A rugby field is longer than it is wide, so why not attack in the same fashion?

Wednesday night’s session was an eye opener about French rugby, especially in light of the weekend international. Basically it was a 2 hour lesson in keeping the ball moving, keeping it off the ground and that old adage ‘making the ball do the work’. First we crowded in to a changing room and got a video presentation on some examples of what we wanted to start happening naturally: everyone who takes the ball advances the pace of the ball, it never slows down. The coach frequently looked at me and I got the impression he was talking directly to me, possibly because I’m the stand-off, possibly because I’m Scottish and he doubts how natural this way of playing was and partly because of the faults he saw in Scotland’s play on Saturday: too sideways, too many rucks, too much slow ball, though it all looked very nice.

So out on the pitch we basically played 15 on 15, stopping whenever we were deemed to have failed. This was often when there was a ruck, and definitely when it was slow. The aim was for everyone who carried the ball to have the triangle of support players behind him. This was where McGeechan came in (not literally...). It made me quite proud that Geech, a Scot, is revered abroad like this. But then again, he’s never got the credit north of the border that he deserves, while a messiah down south.

We played and played for what seemed like hours, it was knackering stuff, not just moving from ruck to ruck like we might normally do but continually playing with the ball off the ground. If the triangle is in place behind the ball carrier then there should, in theory, be no need for rucks as the ball carrier does all he can to stay on his feet fully in the knowledge that he has support players and as soon as the ball begins to slow in a collision (as it naturally does when coming into contact with a defender), he can simply move it on to the man coming on at pace, thereby not getting bogged down in the contact.

A rugby field is longer than it is wide, so why not attack in the same fashion?

Ironically, while watching France exploit space so well on Saturday, I was already thinking about how Dusautoir naturally, when tackled, works extremely hard to free his arms. This freeing of the arms in an effort to move the ball on to someone coming at pace is maybe more important than trying to blast through the tackle by yourself.

What all this did, as the coach mentioned at the start to me, is partially dispel the myth of French flair. When we see the French breakaway off turnover ball and see the offloads come and the running lines and it looks lovely, it isn’t ‘flair’. It’s a ball carrier/support system that has been drilled into these players since they were young. It’s natural, it just happens like a click of the fingers. We hear a lot about how the French play so loose and in such a disorderly fashion but on Wednesday night, the word ‘order’ was used all the time, order out of disorder. It all comes from this deep support play, an insistence that the ball carrier isn’t selfish and everyone else holds their depth and makes sure they add pace, not slow the movement down. So often on Wednesday night, with only 4 people down one touchline, the ball could be advanced half the pitch through continual offloads and support play.

Some of the best examples of this working were found on the Lions ’09 Tour to SA where they cut the defence open so many times. They didn’t go round them, creating space out wide as we so often hear these days. They just went through them, 3 or 4 of them at a time.

I’ve often thought about the differences in the rugby between here and Scotland – ever since I found myself totally lost in the pre-season games of touch –but never really been able to put my finger on it. There have been little things that I have maybe touched on here and there, but Wednesday night was the first time I felt like I’d pinned something down.

It’s exhilarating stuff, and clearly, I find it fascinating.