Contrasting styles in pivotal clash of the No9s at Twickenham
England’s Youngs takes on the wiles of his Welsh ‘New-age’ rival Williams, writes Charlie Morgan
For a small window into why New Zealand head coach Ian Foster was so keen to bring Brad Mooar into his backroom team, look no further than a post-match interview that Mooar gave to broadcasters Premier Sports after Scarlets’ 16-14 win over Cardiff Blues in January.
A trademark interception from Gareth Davies had decided an unremarkable Pro14 derby. Nothing new there. More interesting and innovative was that Davies had begun in midfield from a five-man defensive line-out.
Traditionally, in such situations, scrum-halves are posted in the five-metre channel or directly in behind their competing forwards.
“We forced them to win the ball at the front of the line-out,” explained Mooar, looking back on how Davies read Jarrod Evans’s intended transfer to Blues backrower Nick Williams before sprinting 55 metres to the try-line.
“Then [Davies] could bring the line speed off the back. I thought that was a lovely plan, there. And he picked it off.”
Although he was outplayed by Antoine Dupont against France, it was still surprising to see Davies dropped entirely by Wayne Pivac ahead of this weekend. Tomos Williams starts for Wales with Rhys Webb on the bench.
Their matchup against England’s scrum-half duo of Ben Youngs and Willi Heinz will be a pivotal component of the game at Twickenham. As with the most intriguing contests in sport, there are contrasts at play.
Williams is an all-round operator. Wiry and rapid, he can also fulfil the destructive defensive role in which Davies has thrived for Wales. South Africa, and their defence guru Jacques Nienaber, have granted Faf de Klerk similar licence to roam and raid.
Rassie Erasmus has a preferred profile of scrum-half. Herschel Jantjies and intercept-king Cobus Reinach are aggressive and quick, too. From a spot in the front line of defence, both are deadly in the seconds that follow a turnover. Jantjies ran 60 metres to score for the Stormers after an errant Jaguares pass two weeks ago.
Alex Mitchell learning from Reinach at Northampton Saints can only be good news for England. Surely a shoo-in for the summer tour to Japan, he set up try-scorer Alex Dombrandt against the Barbarians at Twickenham last June after intercepting Webb at the tail of a line-out. Those steals have become Reinach’s speciality.
“Historically, nines have been your safety valve,” says Glenn Delaney, Davies’s defence coach at Scarlets. “They have covered the chip space and filled in around guard [next to rucks] if you are short. I guess we’ve seen nines in the front line a little more, which is a little bit of a return to what we had with players like Mike Phillips and other big, physical presences. What you are trying to do is interrupt the flow of the attack and trying to force errors which will result in the ball being turned over.
“When you are able to count those guys out, giving them a variable role so they are not part of the structure, you are using their skills to help the team. With the line-speed that Gareth and Tomos bring, they are going to be in the eye-line of first-receivers.”
Delaney speaks about how defences should not be totally consistent. Rigid structures are easier for attacks to predict and pick apart. Youngs and Heinz do occupy England’s front fairly regularly, but they are vocal organisers rather than disrupters. Dynamic forwards such as Courtney Lawes and Maro Itoje lead the charge. Tom Curry sometimes lurks in the backfield before shooting up to strike – not unlike Sale colleague De Klerk. England do change the picture for opponents, but in different ways.
The box-kicking of Youngs will be prominent. His clever, diagonal grubber laid on George Ford’s tone-setting try against Ireland. Williams is a “New-age” scrum-half, with his own armoury of dinks and chips. On the occasion of his 99th cap, Youngs will be aiming to prove he is not yesterday’s man.