Analysis: Jack of more trades, master of them

Adam Kyriacou

Our analyst Sam Larner returns to Planet Rugby to discuss the Jack Nowell flanker debate and how players have added to their game in rugby.

When Eddie Jones suggested Nowell could play openside flanker it provoked plenty of ridicule. There is a big part of me that thinks it’s clearly a Mourinho-esque statement intended to distract media attention away from his squad selection. I also think that if it’s not a ploy then it’s just clearly incorrect.

Can Nowell run like a flanker? Possibly, he’s clearly a talented and powerful runner but we’ve largely seen him asked to carry after a kick or out on the wing rather than as a one-out runner. Can he tackle like a flanker? Nowell made 3.8 tackles per appearance last year and no dominant tackles. The average Exeter back-row player made 8.5 tackles per game and 0.3 of those were dominant per game. Nowell’s defence as a wing or full-back is decent but it’s a long way off where you’d want it to be for a flanker. Nowell clearly has fewer opportunities to tackle but he also has a much worse tackle success rate (73%) – only Thomas Waldrom had a tackle success rate of less than 90% for Exeter’s back-row players.

The point though is this, even if you were very impressed by Nowell’s running and tackling, in order to be a truly useful addition at openside he would also need to contribute in the line-out and the scrum. It seems a completely pointless exercise to turn someone who is, on form, going to get into the England matchday 23 and turn them into a second rate flanker who would struggle to get into a Premiership 23. A flanker who would either need to learn to work in the line-out from scratch or would be left out of it and would significantly his team’s flexibility at the set-piece.

So, we can probably rule out Nowell switching to seven anytime soon and hopefully, anytime, but there’s still an interesting question here. We know the stereotypical roles that each position has; locks make tackles and are the primary jumpers at the line-out, blindside flankers make tonnes of tackles, number eights make carries, hookers throw in and are the more mobile members of the front-row. Rugby has changed though and these neat boxes no longer work for classifying players. That is maybe most true for hookers, who are already covering a huge range of positions.

Only Julian Marchand of Toulouse and Grant Stewart of Glasgow made more metres than Leinster‘s Sean Cronin but neither made the defensive impact of the Irishman. Some teams choose to move their mobile hookers out wide to be the two wide players in the 1-3-3-1 formation, think of Dane Coles. The 1-3-3-1 formation has the six big ball carriers and supporting players in the midfield with the two more mobile players on the wings. Cronin isn’t dispatched to the wings, instead he has to do his carrying in the congested midfield, or take advantages of opportunities like this one.

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The most impressive part of this finish is the speed that Cronin shows. It’s not a surprise that Ireland typically bring Cronin on in the second-half when the defence is tired and there is more space to exploit. Cronin isn’t just an open field runner though, he’s also perfectly adept at everything else a hooker needs to do, as he displayed with his two tries from rolling mauls on Sunday.

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One of the hookers mentioned above, Frenchman Marchand, offers something slightly different. He’s slightly worse when it comes to the line-out, around 85% success compared to Cronin’s 89% but he is another ball carrying hooker who offers something different to what we typically expect from the men wearing the number two shirt.

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In this example Marchand turns up on the wing as a battering ram option. Either he gets the ball and runs over the back in front of him or he is there to create quick ball by winning the breakdown by himself. In this case it’s the former and Marchand has a nice turn of pace to get over the line and ensure the try-scoring opportunity is finished off.

We’ve seen hookers whose carrying ability raises them to the standard of a number eight but few hookers have the speed to operate as an additional back. Harry Thacker of Bristol offers extreme speed without sacrificing defensive ability, he’s a 90% tackler.

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In this clip Thacker tracks the play for near enough 40 metres and beats a host of backs to get there first. It’s the type of play you might expect from a scrum-half or a very speedy openside flanker but it’s coming in the form of a hooker who is also expected to be an integral part of all set-pieces.

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Again this is Thacker running a support line to finish off the try. The Bristol Bears’ scrum-half is the third man in this clip but it’s Thacker who is the first one to get there and score the try.

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Finally, in this clip Thacker emerges from the ruck in almost exactly the same way as a scrum-half would and then runs the support line you might expect from Gareth Davies. He’s so quick that although he doesn’t really get much separation from the defender he’s able to finish it off with ease. Thacker is able to do everything a hooker should do but he also acts as a second flanker or winger when needed.

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If you play any rugby on the weekend, the chances are that when you are defending a line-out, your hooker no matter how adept he is at defending, goes off and stands in the five metre channel. That’s the easiest place to defend but most teams mindlessly send one of their best defenders there because of tradition. Australia have identified that there is room for improving their defensive set-up and they have reacted by sending fly-half Bernard Foley, a weaker defender, into the five-metre channel and dispatching the hooker somewhere were he can make a bigger difference. In this example Tatafu Polota-Nau is stood in the fly-half position and ends up chasing back to make the try saving tackle.

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In this example in the same game Polota-Nau is stood in the ‘pivot’ position in the line-out. If Wales threw to the front he would be the back lifter and if they threw to the middle he would be the front lifter. Michael Hooper was sent to the fly-half position for this defensive set. It’s simple stuff, Polota-Nau has enough ability to move around the defensive set-up depending on where he is needed. In one half he embodies a fly-half in the loose and a prop in the trenches.

Conclusion

When I started, this article was going to be about how most positions in the forwards are already filled by players doing ‘jobs’ beyond what they are typically expected to do. However, when I started talking about hookers it was clear that there was an entire article just on them.

The truth is that it’s no longer just enough to be very good, or even world class, at the basics at your job you now need add multiple extra skills to compete against team-mates who can be a fourth back-row player or rival your blindside flanker for total tackles or even finish like your wings. The more the workload is shared across all the forwards the more effective each person can be. If you flanker only needs to make 15 tackles rather than 20 then it frees them up to make more carries or stay on their feet and jackal for the ball rather than bring down the ball carrier. That’s the simple fact of modern rugby, the more effective you can make each player the more likely you are to win each game.

by Sam Larner