup with such an array and depth in the second-row position for so many countries.

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And this brings me to the stretching the mobility premise into the second row as Warren Gatland did in the last Lions tour. This was an inventive but seriously brave move. He initially chose an extremely pacey back three, which paid off large in cover defence, but he then took this into the hallowed ground of the tight five.

After taking something of a beating in the narrow channels in Game 1, Gatland opted for the selection of Maro Itoje at lock to provide a different picture for the All Blacks, but this did bring a significant trade-off in the tight exchanges and it put huge pressure on the remaining Lions forwards.

The following videos are all clipped from Game 3 of the series.

Let’s look at the positives first. Looking at the game clock, we note that these were all largely early in the game and were not sustained. While these types of outcomes are nice for the fan club boys, if the tactic is not sustained, it does not elicit a change in the opposition structure nor produces tangible outcomes, then we can question its impact.

In the interests of viewing all outcomes in the reciprocal, here are the impacts Itoje made in the tight channels and it simply wasn’t enough, not in isolation nor in context of the mobility trade-off. He made four tackles (two on the Barretts in the backs and not one on the opposition tight five), missed one and was largely absent/ineffective at the breakdown battle.

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But the battle in the middle of the park did not go away. If anything, it was fought with as much vigour as any game in recent years. If this was a theatre of war, Alun Wyn Jones would have been knighted on the spot and when he shuffled off the park after 73 minutes, he took with him the respect of the Kiwi rugby public.

I do lead the final video with New Zealand’s second try of the match, not only because it shows what happens when you get over the gain line and produce quick ball, but look for the movement here from Brodie Retallick, which gets himself free at the line out.

So kudos to Warren Gatland for seeking an inventive solution in this series, and it is a mindset that has now come to broader prominence for the coming tournament.

But somewhere in this coming Rugby World Cup, a coach is going to turn the mobility dial too far to the right, will lose a physical contest right up the middle of the ground, perhaps with a first and final warning.

I fear with the combos of Mo’unga/Barrett, Savea/Cane and Bridge/Reece all being favoured, it may be the tournament’s bookies favorites who may fall into this trap.

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