Positional Dogma
Throughout the last two rounds of games we saw a lot of attention being laid upon the Springboks around their 7-1 split bench and their four scrum half’s in a single match day selection. Other teams have also played around with their players and perceived best positions like England starting Marcus Smith at Full Back or Wales’ George North being moved up to centre having only played 16% of his games in that position. James Slipper also had to do a job at tighthead against Wales but that was less intentional and more circumstantial. This got me thinking about the various positions in rugby and the myths around the roles and responsibilities attached to them. Broken down, what do you actually need in each position and why, and is it possible for alternative ideas to successfully force their way into the game?
Slipper Struggling
Front Row
Skill specialisation in the front row has increased at the same rate in which the game has become more professional and it doesn’t seem to be changing in the near future. The scrum will always require your biggest and strongest players setting up the front applying their “dark arts” but what about lineouts? The tradition is to have the hooker throwing, the tighthead as the front lifter and loosehead somewhere at the middle or back. Ireland were only 66% successful at their lineouts in their otherwise heroic performance on Saturday, but with missing their first four line outs it must make us pause to think, “should we really only have one designated thrower on the field?” Most teams will have more than one kicker - an equitable precision skill - so why not have multiple throwers and I wouldn’t stop with the front row. If a coach were to train up a winger to throw then they’d be able to put a prop/hooker in the back line to carry into a mismatched contact situation creating that much sought after gainline break and potential for fast ball. A winger in a jumping position could be even more beneficial. Usually being much lighter than your standard Lock and having an impressive vertical jump and catching skills, this could speed up a line out if your game plan requires it and of course leaves you with more forwards in the back line to crash ball against backs.
Dupont pre Glasgow Kiss
Scrum Half
Anton Dupont has brought a lot of attention to this position recently but as our game evolves and the players become multi skilled, could we one day envisage a game where we don’t have a dedicated scrum half? It sounds radical but if we list the qualities of the scrum half they basically are attributable to all players on the field. Shouldn’t all players be able to pass from the base of the ruck, spot mismatches and eventually learn to box kick? Imagine a team playing with an attacking system where as soon as the ruck was secure, the nearest player moved the ball from the base of the breakdown and then the same thing happened at the next. This way they wouldn’t have one dedicated player running around from breakdown to breakdown. This could allow the team a plethora of options, for example; having or a second number 8 feeding the scrum then picking from the base alongside the acting number 8, a third centre running a dummy line to throw off defences because one of the forwards is moving the ball from ruck to pod to back line or even an extra flanker to offer more jackling threats in defence. This may be the antithesis to South Africas quadruplet of Scrum half’s but if a team is both brave enough to try this out and organised enough to pull it off, it could have the potential to be revolutionary!
Smith settling in a Full Back
Fly Half & Full Back
As mentioned above we saw Marcus Smith at the weekend starting at full back and he’s not the first fly half to do this, Beauden Barrett has regularly been switching positions for the All Blacks. its been a regular occurrence for fly half to find themselves in the back field in defence mainly due to their game reading and kicking abilities but what if both players acted as a genuine fly half at each or at least most attacks? For example, when their team is attacking, both of these players stand on either side of the breakdown as first receiver creating genuine threats in both directions for kick, pass or run. Usually now we just have the playmaker side (usually the open) and a lesser, slower threat to the blind side where you’d usually have just a pod or limited players. Granted, most Full Backs will come up into the attack and act as punch runners but what if we leave this to the Wingers, offering the pods and Centres more space? Teams like Saracens have already experimented with this successfully but Full Back Alex Goode will step into the first receiver when the flyhallf is preoccupied, say, after a carry. What we don’t often see is defences having to deal with a double Fly-Half situation each side of the breakdown.
With a more open mind we can start to experiment and question “what is possible on a rugby field?” Rather than looking at anything beyond the pale as destructive. We can move away from arguments of wether or not we should be allowed to have a 7-1 bench split or more of one position on the field than traditionally accepted. Rugby has a unique place in sport where all the players have such a plethora of attributes between each other and this should be toyed and played with. The laws of our game are fairly complex but the ultimate goal is simple, therefore the route towards it can and should vary greatly. Why not allow for the experimentation then sit back and enjoy the diversity of gameplay this sport can offer?