Brendan Gallagher: Willie wasn’t a wonker – he just got it wrong
Isn’t it odd, by the way, that Cipriani is never allowed the luxury of a bad day at the office yet George Ford is? Cipriani gets written off when he makes a mistake or when he has a very rare stinker but Ford is supported and encouraged all the way and yes, down the line, he repays that with the sort of performance we saw for England against Scotland.
Wasps fault line in Dublin – and on most occasions when they underperform – is a front five that gets found out by the very best, especially when Joe Launchbury goes a little quiet which is going to happen occasionally because he’s only human.
Realistically you are not going to win the European Cup with a front five containing just one current Test player. In the front row Matt Mullen, Tommy Taylor and Jack Cooper-Wooley all have their fine individual qualities but collectively they are not going to prevail against a front of say Jack McGrath, Richard Schmidt and Tadh Furlong.
The alarm bells for me started ringing pre-match – and I tweeted about it before kick-off so this is not retrospective wisdom – when Wasps relegated Ashley Johnson to the bench.
When will England or English clubs ever learn about playing Ireland or the Irish provinces in Ireland? It’s a different ball game. The
Leinster dogs of war were about to be unleashed on Wasps and the battle was always going to be over within half an hour unless the Wasps pack fronted up big time and scrapped it out. Wasps badly needed to put some stick about, not just soak up the pressure.
I would want the incredibly physical Johnson leading the charge every time in those circumstances. Tommy Taylor is a fine young hooker, he could easily finish his career with 30 or 40 England caps, but Wasps needed Johnson on the pitch from minute one at the Aviva.
As for the Le Roux moment of madness, on closer inspection, I’ve become a little more sympathetic. Plonker was the kindest thing I could think to say on twitter along with some advice to leave the flash stuff to Chris Ashton. You have to work incredibly hard to master the art of ‘spontaneous’ splashdowns.
But I was a tad harsh. If you go onto Youtube there are a couple of tribute montages to the richly talented if eccentric Le Roux in which some of his best tries are pulled together and, in fairness, he regularly employs that ball tucked into the chest technique when diving comparatively low to score, hitherto without alarm or mishap.
It is not a triumphant extrovert expression of joy and cockiness, rather it’s his version of the old safety-first Rugby League-style touchdown that became common currency over a decade ago when the trickle of ex League players became a rush.
The physical act of touching down, especially one handed when at full pace and under pressure, can be tricky. At the key moment the ball suddenly becomes very visible and vulnerable to heroic last ditch defenders and their flailing hands and feet.
Hence sometimes the most effective way to score is to pull the ball close into your chest and, with the pill out of sight and protected from all comers, launch into an unstoppable dive. With a few it’s a thing of beauty, with most it’s about as graceful as felled oaks crashing to earth.
With Le Roux on this, however, it all went pear-shaped mainly because he was home and hosed, under no pressure and had time to think. Too much time. Somewhere in mid-flight it suddenly occurred to him that he could hurt or break either his wrist or a rib if he touched down full on with the ball held in both hands tucked up under his torso.
So he made that fatal last second adjustment, of trying to move the ball out to the side in his right hand. If he had actually been negotiating a last ditch challenge the adrenalin of the situation would have seen him just instinctively complete the manoeuvre as normal, almost certainly without injury.
Ashton gets a lot of stick for his splashdowns but, whisper it quietly, I’ve become a fan. He’s canny. He never remotely employs them if the actual scoring of the try is in doubt. He is a brilliant natural try scorer – the best the English game has seen since Rory Underwood – but mostly he completes the scoring by using his low centre of gravity and great ability to cut in on just the right angle and ride the first and sometimes the second tackle.
Ashton only splashes down when the coast is clear. He launches off into the stratosphere and at a much steeper angle than anybody in the game’s history that I can recall and momentarily his two arms are extended like the wings of a Vulcan bomber, the ball seemingly attached to his right hand and wrist like an armed missile. If he ever he does come a cropper that is where it will happen.
But watch what happens next. Before he even reaches maximum height, the ball is smoothly returned safely to the fuselage and the actual splashdown – the scoring of the try – is perfectly controlled. Its a work of bloody art I tell you.
So I would strongly advise Willie Le Roux to dig out a few Ashton clips and, while he is on line, the Bok should cheer himself up and check out Juan Manuel Leguizamon’s howler for London Irish against Wasps in 2007 which will remain, forever and a day, the world leader in splashdown cockups.
