Rugby union: how England learnt from Liverpool FC
England’s 18-7 victory over Ireland in the Autumn Nations Cup on Saturday was lit up by a moment of spectacular individual brilliance, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. Following an unsuccessful Irish line-out, winger Jonny May received the ball deep in his own half and decided to sprint “full-tilt” ahead. He began his run on the left flank, then cut inwards and booted the ball deep into the Irish half, then sprinted forward and kicked the ball over the tryline – where he touched it down moments later leaving a half-dozen Irishmen laying “face down in his wake”. It was the sort of try “you dream about scoring when you’re a little kid with a head full of wild ideas”. The only thing it lacked was a “crowd to cheer it”.
The inspiration for that try, as Eddie Jones – England’s head coach – admitted afterwards, was Liverpool FC. Keen to improve his side’s transition play, said Daniel Schofield in The Sunday Telegraph, Jones had turned for help to Ian Graham, Liverpool’s director of research – the man “credited as the architect of an analytics upheaval at Anfield”. The meetings with Graham, said Jones, had made a real difference: it made his players far better at turning defence into attack. “It’s an exciting area for us,” he added: just look at “that try today where we shifted the ball quickly to the outside”. Then again, his side, as he was quick to concede, are still “in nursery school – whereas Liverpool are doing their PhD at Oxford”.