There’s only one place to start. That offload.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Stuart McCloskey is one of a select few capable of delivering a play like the one that set up Luke Marshall’s first-half try for Ulster against Connacht. It was a sumptuous moment of skill.
Once again, 30-year-old McCloskey highlighted that the old ‘Bangor Bulldozer’ nickname simply doesn’t do him justice. He can bulldoze, alright, but we have yet to see a John Deere machine that also has McCloskey’s finesse.
It happens in a flash, but there’s lots in this offload. Ulster have penalty advantage playing, so that feeds into McCloskey’s willingness to try something different.
His vision is impressive. The Ulster centre identifies that opposite number Tom Daly is tight to Connacht out-half Conor Fitzgerald, leaving an inviting bit of space between Daly and centre partner Tom Farrell.
In McCloskey’s shoes, lots of players would attempt to exploit this space with a short pre-contact pass to Luke Marshall. Indeed, that’s what Marshall himself seems to expect.
Watch above how he slows his run to accept a pre-contact pass and then has to re-accelerate to get onto the offload.
McCloskey sees the situation differently. His confidence in his physical advantages – long arms on a 6ft 4ins, 110kg frame, very strong grip strength, and his balance – and his one-handed offloading skill mean he sees space in behind the defence for the in-contact pass.
McCloskey backs himself to be stable enough to ride the initial tackle from Fitzgerald and maintain control of the ball even in one hand as he stretches it in behind Daly and releases just before Daly turns into the tackle.
Having stuttered his run for that possible pre-contact pass, Marshall then reacts rapidly to accept the ball in behind and crosses to score.
This try assist was McCloskey’s only offload of the game but he did make six passes as he brought great balance between carrying and distributing.
Ulster often use him as first receiver from set-pieces so he can give both options and his first touch on Saturday night was in that role.
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Originally published at 18.28
