The cost of living is rising relentlessly. The cost of food and fuel – up. The cost of energy and utilities – up. The cost of buying homes and cars – up. Most families are tightening the purse strings. It is usually the same atmosphere in sports after a major competition has finished.
In rugby terms, it would only be right to expect a period of retrenchment after the World Cup. Players are fatigued and often carrying injuries, feeling the weight of another big performance peak in an already-over-long season. Now is not the time to be seeking creative additions, or a rapid phase of new growth.
The Scotland-France game at Murrayfield is a typical example of the kind of fare that results – cagey to the point of risk-averse, focused on giving nothing away rather than embracing opportunities, a tenacious arm-wrestle rather than a dance of skill.
For France at least, there was an excuse ready to hand: the loss of the world’s best player, Antoine Dupont, to the national sevens programme. Replacing a once-in-a-generation talent would never be an easy matter.
Ireland might have used similar reasoning to justify a dip in performance and buy some time for a rebuild. After all, Andy Farrell had lost evergreen thirty-something Johnny Sexton to retirement and prevailing wisdom was the men in green could not afford to be without him. At least, not if they expected to win more silverware. Young Munsterman Jack Crowley would take the fly-half reins.
Back-to-back European Champions Cup winning coach of La Rochelle, Ronan O’Gara, poured a cooling dose of common sense over such concerns.
“It’s only natural that there’s a big void there,” he said. “But in setting Jack to succeed, you don’t want to be referencing Johnny all the time, because Johnny had his time and he was fantastic, and now it is Jack’s time. We don’t know where his ceiling is.”
With a write-up like that, it is no wonder O’Gara had tried to recruit Crowley for his own Rochelais squad only three years ago. Even when Crowley was stuck fast in a logjam of fly-halves at Thomond Park – including Ben Healy, JJ Hanrahan and oft-injured Joey Carbery – O’Gara suspectedthe 21-year-old might turn out to be the best of the entire bunch. As he commented in his column for The Irish Examiner at the time:
“He has already turned heads with his displays for the Ireland Under-20s. Crowley may be fourth in line at the moment, but things move quickly when you least expect them.
“Patience is a virtue in these situations and Jack is happy to bide his time and make his mark with Munster. I know all this because he has turned down the chance to sign for La Rochelle, with whom I am familiar.
Am I disappointed? Bloody right I am. This boy is a talent.”
Where outsiders saw only a deep dark hole in Sexton’s absence, O’Gara observed a hidden thread of natural evolution, and a newly-minted opportunity for both his old province and his country of birth.
Crowley is the same age [24] as Harlequins’ Marcus Smith but the curve of his progression could not be less similar. In Ireland, it is very much easier for a Crowley – or for that matter, a Ciaran Frawley or one of the Leinster Byrne brothers, Ross or Harry – to step into Sexton’s shoes because the systems are all familiar.
Smith has been shovelled into some very disparate systems at national level, first by Eddie Jones and latterly Steve Borthwick, playing patterns which have little in common with those at his club. Crowley can move from province to nation in the confident knowledge the expectations of him will be very much the same.
In his fledgling Test career thus far, Smith has been asked to start games with four different inside centres [Owen Farrell, Guy Porter, Manu Tuilagi and Ollie Lawrence]. Each has contrasting strengths and weaknesses, and all bar Tuilagi possess a skillset poles apart from his club 12 Andre Esterhuizen. Crowley has started games for his country with either Bundee Aki or Stuart McCloskey at 12. He knows the support he will get from both will be similar, and the attack systems will be near-identical to those in which he is embedded at Munster.
Crowley has therefore not only managed to replace one of the greats at his position satisfactorily, he has enabled the Ireland coaching staff to do what no nation has the right to do in the immediate backwash of a major competition; namely, to improve the creativity of their attack in a specific area of the field.
With Crowley at the helm, Ireland have increased the ratio of their offloads to carries from one offload every 23 carries at the 2023 Six Nations [the tournament average was one in 17] to one every 15 carries in the first two rounds of the same competition a year later. Furthermore, most of those offloads have occurred in the red zone, no more than 30m from the opposition goal line. They are enabling Ireland to strike more surgically, without allowing the defence to regroup.
In two rounds of play, Ireland have already offloaded the ball 18 times and six of those have produced tries. Offloading was the key to two of the Irish tries in the first-round thrashing of France in Marseille.
It is especially important for team with an acknowledged strength to be able to move beyond it. Ireland are the kings of the ruck-building: the men in green average 109 rucks per game and they use the breakdown to inject speed and momentum into their attack.
The threat of the offload – via first Aki and then his centre partner Robbie Henshaw – adds a new dimension which suits Crowley’s game perfectly. The tyro scored as early as the seventh minute in against Italy on Sunday.
Crowley gets his arms over the top of the tackle to release his club-mate Calvin Nash, then he is on hand on the next phase to finish off a pass from another man of Munster, number nine Craig Casey. At the beginning of the second quarter, the new 10 was at it again.
On this occasion, Crowley demonstrates his proficiency at the underarm offload around the back of the tackler, then Henshaw tacks on one of his own for good measure to give Dan Sheehan room for a joyful gallop down the left. The 10’s offloading genius was infectious, bringing the best out of the two men outside him and particularly, the Ulster giant McCloskey.
On two occasions McCloskey extends the full range of his 6ft 4.5ins frame to deliver basketball-type offloads from above head level which engineer a break on the edges of the field, in one of his most effective attacking international performances.
Thus far at least, the absence of the ‘irreplaceable’ Sexton has scarcely been noticed, and Crowley has become so smoothly embedded he is already offering a real point of difference.
Ireland are not just building their typical momentum through the speed of delivery from the breakdown, they are adding prudent passes after contact in the opposition red zone, to ensure a broken defence has no chance to be anything other than broken. It is rare glimpse of sunlight in a championship which has to date, been shrouded in humdrum grey.
Comments
Join free and tell us what you really think!
Sign up for free