The blueprint on exploiting Jacques Nienaber's rush defence

SPOTLIGHT: Ulster head coach Dan McFarland shared his insights on exploiting Leinster’s rush defence led by Jacques Nienaber.

Ulster claimed a famous victory at the RDS Arena on New Year’s Day, recording a 22-21 win over Leinster.

Trips to Dublin usually end in failure for Ulster.

However they managed to get one over on the United Rugby Championship leaders at the RDS due to the canny manner in which flyhalf Billy Burns took advantage of the altered Leinster defensive set-up under the newly recruited Nienaber, the recent Springboks World Cup-winning head coach.

Leinster have adopted a narrower, blitz-like approach to their defending since the arrival last month of the former South African boss as a senior coach under Leo Cullen.

They had secured hard-fought wins over Connacht, La Rochelle, Sale Sharks and Munster with him on board but this run came to an end when the accuracy of Burns’ kicking exposed them, the visiting flyhalf providing a booted in-behind assist for a couple of his team’s tries.

“I don’t think it is new knowledge but if you play the kind of defence that Leinster are going to play this year, they are susceptible to kicking, high quality and accurate,” McFarland said in the wake of the win.

“Billy is one of the best in the game at that. I genuinely mean that.

“It was a plan but you have got to have variety in that, you have got to be able to do it different ways; you can’t be obvious with it so setting it up and planning it is difficult but those guys, they understand that and they had to execute it well. Billy is brilliant and understands where players are going to be and was able to put the ball there, even when it’s not structured.”

Asked to shed more light on the Leinster blitz, McFarland added: “I’m not claiming to give you new information here, teams that have played against South Africa would have done exactly the same thing.

“Teams that blitz hard off the line are susceptible to attacking kicks but you have to be able to execute them. Ours came off [on Sunday] and, as I say, Billy is one of the best at it.”

While McFarland and co reaped reward versus the Nienaber defence with their kicking, he conceded they struggled at the breakdown with the South African’s tactic in that facet of play.

“In the first half we just didn’t exit properly so we heaped a lot of pressure on ourselves, we had to rely on aspects of our game that we didn’t really want to have to rely on defensively to be able to keep Leinster out.

“Leinster are a really good team and Jacques has brought in that relentlessness at the breakdown, particularly in [poor] weather. You saw it in La Rochelle.

“They played La Rochelle in conditions like this [at the RDS] and they were ferocious at the breakdown with multiple numbers on the basis that they know you are not going to move the ball wide because it is so dangerous in the conditions in your own half to do that so they pile multiple numbers in.

“We got caught with that, not aware enough, probably not committing enough people to the breakdown. We changed that at halftime, we talked about that and although it is still messy because it becomes like a free-for-all all in that area, we dealt with it much better in that second half but I still think there are areas of our exiting where we need to improve on.”

The victory lifted Ulster to fourth place on the table, six points behind Leinster with half of the campaign’s regulation-season 18 matches now played.

Source: Rugbypass