Ntamack gone. Who is next?

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Once the throw isn't straight one of the few French forwards who will run, Ollivon, is standing at the lineout seagulling his displease the Scottish jumper could only just reach it on the Scottish side. Then it takes 3 French forwards who don't get their press right to deal with VdM, and that means almost no French forwards are available to be wrapping around. Which leaves Ntamack and Danny quite a lot of ground to cover vs a running 10 with the ball in both hands looking for a defender to bite.

Point being I can see why Ntamack wants to stay his feet, not get planted and bet he's read the play else he's creating a 5 on 3 overlap for the attack. It's very easy to say just go low, it would perhaps fix the problems that did occur, it might simply see others transpire. At which point some learned folk would blame Ntamack for going off his feet and not remaining alive to a developing attack, or so one might suppose given some of the unhinged criticism he gets

Spot on. The best he can do for the team there is not commit until there is no other choice. Upright tackles are bad but he's attempting a grab at best because he's doing his utmost to stay in the fight for space and be able to cover across. His job there is to slow down Russell and without the knee clash maybe he succeeds.

I wonder how much they actually drill a drift and drop now, gifting territory in return for preventing a line break and having to resort to a scramble defence. And if they do does it even then stand in stark contrast to the prevailing intent to go forwards, confront, apply pressure

In this particular passage until it goes wrong I was actually rather impressed with Ntamack, basically thinking blimey he's so much quicker on his feet than the rest of them, and working up and back harder. That he does in the end get it wrong isn't nothing mind, although it was an accident and probably Edwards will be more worried about the earlier mistakes inside and the team not quite getting the best return on defending as a team, before and after the need to flip to drifting and dropping across the unit