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Chapter 1: What tactics did Bordeaux use to outsmart Leinster?
Hello, welcome to the Counter Rock Rugby Podcast. It's brought to you by the Irish Times in partnership with Oak Energy. Brett Igoe is here with me. First time on the pod. I'm sure plenty of people have seen Brett. He writes for The Currency and has done a few other podcasts around this place. Big following on social media, putting out clips, making graphics.
Brett is a former analyst with Leinster and Scotland. For those who have seen some of those graphics that come up, Brett is a numbers guy and People may not know that I'm a big numbers guy as well. So a little bit self-indulgent to get a fellow man who enjoys talking about data analysis on. But Brett, how are things?
I mean, you've been very busy since the weekend picking through Leinster's defeat. Dare I say, there's been a few things that stood out to you.
Personally, thanks for the introduction. It's tough having to watch it twice. Tough to have watched it a third time. It doesn't get any easier the more you watch it, unfortunately. I just find it really interesting just to look at both teams and how they set themselves up and what they wanted to do and what they wanted to achieve.
And I just thought that I was really impressed with how UUB were set up in terms of even things like their line-out defence. The use of Cameron Wokey, how they handled the 10-minute red or the yellow cards, how they generally attacked Leinster. I thought it was really, really impressive.
It was like as though they looked at opposition who caused Leinster problems and they just cherry-picked the best of them and just put it all together as their game plan. Look, it was really impressive what they did. And unfortunately for Leinster, the wait goes on, doesn't it?
Interesting, because watching it live in Bilbao, my original thought was, oh God, everyone's going to go to McNamara unpicked the Blitz, you know, McNamara out thinks Nina Burr. That was all the narrative in the buildup, like who would outthink each other. And I don't know, maybe this is just my tendency to try and not just take the easy narrative and copy what everyone else is saying.
But my first thought live was for all the prep clearly that was done and impressive coaching that went on. Leinster were just overpowered and you can only go so far when overpowered. I'm assuming you're going to tell me that there's a little bit more to it than that.
you're correct, you know, like the try they scored, they had to go through those 19 phases. Like, in that heat, as the players keep reminding me, it was tough, you know, but that's eating on the energy levels. It actually is causing a bit of self-doubt in the players' minds. Mentally, how are the players fixed? I'm not too sure I've ever seen Hugo Keenan drop
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Chapter 2: How did Bordeaux's game plan exploit Leinster's weaknesses?
You said it's something that piqued my interest previously that it looks like Bordeaux kind of picked different elements from different teams of what's worked against Leinster in recent times. What did you see there? A couple of examples.
Yeah, a few examples. Like as Noel mentioned in his conference, by going wide into that wide space when lens are blitzing all the time, I think he referred to as fool's gold. And it's very easy to press the pause button on the video and go, yeah, look at all the space out there. But Do you have the ability to get that ball out to that space?
So I actually think Bordeaux took a slightly different route to it. They actually attacked Leinster in around that ruck defense, very tight to the ruck. They manipulated their pillars and you can see them doing like these small little late switches to attack more or less the negative pillar position. So essentially the one close to the ruck.
So there's different teams that have different terminologies for it. They call it the pillar. So it's the first defender beside the Rook. But it was the blindside one they went after quite a bit. So if you see Lukaku's try, you can see, I think it was Henshaw went on an overfold. So he left that position.
If you rewind back and have a look at two, three, four phases beforehand, you can actually see Lukaku looking for it. So it was definitely something they prepped for. Like he can see his eyes looking up for those gaps, for that space. And he just waited for the opportunity. And the opportunity came and he was just gone. So that was one area that I think they caused Leinster a lot of problems.
I said this to Gordon Darcy, actually, on our podcast earlier this week. But you can see how Bordeaux prepared for that space next to the ruck. And I won't go too long on this because it is repeating myself. But in the warm-up, now we didn't see, like Jaliber has made that like line 10 line break. near close to the rock, a bit of a trademark himself.
And he didn't actually do it in the match itself, but in the warmup, what they would do is kind of, you know, a shoulder touch type thing where they deliberately allow a forward on like a short tip line to break the gain line.
And as soon as he did, Jalabre would just flood up from 10 or, you know, running behind a forward line or wherever he was, you know, two, three players out, he'd be there straight away at the gap near the rock. Cause obviously if, if, if the rock has gone backwards, then, or the game line has gone backwards close to the ruck, where is the space going to be?
It's going to be very close to the rucks. They haven't got pillar defense there. So it's just, you know, just, I don't know. That was something I picked up on before the game that they really do. They did went after that space near the ruck.
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Chapter 3: What role did mental preparation play in Leinster's performance?
When he slapped a line out forward five minutes from his own line. And that actually did go forward.
Well, it's actually one that never hasn't got mentioned at all. I was going to question Joe McCarthy's try that he scored. I wasn't aware you could jump over the tackler.
Oh, Dan Sheehan got in a bit of trouble on the Lions tour, didn't he? For jumping over a player last year.
Yeah, it was pretty similar to that Dan Sheehan moment. Yeah.
I think I do remember sat in the press box, a couple of the journalists pointed it out, but I think the Joe McCarthy jump, but I think by the time the game finished, there were other priorities for the analysis given the problems elsewhere.
Yeah, I just thought that maybe the ref was just taking a bit of sympathy at that stage. He was just not going to go. I listened to the game with the ref, Mike,
none of the UBB players made any reference to actually I don't think he's allowed to do that What do you make of we talked a little bit about a defensive system there and why maybe it's hard to actually read well look Leinster were definitely out of thought and unpicked certainly in that first phase strike for Uberti in the first half but why elsewhere it's probably a little bit difficult to analyse the efficacy of a system when
you just can't win any collisions and no defensive system, blitz, drift, whatever, you know, hard rucks, soft rucks, it's going to do anything if you can't win defensive collisions. But what about on the ball? I mean, Leinster have definitely gone more possession heavy this year. I think they're the second highest carrying team in the URC this season. They made over 60 carries more than GBB.
in this game granted chasing the game that was always going to be likely but you know one team followed the blueprint made famous by South Africa and knockout rugby which is kicking plenty contestables winning lots of breakdown ball playing without the ball but being very efficient when you are in the 22 and that team wasn't the one that was coached by a two-time South African World Cup winner
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Chapter 4: How did Bordeaux's line-out strategy impact the game?
And again, I don't have any data to prove that. I'm just going on optics of what I see on the pitch. He has a back row, which is as good as any back row in that competition. Unfortunately, I think Jansen is out this weekend, so he'll miss that.
Look, it's been impressive from where he came from, from where that group came from, by the looks of things, they've completely bought into his methodologies. And it's just been great. And I wouldn't relate them going to Glasgow and nicking a win somewhere along the line.
I think, I know I'm not getting the whole Scottish route here, but all I hear from Glasgow is about their, where are we playing the final? I think we had this before the European game was where are we playing the semi-final against Leinster? They jump ahead of themselves and it would be nice if Connacht were the team that just caught them out.
I'm not sure Glasgow have reached the same heights they had just after Christmas. I thought they were playing some really, really good stuff there. Look, they finished top of the table, so they're still going to be pretty good. But yeah, it'd be nice if Connacht was to nick it and I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
defensively seems to be something they've really turned the corner on. I mean, they've always been a free-flowing attacking side that's been able to score tries. But we all know Lankensker likes to coach both sides of the ball out there. But that tends to be the consensus view is that they've added a steal there.
yeah no definitely they've they look a different team but if you're involved in coaching these things can't be changed overnight they need a lot of time to bed in and they've got to bed in him and his systems and what he wants to do and his methodologies and look it's always going to take time like we can see all of these projects and that's why I know we're going to talk about Munster like it
it will take time to do these things. It's not a quick-fix solution at all. I think even Lee Arbour mentioned it was going to take him 14 weeks to do his defensive patterns or his defensive philosophies and embeds. We can't just get world-class coaches into our provinces and just go, right, we're ready to go and we're going to be really, really competitive.
I'm actually surprised how quickly Stuart has done it, if I'm really honest.
Yes, it's been quick, but let's be forget, they were in Bedaldins, what, January 10th?
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