Cullie Tucker was the more visible, but John Farrell, sitting on one of two stools close to the touchline at the Mikheil Meskhi stadium last Saturday night, also played a pivotal role in solving Ireland’s scrum issues that surfaced in the first half against Georgia.
Irish forwards coach Tucker ran the water into the team during stoppages. But when the need arose he made a beeline for the second seat as Farrell, one of two video analysts alongside Brian Colclough, provided half a dozen angles to scrutinise the scrum footage.
This enabled Tucker to try to problem solve on the hoof, long before the interval where he was able to directly address the glitches. Sitting in a Portakabin that was more sauna than refuge from the sweltering Portuguese heat at the Irish training venue on the outskirts of Lisbon on Tuesday, he offered an insight into the interaction.
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“I take a look at the scrum live, ideally it would be close to me,” Tucker explained. “One of the analysts has a feed on the sideline, so I can go over directly to him, and he’ll have five or six angles there that I can flick through, [to see] how we’re getting into the scrum or what our height is like post-entry.”
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Tucker looks for a pattern to see if there is a recurring glitch. The message going into the players has to be succinct, drilling to the core of the problem, and offering a redress in real time. He continued: “We started well, got a penalty advantage on the first [scrum] and managed to turn them over.
“[Then] the binding phase just got messy. The key to any scrum, really, is how balanced it is on both sides before you can get in. So, that was a big fix-up, and for us, from about 20 minutes to a 20-minute period in the second half, we just weren’t getting into the scrum well enough. They were getting in better than us.
“It came down to the binding phase and how we were setting up. So, we had a couple of tweaks at half-time, and looked at a couple of clips. With a big scrum just after half-time then, ours was far better than it had been the previous 20 minutes. It got us back to where we wanted to be as an Irish scrum.
“[The players] have to be able to apply whatever messaging we’re giving, and they have to be able to tell me how they’re feeling on the pitch as well, which is huge around scrummaging. It’s a credit to them, and I think it’s a great learning [experience] to go through.
“It’s a dark place to get into, and to find some light out of it I think is very, very important, and to come out the other side of it. Finishing three penalties all against them – I was disappointed to lose one on our own put-in for sure – but to turn one over on them as well let us come out of the game fairly positive and feeling good about how we’re going and where we need our scrum to be.”
Ireland’s lineout work was first class, Ryan Baird terrorising the Georgian throw, while Darragh Murray, on debut, did the calling on the team’s throw. Tucker, who took over as interim head coach from Pete Wilkins at Connacht during last season, is well versed in the qualities of the 24-year-old secondrow, with whom he works on a daily basis.
If others, including Murray by his own admission after the game, were a little nervous about how it might go, Tucker wasn’t. “I have known Darragh for a long time now. He’s a very calm individual, a very intelligent rugby player,” said Tucker.
“He takes stuff on very, very quickly, but Paul’s [O’Connell, Ireland’s interim head coach] coaching is to the fore there, [and also] the work John Muldoon has done [with Murray] in Connacht. He’s a sponge for that kind of information, and he’s a smart rugby player. You have to be able to call a lineout.
“Himself and Bairdo [Ryan Baird], there’s a lot of good [rugby] IP there as well, which they’re constantly sharing. They prepared really well during the week for the pictures that were coming, and they were able to react on the pitch as well. So, it was a good day for Darragh.”
[ Ireland’s six debutants against Georgia: What they said and what song they sangOpens in new window ]
Tucker will work under Connacht’s new head coach Stuart Lancaster next season but he’s enjoyed the interim responsibility and also being part of the Ireland coaching set-up for the two-Test summer tour. “I’m way better for the experience of running an entire programme and stepping up here, working with different coaches, and experiencing international rugby players.
“When I sit down and reflect at the end of the season, I’m going to be a far better coach on the back of it. It’s been great experiences, loads of learning, and I think it’ll definitely kick me on in my career.”
On a more serious note, with Scott Wilson’s departure for home and Murray’s decision to cut his hair, Tucker no longer has any meaningful competition for the best mullet hairstyle.
