Worcester Warriors have for so long been one of the Premiership’s less fortunate teams. Whilst they have good players and play good rugby, they struggle to pick up points and climb the table, and are quite often found amongst the bottom three or four in the league.
One of those moments of quality this season was this try, scored by Australian utility back Jono Lance in their Premiership game against promoted London Irish, and who has this summer departed Sixways for Western Force, who play in the Super League and are based in Perth.
Here, we see how they have worked the ball through into the London Irish half. South African scrum-half Francois Hougaard began the move by playing the ball to Welsh centre Ashley Beck, before Beck ran through the defensive line, and we end up as the image shows.
Now, we see how Beck has a player in front of him, and he has to offload the ball or risk being pulled out into touch by the Exiles defender. You can see how Beck is looking to make the pass into Hougaard, who continued his run forward to support Beck. The delay on the pass means the defender is unable to intercept the pass, as he is committed to the centre.
We see now how Beck has been tackled, as is marked by the blue square, and is out of play. However, the ball is with Hougaard. The South African is accompanied by Jono Lance, and you can see how he has angled his run slightly towards the centre of the pitch. This is because the second Irish defender has moved towards Hougaard, and towards the ball. Like with Beck earlier, because the defender has committed to the scrum-half, he can’t intercept the ball. His movement towards Hougaard is shown by the yellow arrow, whilst the offload from Hougaard to Lance is shown by the red arrow.
However, whilst the two defenders have now been taken out of the game through the two delayed passes, the try would not have been scored without Lance playing his part. It’s not as simple as saying that he just collected the ball and ran for the try line. His angled run ensured that the ball wouldn’t be intercepted, and that he wouldn’t be tackled. Therefore, as we see here, through all of these stages, Lance is able to run through unopposed and score what was a brilliant team try.
