Analysis: London Irish’s first phase defence

David Skippers

This week our analyst takes a look at how London Irish’s poor first phase defence has contributed to them occupying the bottom spot on the Premiership table.

London Irish aren’t quite dead and buried in the Premiership this season, but they do need to overturn a nine point and 40 points difference deficit in nine games.

They do include games against the three teams immediately ahead of themselves, so all certainly isn’t lost for the Reading-based team. But, if there’s any chance of a comeback, there’s one area which they desperately need to shore up; first phase defence. London Irish have conceded 24 tries from first phase, the league average is just below 13. The average team concede a third of their tries from first phase, the number for Irish is half. It’s an affliction.

Often, with these articles, it takes a long time to find relevant clips. Not so for this one, Irish conceded their first try of the season from first phase.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Two things go wrong here for Irish, first there’s the line break and secondly there’s no real covering defence. The line break happens because Quins have three attackers; 10,12,13 and Irish have matched that in defence. When Marcus Smith loops around, he’s no longer the responsibility of James Marshall the defensive fly-half. In theory, everyone should shift along one but they don’t. Inside centre Fergus Mulchrone stays fixed on Jamie Roberts, outside centre Ciaran Hearn drifts to cover Smith and Joe Marchant just goes straight through the two of them.

Irish have two men back; Tommy Bell and Topsy Ojo. Bell is on the near side sweeping for cross kicks and in a position to rush up if the ball goes wide. Ojo is on the far side of the pitch and should be tracking across with play, he doesn’t and when Marchant goes through the first line of defence, he doesn’t have a last line of defence in his way.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

This is essentially the same try all over again, but it’s even more simplistic. Two passes is enough to completely dumbfound the Irish defence. The line speed is good but there’s no fancy trickery here, it’s just a dogleg that is exploited and a misunderstanding about who should be covering who. Behind the first line of defence we see the same issues, the winger and full-back; Alex Lewington and Bell in this case are too wide. No team should be letting a player run in a straight line for 40m, from first phase, without even threatening to put a finger on him.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

This is almost an improvement, there’s no line break here. As soon as the Warriors pick up from the back of the scrum the near side defensive winger rushes up. As every junior back three player should know, you should be connected to your fellow back three players with a bit of string, as one goes up into the line the other should sweep around and fill in the space vacated by that player. If that happens here then the kick isn’t an option. Unfortunately for the bottom-placed club, the winger and full-back start too far apart and when one of them joins the line that gap just gets bigger. This is a consistent issue with the Irish defence and explains not only why teams score from first phase but also how they’re able to score from so far away from the line on first phase.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Look at just how far apart the first three defenders are for London Irish in this example. Blair Cowan is defending off the back of the line out and in theory will be coming across to the aid of the defensive line. He’s stopped by a hard inside line which turns a four on four into a three on two in favour of the Warriors. The defence has to make a decision and they both go for the same man leaving the inside pass for the line break.

The deep lying defenders make the try much harder than the others we’ve seen here but the initial break is too easy. That’s not only down to the nice attacking interplay but also the very slow line speed in defence. There’s far too much time for the Warriors to pick and choose where they are going to attack.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Henry Slade does brilliantly in this example, he drifts wide and draws the attention away from the stacked attackers on the inside. A simple inside ball does enough to exploit the slow inside drifting defence and it’s yet another example of a try scored from 40m out and with the try scorer passing through the last line of defence untouched. None of the attacks we’ve seen so far have done anything exceptional or out of the ordinary, it’s just simple strike moves which have completely flummoxed London Irish.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

This penultimate example might be the worst one yet. This is one pass, a step, and then home under the posts. Rob Horne hits the line and puts in a nice step, but Blair Cowan’s defensive effort is abysmal but it might only be a missed tackle if the forwards from the maul worked harder to get across. They are statuesque and that leaves a massive hole for the Saints to run into. There’s a bit more resistance from the last line of defence but it’s nothing to get too excited about.

Animated GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

We’ve largely ignored the first phase tries conceded directly from mauls, but that has also been a weakness for Irish. They set up well in this example but they fold like a deckchair as soon as pressure is put on and Wasps score one of the easiest tries they will ever get.

Conclusion
In theory, first phase should give the defenders the advantage. Yes the attackers have the time to decide what they’re going to do but the defenders are set and we’re constantly told that defence is winning in modern rugby. The opposite is true for London Irish; they’re leaving gaps, they have no line speed or inconsistent line speed, and their back three are operating entirely independently of one another. The season isn’t decided, but we’re a long way into it for these issues to still be apparent.

By Sam Larner