Hatching a Plan for Wales to Halt Ireland's Grand Slam Charge

Wales entertain Ireland on Saturday in a game almost certain to decide the winners of the Six Nations this year.

If Wales beat the visitors, no one can win a Grand Slam and they will have the better head-to-head record going into the final weekend.

In that last round, Wales play Italy and Ireland must go to Murrayfield. The Welsh will be better placed to rack up a big score to further swing things in their favour.

But the mathematical scenarios can wait. In the immediate future we have a clash between the two most dominant sides in Europe in recent years.

Wales were poor against England but found form against the Scots and were excellent in Paris, while Ireland have seen off Italy, ground out victory over France and totally outplayed England.

It falls to Warren Gatland and his coaches to come up with a strategy to beat Joe Schmidt’s team. Their last 10 opponents have tried and failed.

It was instructive, then, to hear what Wales’ defence coach Shaun Edwards had to say to the media and to glean some clues as to how Wales might go about the job.

Let’s look at the key quotes from the former Wasps coach, per Wales Online, and build a game plan for Wales that might just succeed where many have failed.

Edwards said: "They have got two brilliant half-backs for a start who have got great tactical brains"

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Where halfbacks Conor Murray and Jonny Sexton are concerned, it is not so much stopping them kicking the ball so well, but doing it just as well as they do, as former Lions coach and Edwards’ former Wasps boss Sir Ian McGeechan wrote in the Telegraph:

And then there is the kicking game. That attracted a lot of attention last week and rightly so because Conor Murray and Sexton were quite magnificent in their execution of it against England.

Webb and Biggar have to match them, something Ben Youngs and George Ford failed to do. If they do not, then they will suffer the same fate as England and spend long periods stuck inside their own half.

Edwards said:

They have a strike runner on the outside in Tommy Bowe who is maybe the best defensive winger in the northern hemisphere. He is magnificent in picking up interceptions and we have to keep our eye on Tommy.

As for Bowe himself, the wing is also probably the best chaser of those pinpoint kicks put up by his colleagues, even if he doesn’t like it as much as scoring tries, as he told the Telegraph:

'I would love to be carrying the ball, scoring tries, making yards, line-breaks - that's the real enjoyment of the game,' he says. 'But if it comes to chasing kicks and putting teams under pressure, trying to force turnovers, then that's what I've got to do.'

And Edwards also knows that this chasing ability can quickly turn into try-scoring chances:

A recovered contest is probably the best ball to attack from. First you are already in behind them and secondly the defence is all over the place. We realise what a challenge it’s going to be in the air and on the floor.

So Wales will need Leigh Halfpenny and their wings to make sure they beat the likes of Bowe and Rob Kearney to those steepling kicks and ensure they are the ones using those contests to launch attacks, not the other way round.

Ireland are well-known for wrapping players up and keeping them on their feet to turn possession over from tackle situations in a move known as the choke tackle.

Asked how to counter this area of strength for the Irish, Edwards said:

You have to be very brave and strong to hold them up and then you have to hang on for dear life. As soon as the referee calls maul there are no rules after that. You can fall wherever you want to.

For the attacking team, one tactic the Springboks did was to try and put their knee on the floor as soon as possible before they could call maul.

Maybe it’s a tactic some other teams have used, I don’t know.

So expect the Welsh to try and hit the deck early as they carry into contact.

To be successful here they will need to rely on the fitness of their supporting players to get there and clean out or risk losing possession on the floor anyway, as England found out in Dublin.

Edwards said:

The thing that scrums give you at the moment is field position. If you get the scrum penalties and at the moment the big weapon in rugby is the rolling maul which is very difficult to stop.

Referees are looking very hard at the defences about pulling it down. So the scrum often gives you a penalty which you can kick to touch and get a rolling maul out of.

So Wales’s front rowers will need to be aware of going to ground at the engagement. An area that many thought would be problematic for Ireland against England turned out not to be the case.

Wales may therefore find it harder to attack the Irish scrum than they had hoped. Instead, ensuring a clean strike and quick getaway from the set piece before they concede would be a better tactic.