ROBERT BALOUCOUNE WINS the breakdown turnover cleanly wide on the right and Ireland sense their chance.

Open space beckons deep behind England.

Jamison Gibson-Park claps his hands and shouts for the ball, so Ciarán Frawley scoops it up from the Baloucoune poach and pops it infield.

As Gibson-Park gets set to kick, Nick Timoney – just on the pitch as a replacement – knows what he has to do. Sprint.

Timoney is fast and fresh.

He instantly accelerates beyond the team-mates directly around him, joining Gibson-Park and Frawley in an aggressive kick chase.

Timoney cruises past five English players in the blink of an eye, haring after the retreating Marcus Smith.

Ireland are in hunter mode here and the effort from Jamie Osborne, the tackler for Baloucoune’s turnover, and Baloucoune himself is important.

As Smith glances over his right shoulder, he can see that there is no avenue for running out on that side of the pitch.

Smith is the hunted. Even before he gets back to the ball, he is cornered.

Working hard on the inside of Gibson-Park, back row Timoney shows his speed to cover ground quickly.

Smith reels the bobbling ball in as he turns and tries to dart to Gibson-Park’s left. 

The England fullback hasn’t yet seen Timoney surging up on that side, though, and the Irish back row makes a hugely effective tackle to get him to ground quickly.

It’s a clinical, textbook tackle from Timoney at the end of his chase.

He takes Smith’s legs out as Gibson-Park assists in the tackle, leaving the Irish scrum-half in position to bounce back up and instantly compete for the turnover.

Timoney, meanwhile, follows up his tackle with good discipline by swinging up and away from the breakdown area. 

Many a good tackle is ruined by the tackler lingering on the ground as the jackler goes for the ball.

Gibson-Park gets a good grip on the ball early here, even as Smith tries to get back to his feet for a double carry, and with Frawley locking him into position, the scrum-half earns Ireland a penalty.

Timoney punches the air in delight at having made an instant impact off the bench for Ireland.

They kick the penalty into the corner and score their fifth try through Osborne from the ensuing lineout.

Timoney – who is set for his first Six Nations start against Wales on Friday – is excellent at chasing kicks. His combination of speed, work rate, and awareness make him consistently excellent in this area.

Indeed, Opta’s data for this Six Nations shows that Timoney is a standout player in this regard. Opta collect data on which players are the first tackler when the opposition make a carry on kick return, as in this instance in Twickenham. 

Timoney has made three such tackles, which leaves him behind only Italy’s Michele Lamaro [4] and France’s Anthony Jelonch [4] in the Six Nations so far.

But Timoney has played just 82 minutes so far, while Lamaro has racked up 229 minutes and Jelonch has amassed 207.

It’s important to note that the data above doesn’t include times when Timoney and the other players have made a huge kick-chase effort but aren’t the first tackler at the end of it. 

You would need access to Ireland and Ulster’s GPS data to get an even deeper understanding of Timoney’s efforts in this area of the game.

Of course, Ulster fans are well used to moments like this one from Timoney. His kick chase has been a key strength for years with his province.

But it wasn’t always something that he focused so deeply on. That changed around six years ago. 

“It was actually Bill Johnston, who played with Ulster, from Munster,” says Timoney.

“We played an A game back in 2020 for Ulster against Munster. He gave a good minute or two speech before the game about how no one else really cares about kick chase. But he had this massive thing for kick chase. It was when box kicks were starting to become really big. And he’d be honestly circling around the backfield 20 metres behind the ruck, trying to time it so he’d sprint onto it. I just thought it was class.

“So I was like, ‘I’m going to do that with you.’ It actually became a really good way to get into games and stuff. At the start of my career, it felt like box kicking was very frowned upon. Now it’s just like, you have to.

Nick Timoney celebrates in Twickenham. Ben Brady / INPHO Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO

“In my eyes, it was like, ‘If we’re going to kick the ball away, I might as well make this part of my game too.’ So I tried to chase kicks.”

And as we saw from Andy Farrell’s reactions in Twickenham, coaches tend to love moments like a big effort on kick chase or in scramble defence even more than the glamorous attacking moments that make the YouTube highlights.

Team-mates and coaches enjoy bits like the one above against England as much as anything.

“It’s a big emphasis in what we do in general; running fast, being fitter than teams, trying to outwork them and stuff,” says Timoney.

“So it’d be heavily encouraged, yeah, if you can find moments like that in games. Give yourself energy and give the team energy. You feel wrecked at the end of them because you’ve just gone on a big sprint.

“In that scenario, I was only on the pitch, so obviously no excuse not to.

“But you do feel better when you almost feel ahead of the game because obviously, a lot of the time you’re going faster than the opposition will be. So you kind of feel better about yourself.”