AFTER PICKING A low pass off his toes from Garry Ringrose, Cormac Izuchukwu charges down the left wing. The flanker hits traffic, but Ireland get bodies in to quickly recycle the ball through Jamison Gibson-Park. Jack Crowley throws a pass across James Ryan and Tadhg Beirne carries into contact. Gibson-Park moves it on to Tadhg Furlong as referee Hollie Davidson signals Ireland are now playing with penalty advantage. Furlong quickly releases to Crowley, who plays a short pass to Stuart McCloskey.

Now the play is opening up, and McCloskey has options. As an Italian defender closes in, Jamie Osborne is the nearest teammate, just to McCloskey’s right. Robert Baloucoune is lined up a man further down the line, with two more Italian defenders positioned to shorten the space. As Tommaso Menoncello momentarily hesitates in tackling McCloskey, the Ulster centre pulls back, pushes his left hand into the Italy 13 and uses his right hand to fling the ball to Baloucoune, who does the rest with an athletic, confident finish.

It’s the best passage of play Ireland have put together all day, with McCloskey’s clever bit of improvisation the highlight. The pass is instantly described as ‘quarterback style’ on commentary. Post-game, Izuchukwu will jokingly refer to McCloskey as ‘Aaron Rodgers’.  

Later that day, Finn Russell will deliver a similarly shrewd piece of play – using one hand to flick the ball wide and tee up Huw Jones for a 10th-minute try as Scotland stormed into a commanding early lead against England. Russell, unlike McCloskey, did not have the freedom of penalty advantage but still backed himself to execute the pass.

Both were wonderful examples of quick thinking, which saw two players take less orthodox passing options. It begs the question: why do we not see these type of passes more often across the game?

First of all, risk. Generally speaking, a one-hand passing option is seen to carry a greater probability of losing possession. The player in possession needs a good awareness of what’s happening around him. Indeed, moments before McCloskey produced his NFL moment, James Lowe had thought about a one-hand offload, but decided to carry into contact when he realised he was somewhat isolated without a ‘safe’ passing option.

Using one hand usually means less accuracy, and if you are in a position where you might be able to use one hand, it probably means you are in a tight, pressure situation to begin with. 

Noel McNamara, attack coach with Bordeaux-Begles, rejects the suggestion these passing options are too ‘high risk’.

“One of the reasons why you don’t see it is because it’s described as a high-risk play, but it’s a high-risk play for who?” McNamara tells The 42.

“People will put figures on it, ‘Oh it’s a 50/50, a 60/40, a 70/30. How? Why? Based on what? That straight away decreases the likelihood of people trying it. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy as much as anything else.

“I think risk is relative. Putting percentages on things and risk on it and everything else, you can’t do it. It’s not possible to say that’s a 50/50 pass or that’s a 70/30, it’s a completely arbitrary figure.”

McNamara sees this thought process as a hindrance and traces it back to a player’s early days learning the sport.

“I think the reality is first and foremost because [of] how it’s trained. If you think about how passing is developed and how it’s coached, largely speaking, it’s done in passing waves where you’re facing one direction and you catch with two hands and you pass with two hands and you follow through to the target.

“Maybe one of the answers to the question is that there’s too much coaching. What’s the objective? The objective is to get the ball from the receiver to the person in space. So maybe if you think about it more as a problem as opposed to anything else, I think that’s certainly one description of it.

“Coaching now in rugby starts very, very young and tends to be from similar principles based on the culture.”

So if we all learn the same way, we end up playing the same way.

“I think there is a danger of people becoming homogenous,” McNamara continues.

“You see it in all sports. There was a stage when Jim Furyk had one of the ugliest swings you can possibly imagine, but had an incredible ability to get the job done. You look at golfers now and all the swings largely look the same. Most of the young golfers, because they’re taught a particular way, they all tend to look the same, and then they have maybe a different ability to deal with pressure at the very highest end. I certainly think that’s one part of it.”

McNamara coaches a Bordeaux team known for their capacity to get their offloading game flowing and produce moments of individual brilliance. 

“For us, we would try and stay away as much as possible from just straightforward passing waves and try find solutions because the reality is, if you don’t catch the ball the way you want to catch it, does that mean you can’t pass it?

Bordeaux coach Noel McNamara. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO

“Ultimately the defence are trying to pose you a problem, and if you don’t catch it in the best possible way, well then it’s ‘Ah, we’ll just go another phase’, whereas we probably look at it a slightly different way where that’s not necessarily what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to find the quickest possible way to get the ball to the space and I think that’s something I’ve heard Richie Murphy talking about, playing the big space quickly with Ulster, and I wonder if that’s (McCloskey’s pass) a product of that.”

Another possible explanation is that there is a smaller pool of players who possess the skill set to execute these higher-risk options. However, a one-handed pass isn’t a moment of instinctive flair on the level of Simon Zebo’s heel flick against Wales in 2013, which few players would even think of attempting.

In looking at his own squad, McNamara highlights the multi-sport background of Bordeaux’s players.

“We’ve got two players at the moment, Salesi Rayasi and Temo Matiu, who played an awful lot of basketball when they were younger, very high-level basketball players, who are extraordinarily creative in terms of how they pass. 

“Even on the weekend, Salesi Rayasi passed the ball basketball style over a defender’s head to somebody in space.

“I remember we had the Irish Schools squad in Poland for a tournament. Jordan Larmour was an exceptional hockey player. There was a bowling alley underneath the hotel, we went down a few times and Jordan was unbelievable at bowling as well! So I certainly think there’s a transfer ability.”

Surely this is something Irish players should have as an advantage. The benefits of a Gaelic football background are often cited as a weapon for Ireland’s aerial game, but the same logic should apply to their handling skills.

“The multi-sport adds an awful lot, particularly basketball, but Gaelic football, the likes of cricket and hurling and so on as well.

“But in Ireland, if you think about it, we don’t have that many throwing sports for young kids.”

The most obvious answer is perhaps the boring one. Unless players have the security of penalty advantage, a one-handed pass is simply deemed too risky an option by players and coaches, so instead they play the percentages.

“The biggest danger in any sport and any team for me is outcome-based coaching, where you base the decision and the quality of the decision on the outcome,” McNamara counters.

“So if the space is there and the opportunity is on, and you try something and it doesn’t come off, well then it’s viewed as a bad decision. And if it does come off, then it was a good decision. I think that’s the most dangerous thing you can get into.

“Ultimately you’ve got to have clear process on, well, space is there, I tried it, it was a good decision. Afterwards it could be a technical error, maybe if you had a bit more depth, maybe if you had gone further through or whatever it might be, but I think it’s really important players understand that I back the players night and day if there’s good reasons for the decision and if it was on.”

To summarise, there’s a lot that goes into the mix.

“I think there’s three things. One, I do think we can over-coach, and particularly with young players, maybe not allow that kind of exploration and figuring things out for themselves. There’s an awful lot of telling them what to do.

“The second thing is that the multi-sport background adds an awful lot. And then the last piece is just that the data sometimes is incredibly limiting.”

That’s not to say players should always have free licence to try the more ambitious option.

“Obviously there’s types of mistakes, and there are high-stakes mistakes. If you’re playing a Top 14 final and you’re trying something, then maybe ultimately some context does come into it as well,” McNamara admits.

“But I would believe very strongly that outcome-based coaching is very detrimental in the long run.”

So choose your time and place to try a one-hander, but maybe having an ‘Aaron Rodgers’ moment shouldn’t be such a novelty.