134 YEARS AFTER the competition’s inception, the (now) Six Nations will introduce a change in format next year that will completely alter the approach to many games.
The presence of bonus points in the competition will undoubtedly improve the entertainment on show, according to Fergus McFadden, as each match will carry more at stake, for longer.
Nations trailing by more than seven can chase a losing bonus point, side winning comfortably will be tempted to score tries rather than slotting penalties from distance. Winning will continue to be the most important thing, of course, but the bigger picture will demand even more examining for coaches, says the Ireland and Leinster wing.
“There’s going to be more on our plate as players and staff. I’m sure going in to certain games, Joe (Schmidt) will have to dissect how he might have to attack teams differently.
“Say, England or Wales have 15 points in the first three games and we only have 12. We’ll obviously think we have to score a lot of tries – it does change the dynamic of how you approach matches.”
The wing, who hopes to put himself back in the depth chart of Ireland wings in time for the bonus point-altered Championship, points to the dramatic final day in 2015 as an example of when required scores dramatically changed the normal course of a Six Nations game.
From now on, perhaps the competition won’t need such a perfect storm on the very last day to serve up edge-of-the-seat excitement.
2015, when we were playing Scotland and it came down to points difference. I wasn’t playing that day, but there’s no doubt we would have approached that game differently if points weren’t an issue. If we just needed four points (for a win) Joe wouldn’t have been as focused on breaking them down in certain areas.
“It makes things trickier approaching games. There’ll be more on lads’ plates, probably more so from the coaching staff – even just examining the table, going: ‘how much do I need to get out of this game in comparison to other teams chasing us?’
In the week leading up to a game, players would rarely admit that bonus points are in their consideration. The old line about only being focused on the win is trotted out right up until kick-off when the bonus-point chasing team pull out all the stops, pass up all the kicks at goal in search of table-shifting tries. McFadden though, is in the middle of a long lay-off with a serious quad tear.
“It was nearly torn off the bone,” he says before meeting fans at Life Style Sports, but his rehab is well on course and he expects to be back running next week with the first fixture of 2017 pencilled in his planned return date.
“I got it re-scanned there a couple of weeks ago. The tendon is reattaching to where it would be expected at this stage of rehab. I think it’s 10 or 11 weeks now I’m on. Which has kind of flown by.
You have to be pretty careful with the rehab, with the recovery and the work you do on it. Getting back into the swing of things before you get back playing to make sure you get it right and it doesn’t reoccur.”
“It’s been nicely progressing and it’s nice to get in to a position where I’m doing more and more training, plenty of ball work and static stuff up to this point. That will all move on from here, now that I can get back running again.”
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