TARGET FOR TONIGHT
Cockerill will subject Jones to huge aerial bombardment but Wilson is confident Glasgow’s stand-in full-back can cope
EDINBURGH head coach Richard Cockerill has warned Glasgow’s Huw Jones to expect a relentless aerial bombardment as the capital men go all out to test the stand-in full-back’s nerve under the high ball.
Jones will fill in at No 15 for today’s Guinness Pro14 derby clash at BT Murrayfield and Cockerill admitted his team will try to put the Scotland cap under pressure from the first whistle.
‘I’d say he’s going to be catching a high ball quite early in the game, wouldn’t you?’ said Cockerill. ‘It’s no secret, is it? The way Glasgow defend, they don’t ask their full-backs to close up, so Glasgow full-backs maybe do less tackling and sit deeper in the way they defend compared to the amount other sides do.
‘Our strategy won’t change around how we get out of our half of the field and he’ll be under pressure to catch a few high balls.
‘He’s a very talented player and we’re not going to underestimate him and think that it’s going to be easy because he could kill it at full-back and that could be his new position for the rest of the season at Glasgow. I would expect that he’d be under pressure early in the game for obvious reasons.’
As well as having to deal with high balls, Jones will be on the end of some ferocious tackling as Cockerill has made clear to his players that, although he may struggle defensively at full-back, leaving wide-open spaces in front of him will play into his hands.
‘Huw is a world-class 13 and attacks well,’ said the Edinburgh head coach. ‘We’ll have to see how his positioning is in the back field, but certainly going forward, counter-attacking, if you kick loosely to a player of his quality, then he’s going to cause problems, so he has to be stopped.
‘He likes attacking ball in hand, he’s very, very quick, and he’s got a very good eye for the gap. We’re going to have to be smart in how we play him. He’s a very talented footballer and we’ve got to make sure we give him as little opportunity as possible.’
Glasgow Warriors head coach Danny Wilson said Jones had been working hard on the defensive part of his game, especially dealing with high balls.
‘Huw will be tested against Edinburgh’s kicking game and that is an element he has been working on,’ said Wilson. ‘Defensively, it is a different type of role for him.
‘It is a backfield coverage role, a pendulum role with his two wingers. It is a slightly different tackling role to 13, where you are the lead defender, especially if you play quite an aggressive defence. His defence has been questioned in the past but I have confidence in him to do well.’
Wilson admits he has been left with little option but to play Jones out of position.
The coronavirus pandemic has left the Warriors short of cover at 15 and with Glenn Bryce still working his way back to fitness, Wilson is confident Jones can show his versatility.
Glasgow are highly unlikely to make the Pro14 play-offs and Wilson admits he would not have taken the risk if more had been at stake.
‘When we picked up rugby again after full lockdown, we didn’t have a full-back,’ he said. ‘We had Ollie Smith coming out of the 20s, and he has had a couple of little niggles, so the first dilemma we had was what we were going to do at full-back. That was the situation I was dealt and had to get on with things.
‘Needs must for us as there was a hole to fill and we felt that Huw had played there before at the Stormers in South Africa and he is an outstanding attacking presence. There is an element of experiment but this is the kind of game to try that experiment. I think we have to be gutsy and try these things. So far, it has been quite positive but the ultimate test will be the game.
‘Glenn Bryce needed to get a bulk of conditioning training under his belt before we could bring him back in and by then we had done a lot of work with Huw. Glenn is on the bench because he has done that work now and is fit and ready to play but it made sense to continue with Huw at 15.
‘As for Tommy (Seymour), it made more sense for him to be an out-and-out winger rather than move two or three people around.’
Wilson said that Jones, 26, is ‘excited’ about making the change from centre, where he has won all of his 25 Scotland caps to full-back.
‘The first thing you do when you speak to a player about a slightly different role is find out where they are,’ he said. ‘His response was really positive and he is really excited. I think he has a real spring in his step and he sees this as something he can offer.
‘That’s what pushed us in that direction. We played with him there early on in training and he really took to it and enjoyed it. He is looking forward to the experience. We’re not asking him to do something he is not motivated to do.
‘Granted, outside centre to 15 isn’t done much any more in terms of changing positions but it used to happen and I think that Huw will be a good fit. This is the type of game where we get the opportunity to do that.
‘He ticks a lot of the boxes for full-back but he needs to get in there and give it a go. He also needs to do it more than once, to be fair, because I don’t think you can chuck somebody in and assess every detail on one game. It’s a start for him and us.’