Don’t knock maul, it’s art, says Dai Young

Dai Young, the Wasps director of rugby, believes the driving maul will continue to be a potent try-scoring weapon despite fears that it is dominating the game.
Every Premiership game features numerous attempts to score tries using a driving maul after a lineout win and Young’s own team have a useful version of the driving maul.
The most recent law change affecting this aspect of the sport states: “The ball can be moved backwards, hand to hand once the maul has formed. A player is not allowed to move/slide to the back of the maul when he is in possession of the ball.”
Young said: “Changing the law about placing the ball to the back of the maul after a lineout means that teams have spent even longer working on it than normal to get into the position to use the drive.
“It really is an art that needs a lot of work to get right. Inevitably, that also means teams have also spent more time trying to work out how to stop it!
“Teams are on red alert when it comes to the driving maul off the lineout. People talk about it being used a lot now, but it was an attacking weapon when I played and has a place in the game.”
Young has turned the Wasps pack into exponents of an effective driving maul which regularly brings tries, having recognised that it was an area of their attacking strategy that needed attention.
But also, in Joe Launchbury, Wasps have the best driving maul disruptor since Simon Shaw.
Without someone of Launchbury’s physical size and technical excellence to get him into positions to disrupt the effectiveness of the opposition’s maul, teams all too often resort to illegally pulling it down, happy to concede three points rather than seven.
Young said: “Defending the drive from the maul is difficult and you have to attack the head of the drive.
“If you can splinter the head from the supporting players you have a chance of stopping it but if you get it wrong it is a try – simple as that. You have one chance to stop it and that means putting your head where it hurts.
“There is also a technical ability to know how to destabilise the opposition driving maul and you see on a regular basis that when it is done properly and the opposition don’t stop it immediately then you have problems.”
NEALE HARVEY