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.

“In hindsight we would normally put those kicks into the stand,” he reflected, ahead of this weekend’s trip to Scotstoun. “We were getting lengthy touches but they obviously had a tactic to throw in quickly. I think Felix Jones put in a good ball down into their five-metre line and we actually chased quite well. They threw a really long 30-metre pass and cleared their lines. We thought we had them pinned into their five-metre line.

“We probably should have realised that earlier in the game and scrapped going for those extra-long kicks, just hitting touch and making sure we could set up our set-piece and then taking it again from there. Those quick lineouts proved costly.”

Assistant coach Brian Walsh accepts that a lesson was learned in Clermont where touch kicking was concerned.

“Their counter-attack caused us a lot of difficulty, with the quality they had,” says Walsh.

“Considering the timing of when those counterattacks came at us, putting the ball into row Z was not a bad strategy. There’s learning in that for everybody. I think we were conscious of it and some of it was down to execution rather than lack of knowledge.”