Mike Prendergast: 'When they changed the rules they probably didn't realise it was going to come to this'

Prendergast says World Rugby’s aerial contest directive has led to more box kicks, more scrums and a noticeable decline in match quality

Mike Prendergast believes standout games in rugby have been few and far between recently. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile

Mike Prendergast has called out the unintended consequences of rugby’s directives around contestable kicks, claiming they are making the game slower and encouraging more box kicks.

Asking for World Rugby to review their November 2024 decision to punish kick escorting, thereby enabling chasers to contest for aerial balls unimpeded, the Munster senior coach, with chief responsibility for attack, believes the tactical change it has ushered in has led to more stoppages with a higher rate of knock-ons and then time-sapping scrums.

At Test level, some nations have adapted better than others, with world champions South Africa and Steve Borthwick’s England particularly excelling at retaining kicked ball in the air. Yet it has led to more kicking, less ball in play time and a greater reliance on set-piece, which also suits those heavyweight nations.

Speaking ahead of Munster’s Champions Cup pool clash with Gloucester at Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh, the former Grenoble, Stade Francais and Racing 92 attack coach gave an explanation of his frustrations with the tactical evolution in rugby and outlined why he believes the quality of matches has diminished since the World Rugby directive.

“The reality is, you look at ball in play now, and ball in play in most games has dropped off. I think when you strip it back and for anyone that's watching games at the moment, whether it's international, URC, there haven't been standout games.” 

Citing Munster’s derby win at Leinster in October as a rare exception, but of most matches Prendergast said: “It's so stop-start, the international games, our games, and there's a reason for it. You don't have your escorts going back.

“I think when trends come into the game, a lot of coaches follow it and a lot of teams end up following it, and it's kind of what's happening at the moment and, I suppose, us as attack coaches, we're trying to figure out how do we get out of it... how can we manoeuvre certain aspects to change it a small bit.

“It's coming down to aerial wingers, the best guys in the air, the biggest scrums. You put that ball in the air and you catch it, as a defensive team, it's generally hard enough to play against that.” 

The Munster senior coach recalled the 2020 Champions Cup semi-final between his Racing side and Saracens, using the English team’s excellent tactical kicking game as a precursor of the current malaise.

“They were so difficult to play. They were box kicking, but the box kicks were quite short. So, it just meant they’d all the players on their feet and they’d trap you. Richard Wigglesworth was nine (scrum-half) and he had a brilliant kicking game and he’d trap you in around that five to eight to 10 metres.

“So you're in an age of trying to play out and it's really hard and I remember talking to Finn (Russell) at half-time and we had Virimi Vakatawa and these X Factor players, but it was just impossible to break them down.

“I remember Finn saying: ‘It's nearly a boring game to play.’ I said: ‘I know, but there will probably be one moment.’ We spoke about one little ball over the top and to me it kind of feels like the game's gone that way at the moment.

“It's obvious to see it's becoming a box-kick game. You receive it, you play two or three phases and you generally kick back. There are times, don't get me wrong, you kick it and you win that ball, and that's where you can get the excitement from it. You're playing on top. You're playing in the ascendancy.

“If that doesn't happen, you either catch it or there's a knock-on and we're talking scrums and then we're going from set-piece to set-piece. There's beauty in scrums, of course there is, but it's slowing the game down and it's having (more) box kicks is naturally going to slow it down.

“We talk about ‘the five seconds’ (time limit to use the ball out of a ruck), but five seconds isn't five seconds anymore. When you're actually sitting down watching games now, there's less ball in play and we're watching games for far longer. We're sitting there for two hours watching a game.

“There's obviously going to be games like that with conditions and stuff, but I think, to be fair, when they changed the rules they probably didn't realise it was going to come to this.” 

Asked for his solution to the issue, Prendergast suggested outlawing one-handed tap backs in the air in favour of a return to catching high balls.

“Definitely I think people have to sit around the table and figure out, do we bring back the escorting, as it was before?

“Teams like Gloucester do it (tapping back) really, really well. They’ll kick short and they go up to tap and that can end up in a knock-on or it ends up in scraps. I just think when the escort was there, that's when there was probably less kicking in it because you'd less of a chance to get the ball back.

“So, when you watch it, teams were probably playing off 10 to exit a small bit more and it just changes the game. You would have heard over the last couple of years teams strategically will either kick out, they kick higher or they kick long and on.

“’Long and on’ means the ball is going to be on the pitch, so there's going to be high ball in play, which means that the ball is moving, people are moving. That's what we want to see.

“You look at the games this year, and there isn't too many games that have really jumped off the page. We saw a brilliant game of rugby in South Africa (Bulls v Bordeaux-Begles last weekend) at altitude, so they were kicking long. Bordeaux coming back were brilliant to watch but a lot of the game was long kicking because it was altitude. But the shorter kicking game means it just becomes slower because you're setting rucks, you're setting set-pieces, the flow isn't there.

“Phase attacks are less and less. So let's hope the rules change or what we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out as well is how we can see little kinks in it as well.”