by royc on Wed Mar 29, 2017 7:06 pm
The two things that have struck me this season about the backs play are (a) they do not seem to have many, if any, training ground moves up their sleeves and (b) the skill levels are not great and indeed are sometimes poor.
I am sure there must have been one, but I do not remember a switch, where a player running one angle pops the ball to a player cutting against the direction of run, i.e. going fast in the opposite direction. It is simple enough to do, looks very good from the stands and almost always catches the oppos flat-footed.
Ditto running hard lines at an angle in attack, so not directly at your opposite number but at a player or space further out in the line, thus leaving the chasing mob behind, your direct oppo too far away to interfere and the chance of getting a 3 on 2 if you're quick enough. Those who recall Gordon D'Arcy will remember these diagonal runs where he got beyond the opposite 12's left shoulder and had a range of options with O'Driscoll outside.
Ditto decoy runners.
Ditto decoy runners plus bringing the full back into the line at speed, with one striking here and another dummy running there, and never the same thing twice, as England did to us in the 6N, which completely foxed and ripped open our midfield defence.
If you run the ball from side to side, the oppos will drift along and finally bundle you into touch or something, as edinburgh keep discovering. You need to attack the line somewhere and force them to tackle and the best way of doing that is having a runner, usually wing or FB, coming in at speed at an angle, good chance of breaking into space or at least making a few yards.
And so on, we do not seem to have any pre-planned back plays. None of the above or many more from the same drawer are difficult to do or even that challenging, you can get a young school team to do all that with gusto as long as they have a couple of hard, fast runners who can give and take a pass (admittedly not always a given with Edinburgh!).
I suspect the backs may have been over-loaded with defensive theory stuff - they have the look and demeanor of a demotivated Matt Williams' squad at times - which can sap one's will to live, it is hard to shrug off and play heads-up, attacking rugby.
I feel the team needs to get its attacking act together and that can only come from the coach.
Agree that it needs a change from Burleigh at 12, his second five-eighth play-making role doesn't work so well in Pro 12. Happy to see Dean at 12, crashing the ball up or better, running hard diagonal lines, equally Tofilau having a shot, he is a big lad and should be faster as an outside centre, equally Rasolea, who has all the same qualities. It is a pretty simple position to play and the defensive side is not hard to master under a good coach.
Bryce at outside centre, looks the best of the bunch but may need a crash course in elements of it.
Weir is good at 10, but needs to be making more breaks, the 10 is the main playmaker and that involves more than just tactical kicking, you need to pose an attacking threat that ties in your oppos.
Back 3 of Hoyland/Brown on the fast (right) wing, Scholes/Allen on the hard-running trample-them-underfoot wing.
Kinghorn - or if he's off-form, Brown or Scholes - at fullback.
And somebody at scrum half. I wouldn't bring Shiel in, too young and only got one start in the U20s. Pity Fraser is out injured. Would love to see the Heriots' boy from the U20s, Andrew Simmers, get a shot on the bench if anyone thinks he's up to it, he started all 5 games and was one of the 4 Scots in the 'squad of the tournament'. Other than that, bring Mike Blair in for a crash course with SHC and Fowles (Kennedy still out?). It could be quite a long course, but somebody needs to get a grip on their game and show them what they're doing wrong, which is rather a lot of things at the mo.
So my back line for the last-gasp games:
15 - Kinghorn/Scholes/Brown
14 - Hoyland/Brown
13 - Bryce
12 - Dean/Tofilau/Rasolea
11 - Allen/Scholes
10 - Weir
9 - A 'trainee' scrum half
EDIT to add - and Graham on the bench, get him on the field early and let's see how he copes at Pro level, could add that missing spark at 15 or 14.