I was just wondering about the length and breadth of this mythical box that people — sometimes labelled as genius — think outside of. Those fabled tap penalties in Thomond on St Stephen’s Day: are we talking E=mc2?
Our American footballing brethren in the NFL have been doing a bit of lateral thinking recently. The surprise package, the Philadelphia Eagles, are at 13-2 with two games of the regular season left and are looking good for homefield advantage throughout the play-offs. Leinster are not the only sporting franchise to realise how important this is.
The Eagles have started to think outside the box especially when it comes to critical plays. As you may know, teams that have the ball have four attempts (downs) to make ten yards, and if they make that they get another four attempts until they get the ball into the end zone.
Sometimes the offense may come up short by a few inches or by as much as a yard on the third down and rather than punt the ball away they attempt a quarterback sneak on the fourth down. The quarterback takes the snap from the center and rather than looking to pass or hand it to the running back, he follows the forward progress of his 150kg linemen, and they sneak over the line, making enough yardage or inches to get a new series of downs. However, if you don’t get over the line you hand the ball over, sometimes in preferential positions for the opposition. It makes sense to limit the gamble.
The Eagles have taken it a stage further and instead of having just the quarterback follow the center, they now line four beefies behind the center and the quarterback almost in diamond formation. As soon as the ball is snapped, the four big men expertly maul — as in rugby maul — their way over the line. Somebody in America has been watching rugby union because the body angles and the binding are just like what rugby teams do from their five-metre lineout mauls.
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The Eagles take all of their smaller, lighter skill players out of the line and put in what they have dubbed “the heavy squad”. Everyone knows what is going to happen and there isn’t much you can do to stop it.
The quarterback sneak has had the same formula ever since the NFL came into existence. Now every team in the league will copy Philadelphia’s way of getting over the line. Somebody has been doing some thinking. Just wondering what they do for the other 364 days of the year.
It is only a work in progress because in a league where quarterbacks (for the sake of limiting injuries) are expressly forbidden from making a tackle if the ball is turned over, why would you have him stuck in the middle of a maul with huge men pushing and shoving from in front and behind? Someone is going to figure out that you don’t need to have a highly valuable quarterback employed in a quarterback sneak. Give the ball to an expendable big guy with a good centre of gravity who can keep his feet when the hit comes ... maybe that will be next year’s cunning plan.
I can’t be certain who started the tapped penalties from short yardage in this part of the world. The Exeter Chiefs pioneered it in the English Premiership, and Leinster took it on in the United Rugby Championship the season before last.
Do these teams have a percentages coach? You know — a bespeckled actuarial type in a pinstripe suit called Walter. Somebody who says that actually, from a probability and causality perspective, there is a much higher chance of scoring a try from a tap penalty rather than by trying a lineout maul?
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Over the course of 20 years, coaches have found out that their team’s hooker can, in an attacking position, overthrow, or get picked off, or throw in crooked. Jumpers sometimes mishandle or come down off their jump in a position where you can’t set up an effective maul.
The opposition too can sometimes be a little bit uncooperative. On occasion they actually compete in the air which is very unsporting. Sometimes they wait on the ground, and have you pushed back five metres before you can get your maul set properly — that is ten metres from the tryline.
You shouldn’t need Walter to tell you that if you tap and go you will be at least two metres from the line before you come into contact; that contact will be achieved on your terms because the welcoming party does not know where you are going to run to. Why on earth would you kick the ball to touch from only ten metres in, then? You don’t have to have worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project to figure out that just tapping and going will only get you so far and if you are stopped that there may be a prolonged period of pick and jam before you get over the line. So what about a few variations?
What if you actually tried a little bit of magician’s sleight of hand or a surprise change of direction to give a bit of the unexpected to the defenders who are looking for a ball carrier running straight at them? Is there a bonus at the end of the year if someone comes up with a bit of original thought?
We first saw a variation from Leinster in the Racing game in Le Havre last month. It was a smart move. Dan Sheehan taps and has James Ryan and Ryan Baird as outriders. Instead of charging at the cover, Sheehan passes to Caelan Doris who is travelling and has Andrew Porter and Michael Ala’alatoa as company to clear.
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A fraction of a second before contact and the ball is whipped to Josh van der Flier trailing blind and at an angle. He still had to bump Maxime Baudonne en route to the line but this was easy because the Frenchman only saw him late and was off-balance as Van der Flier’s pace got him over. How come it took a season and a half to dream up some variations?
On St Stephen’s Day we were treated to even more dessert and this time Scott Penny was the beneficiary. A cavalry charge by most of the pack, Nick McCarthy shouts for the ball going open and Penny takes the swivel pass from Sheehan. It worked because none of the Munster pack could see Penny coming and the charge left gaps in behind the tackle line. The pass was inaccurate and Penny took it shoulder-high but his ability close to the line is world class and Peter O’Mahony could not react quickly enough to stop him.
There are two things to note from the encounter in Thomond. The first one is that we are told about the embarrassment of riches that Munster have in their back row and in reserve. Just think of the likes of John Hodnett, Alex Kendellen and Jack O’Sullivan. Yet none of them are remotely close to the standards set by Scott Penny.
Every time I watch Penny, I can’t help thinking that he is international class and the only open-side flanker that is better than him on this island is now the world player of the year. Pound for pound, he is one of the best players in the country. If, God forbid, anything happened to Josh van der Flier, rather than fiddling with the composition of your back row, you could, with the plain evidence of your eyes, pick a like-for-like replacement with someone who is the next best No 7 available. I do not think I have seen him play a bad game in the URC or the Heineken Champions Cup. Quite how Cian Prendergast got to go to New Zealand ahead of him is a mystery to me.
The second thing is that everyone next week will be doing these Leinster variations. The genius who thought these up will have to dream up more or else consult the Leinster short penalty playbook from 25 years ago — which had a dozen of these moves. It is progress though when the Yanks have started to maul, and we are moving away from it. Ho hum.
