Why Jack Willis isn’t ‘playing out of position’ and what makes the modern number eight ‘ruthlessly practical’

Another EPCR weekend, another parade of otherwise intelligent fans, pundits and even commentators tying themselves in knots trying to work out whether Jack Willis is playing “out of position” by wearing six at Toulouse, whether Oscar Jegou or Levani Botia is the La Rochelle flyer or what a man the size of Cameron Woki is doing playing at seven.

It’s become a drinking game at this point; take a shot every time a pundit questions whether a French six or seven has “the power of a natural openside or blindside” and you’ll be on the floor by half-time.

The thing is, these debates are pointless because an increasing number of teams don’t play blindside and openside flankers in the first place. In the Top 14, for Les Bleus, and across Argentina’s and Italy’s systems, back-rowers predominantly operate as left and right; le gratteur (the scratcher) and le porteur (the carrier).

Left, as in loosehead prop side. Right, as in tighthead prop side. It’s not even that complicated; it’s just different, and watching British pundits struggle with it has become rather like watching your dad try to use Spotify.

The transition advantage

What gets missed entirely is why teams structure this way, and it’s not some romantic attachment to French tradition or a desire to confuse English journalists. The answer is prosaic and ruthlessly practical: transition speed.

The primary driver of left/right systems is what happens when you win the ball back. When your defence forces a turnover, the object isn’t to admire your work; it’s to strike before the opposition can reorganise. The speed of transition from defence to attack determines whether you’re running into a settled defensive line or exploiting space whilst they’re still scrambling.

Traditional back-row structures require repositioning after turnovers. Your openside might be on the wrong side of the ruck, your blindside caught narrow, your eight still extracting himself from the breakdown. Everyone needs fractional seconds to rediscover their attacking shape, and in modern rugby, those fractions are the difference between a line break and running into a wall.

Left/right systems remove that variable. When you win turnover ball, your back-rows are already in attacking formation, typically some variant of 1-3-3-1 or 1-4-2-1, depending on team philosophy.

Two runners are already positioned wide in predetermined channels. There’s no hunting, no repositioning, no recalibration; the half-back knows exactly where support will arrive and which corridor it will occupy. That certainty creates strike lines that simply don’t exist when players are still working out where they should be.

Willis at Toulouse illustrates this perfectly. His turnover-per-minute ratio has climbed since moving to France, not because he is suddenly better over the ball but because when Toulouse win possession, he is already moving forward in his channel.

He is not sprinting across the pitch to get involved; he is arriving on the nose, balanced and square with energy left to dominate the ruck. His partnership with François Cros works because both players know exactly where they will be when the transition happens.

Botia at La Rochelle offers a different expression of the same principle. Operating predominantly on the right flank, he regularly exceeds 40 metres per game in carries. Those metres come from hitting predetermined lines in his corridor, arriving when the attack needs him. From the moment La Rochelle win the ball, he is moving forward, not searching, just relentlessly asserting control of his side of the field.

The defensive reality

This is where the system becomes more complex than “left stays left, right stays right” because whilst the attacking structure remains consistent, defensive scrums force tactical inversions.

On a left-hand side defensive scrum, the more mobile back-rower typically positions on the right side of the scrum because he needs to cover more ground getting across the field, whilst the right-side player positions left where he is protected by the nine and 10.

On a right-hand side defensive scrum, those roles invert. So there is positional flexibility based on field geography, just not in the way traditional open/blind thinking suggests.

The critical difference is that these defensive adjustments don’t fundamentally alter the attacking channel structure that follows. Once the ball is cleared and play develops, back-rowers work their way back into their primary corridors. The system prioritises getting into attacking shape quickly rather than maintaining defensive position throughout phase play, which aligns with how modern breakdown law interpretations actually work.

Referees increasingly reward the closest man to the breakdown rather than the fastest man to the ball. Jackals arriving from depth after a 30-metre sprint are more likely to be late, upright or ineffective. Players already operating in their channel arrive better positioned to survive the cleanout. Willis and Botia aren’t getting there quicker necessarily; they are getting there better.

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The historical context

The left/right formation has always existed in rugby. Peter Winterbottom and Gary Rees played this way for England in 1987 and 1988, with John Hall at eight, notably at the World Cup. They didn’t care about “open” or “blind” labels; England had three quality players who owned their channels and built permanent partnerships with their second-rows, even if it was largely driven by getting the best talent on the pitch simultaneously.

But somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves this was inferior. The narrative became that “proper” back-rows needed to swap sides based on pitch geography, that adaptability trumped consistency, and that a flanker who couldn’t play both sides wasn’t truly world-class.

Remarkable how thoroughly we talked ourselves out of something that demonstrably works.

The scrum benefit

Whilst transition speed drives the system, there is a secondary advantage at scrum time that shouldn’t be dismissed. When your left flanker and left lock pack down together consistently, always on the loosehead side in attacking scrums, they develop a deeper understanding of weight distribution, binding pressure and timing.

Watch Toulouse’s scrum dominance over recent seasons or how La Rochelle have dismantled front-fives even when results elsewhere unravelled. Part of that comes from flanker-lock partnerships being predominantly consistent rather than constantly recalibrating.

Because the formation is structurally predictable, the timing of the back-row’s exit from attacking scrums becomes reliable for half-backs. They know when support will arrive. In traditional models, there is always a fractional delay while everyone works out where they are and where they need to be.

That said, this benefit shouldn’t be overstated. Club rugby involves rotation, injuries and substitutions that constantly change personnel. Players train with multiple partners and develop the ability to work with whoever is available. The partnership advantage is real but not transformative on its own.

The size debate that misses the point

This is where traditionalists get genuinely lost. Kwagga Smith, Ben Earl, Sam Simmonds and Ardie Savea don’t resemble old-school number eights, yet all are devastating. In predominantly left/right systems, size matters far less than dominance within a channel.

Earl’s breakdown work at eight would translate cleanly into a gratteur role. Savea’s influence is already essentially a left/right game without the label. These systems simply formalise what modern back-rows do instinctively: own a corridor and impose themselves within it, unless of course you are that bloke in the pub who still thinks an eight should be a wardrobe with wheels.

The trade-offs

No system is perfect. The predictability that gives half-backs reliable pictures can become a double-edged sword. Fixed lanes in attack make support lines dependable but also readable, and well-drilled defences can sit on those corridors and compress play back inside by committing defenders early to the wide channels, forcing carries into traffic rather than space.

That isn’t a flaw so much as a trade-off. Certainty buys efficiency and speed of transition, but it invites pressure when execution drops, or the opposition are good enough to exploit predetermined patterns. Traditional back-rows with elite athletes can overwhelm any system if they are better on the day.

Why it matters

Modern back-row systems increasingly prioritise width, predetermined channels in attack and transition speed over positional flexibility. Whether you call it left/right, gratteur/porteur, or simply 1-3-3-1 attacking structure doesn’t change the underlying principle; get your back-rows into positions where they can strike immediately after winning possession.

The vocabulary problem persists because we are analysing these systems using traditional open/blind language. Fans and commentators alike praise “openside-style” work from number eights or question whether a flanker has “blindside power” when what they are really asking is whether a player executed his role within his channel effectively. It is an analysis, but translated into the wrong dialect.

But the deeper implication cuts to selection philosophy itself. If your system demands a gratteur who can poach, carry short, and hit rucks at pace, does it matter whether he wears six or seven?

If your left channel requires a lineout option with leg drive who can defend tight, the relevant question isn’t whether that is traditionally an openside’s job, it’s whether the player possesses those specific attributes. The shirt number becomes an administrative detail; the skill set is everything.

This explains why the most effective international sides now select back-rows based on what they can do rather than what they are called, assembling combinations that deliver the required functions across both channels rather than simply picking the best available six, seven, and eight.

The left/right approach was never inferior. We just convinced ourselves it was, whilst the game moved on without us noticing.

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