Anatomy of a Try: Jamison Gibson-Park vs Leicester Tigers
How Leinster stretched and outwitted Leicester for Jamison Gibson-Park's 53rd minute try.
Last weekend, Leinster demolished Leicester Tigers 55-24, coasting into the semi-finals of the Champions Cup - one step away from another final.
With just over 50 minutes on the clock, Leicester trailed by only 10 points - a rather honourable deficit for an away trip to Dublin. But Jamison Gibson-Park’s try came soon, and marked the moment that Leinster began to pull away on the scoreboard from the English champions.
Let’s start about 20 seconds before the scrum-half dots over the line. From the maul on the far side of the pitch, Leinster have moved the ball quickly across the backline to some space on the near side, before moving the ball back into the middle of the pitch, where we can see their latest ruck in this screengrab.
Tigers’ fullback, Mike Brown, wary of his need to cover the space in behind as Handre Pollard (in the backfield) moves with the ball, drops back. Brown is an experienced fullback, and will have bet that if Leinster spring something on down the wing he’s left Freddie Steward on, he can clean up the mess.
What he won’t have accounted for, is the speed with which Leinster maneouver in and out of position - going from innocent to threatening in a split second.
Brown has left the aforementioned Steward, who whilst is a solid winger he primarily plays at fullback, as the sole man on the near side. That’s fine. Steward’s a capable, strong, and quick defender.
What’s less fine, is that Leinster have manufactured a game state where both their wingers, James Lowe and Jimmy O’Brien, are overloaded on one wing.
Lowe, instead of following the ball and swinging back to his wing, stays, and Leinster have doubled their ammunition. Neither of them touch the ball in this move, but they don’t need to. Their presence is enough.
The build up to this try encapsulates best one of the many ways that Leinster slaughter the opposition defence. They show their opposition something one moment, before dramatically changing the picture. They know best when, where, and why to pull the trigger. It’s one of the myriad of reasons that makes them such a wonderful rugby team.
We see Leinster’s backline roughly nine seconds before Garry Ringrose slips through the Leicester Tiger’s backline. Leinster have just gone through a few phases, with the one before this a tip on pass from Ross Byrne to Andrew Porter resulting in the ruck in this picture.
It’s far from structured on Leinster’s side, but having moved so quickly from that original maul to one side of the pitch back to the middle, five of Tiger’s players are still defending on the far side, once again unaware that both of Leinster’s wingers, and presumably their next attack, are on the other side.
Garry Ringrose had a complete performance on Saturday. It was his first game since Ireland’s Six Nations defeat of Scotland on 12 March, where the centre caught a blow to the head during a tackle on Blair Kinghorn, ending in him being stretchered off, and resulting in a rather concerned Princess Anne.
He marked his return in style. Just over a minute into the game he discombobulated Dan Kelly with a smart dummy and strolled into the try line with ease.
Here, he’s circled in red, having entered the previous ruck alongside Tadgh Furlong to secure the ball for Leinster. This is equally and endorsement of Ringrose's work rate and positioning as it is Leinster’s cohesion and awareness as a whole.
A phase later and he’s on Robbie Henshaw’s shoulder, ready to attack the gap that’s starting to emerge between Steward and his inside defender. A gap that, because of Brown’s absence, who is still out of picture here, and Steward suddenly realising that Leinster’s two speedsters are ready to burn him on the outside, is rapidly widening.
And so Ringrose glides through the gap inside of Steward with teammates, who anticipated the break, already on his shoulder in support.
This gif shows the smoothness of the try that Leinster, frankly, made look easy. The sort of split-second thinking and execution they do all the time, and why the tag of Champions Cup favourites sit firmly with them.
(Images & Gifs: BT Sport)