Lesson learned from quick-thinking Clermont

There was a time when full-backs or others in defensive positions got a clap on the back when they found a long, relieving touch.

However, as developments in last Sunday’s Clermont Auvergne-Munster European Champions Cup match demonstrated, under the laws now applying, it would be much wiser to sacrifice length for knocking the ball so far out of play that it cannot be used by the opposition to counterattack.

Wing Andrew Conway is just one Munster man who has been looking back on the way Clermont used the strategy to score two of their three tries.