Pass, move. Pass, move. Perpetually advancing. Always forward. Like the cogs of a Swiss pocket watch, Ireland’s attack operates with machine-like precision. Johnny Sexton retires, Jack Crowley keeps the enterprise thrumming. Andy Farrell makes five changes to a pack that crushed France in Marseille and Italy’s forwards get the same treatment a week later. Tick, tick. Pass, move.
As revealed by Sage analytics, Ireland are averaging 5.8 metres per pass in this year’s Six Nations. Against Italy, 122 of their passes travelled less than five metres. No other side last week played more than 66 short passes. By shifting the ball around the fringe and targeting the outside shoulder of the close-in defender, Ireland’s ball carriers are able to rumble on with a continuity that at times seems unstoppable.
“I suppose our forwards are very good at short passing,” says Paul O’Connell, Ireland’s forwards coach, as if slick handling skills from the tight five is nothing to get excited about. “That is what we ask them to do a lot. More so than other passes. Very often our forwards work in groups of three. They have short passes inside and outside with the backs behind.”
Italy’s head coach, Gonzalo Quesada, likened Ireland to New Zealand during their prime. “They just go through their basics and because their set piece was 100% efficient, they did what we know they can do,” Quesada said after his team were blown away 36-0 in Dublin. “When Ireland are at this level, there are not many teams in the world that can beat them.”
With two wins on the board, talk of a second grand slam in as many years has gained traction. O’Connell, who won the slam as a player in 2009, moved to cool down the hype. “We talk about winning, for sure, we always want to win the tournaments we’re playing in – but once we’ve cleared that up, we don’t really talk about it much more,” the former British & Irish Lions captain says. “We just focus on the next game. We focus on what needs to be better and get excited about doing the things we feel might lead to a performance.”
Continuity is the name of the game. O’Connell explains that – unlike some of Ireland’s competitors – there hasn’t been too much change in the dressing room, both in terms of players and staff, since the end of the World Cup. “We have a very experienced group. It’s quite settled. You begin to appreciate that when you have a settled group. We can layer things on. We’re not starting from scratch. We can get better and better at the simple things we’re doing.” Perhaps this is why tweaks in personnel, even in key positions on the park, don’t have a destabilising effect.
O’Connell credits the impact of Sexton, saying the retired fly-half’s legacy “lives on”. In his absence, leaders such as the new captain, Peter O’Mahony, and senior figures such as Caelan Doris, James Ryan, Iain Henderson and Garry Ringrose have taken on the task of driving standards and ensuring this next chapter is not weighed down by yet another World Cup quarter-final setback.
Another player shouldering greater responsibility is Robbie Henshaw. If selected against Wales, the 30-year-old centre will win his 70th cap. After a hamstring injury reduced his World Cup to just 59 minutes across two games where he came off the bench, the hard-running midfielder believes he is operating close to his best.
“For me, it’s always been about getting back-to-back games,” Henshaw says. “Every week you play you get more confidence. I’ve been building nicely. There’s more in me.”
After the disappointment of the World Cup, Henshaw spent a week at the Aspetar high-performance centre in Doha. Though he refers to it as a “work holiday”, he was under a strict regime that closely monitored his training loads and helped fast-track his recovery time.
“Coming back from the World Cup, I wasn’t in the best state physically and mentally,” Henshaw adds. “It took a few weeks to come into this campaign, and back at Leinster, to get back into the form I could get. Looking back at the last year, it’s been stop-start. I’m delighted that my body is in a good place and my form is in a good place.”
Henshaw references the work he has done with Jacques Nienaber, a double World Cup-winning coach with South Africa who is now an assistant at Leinster. As many as 19 players in Farrell’s Six Nations squad represent the Dublin-based club, adding to the continuity that makes this team such a formidable outfit.
“We’re adding layers and layers every week,” Henshaw says, echoing O’Connell’s thoughts. Even in separate press briefings, the whirring cogs operate with machine-like precision.
