Sam Larner

And that hasn't happened.

So interestingly, the season he joined, the points they conceded pleading a bar...

are actually slightly lower than the points they can see posting about we're not talking significant numbers here we're talking like half a point a match so it's it's not a massive change but equally it wasn't a complete flip to oh now they're the dominant defensive team where we saw that was 2024-25 where they became incredibly dominant defensively and now we've seen them flip to being fairly leaky defensively

So I think partly it's he hasn't got the keys to the castle to do completely what he wants.

He hasn't got carte blanche to do just exactly how he wants his defensive setup to be.

I think there's one thing.

I think the second thing is, I think it's a little bit easier at the international level to have a defensive approach, which is really unusual because first of all, fewer people see it.

And second of all, your opposition attack have less time to work on ways to get around it.

Whereas if you're Bordeaux, you've got the top 14 playoffs basically nailed by Christmas.

So you have time to then go, okay, we're likely going to face Leinster.

If we don't face Leinster, we'll face any other French side who we already know about.

So we have got months to work out how will we break down this Leinster defence.

And with all of those, every single modern defense, modern attack, there's always weaknesses in it.

I think we would say with the fairly high-pressure blitz, one of the ways around that is you have to tie it out in the players before they get off the line.

So speeding up the game, kicking effectively, turning the opposition around, making that one carry that gets you over the gain line that then speeds down every assuming blitz.

and then speeds up every chewing.

Look, it is a way of rounding.

And that obviously sounds very easy in principle, and it's fairly hard to do.

But there are ways to round these kind of defences.

I would also say, and I appreciate this is kind of controversial, but I think that modern defence coaches, to a certain extent, or coaches maybe, I don't think we know how good coaches are.