Ulster head coach Dan McFarland highlighted Billy Burns’ kicking in a victory in Dublin as an example of how to exploit Jacques Nienaber’s defensive strategy for Leinster.
Despite previous successes for Leinster against Connacht, La Rochelle, Sale, and Munster, Ulster found success by capitalising on Burns’ precise kicking in a nail-biting 22-21 win in the Vodacom URC on Monday.
The Irish giants, under former Springbok head coach Nienaber’s influence, have shifted to a narrower, blitz-like defensive approach.
McFarland emphasised Burns’ expertise in executing kicks and the Belfast team’s varied approach to keep their strategy unpredictable, acknowledging that the vulnerability of a blitz defence to accurate kicking was not a novel revelation, but credited the flyhalf as one of the best in executing it.
“I don’t think it is new knowledge, but if you play the kind of defence that Leinster are going to play this year, they are susceptible to kicking, high quality and accurate,” he explained.
“Billy is one of the best in the game at that. I genuinely mean that. Definitely, it was a plan but you have got to have variety in that, you have got to be able to do it in different ways; you can’t be obvious with it so setting it up and planning it is difficult but those guys, they understand that and they had to execute it well.
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“I’m not claiming to give you new information here, teams that have played against South Africa would have done exactly the same thing.
“Teams that blitz hard off the line are susceptible to attacking kicks but you have to be able to execute then. Ours came off today and, as I say, Billy is one of the best at it.”
Billy Burns 🤝 perfect crossfield kicks
Beautiful vision from the @UlsterRugby fly-half to set up Jacob Stockdale and Nick Timoney 👏 #BKTURC #URC | #LEIvULS pic.twitter.com/H3a6dDm9Y3
— BKT United Rugby Championship (URC) (@URCOfficial) January 1, 2024
Renowned for his defensive work at the Boks, Stormers and Munster, two-time World Cup winner Nienaber joined Leinster as senior coach in November, and has wasted little time sharing his expertise.
McFarland added: “Leinster are a really good team and Jacques has brought in that relentlessness at the breakdown, particularly in [poor] weather. You saw it in La Rochelle.
“They played La Rochelle in conditions like this [at the RDS Arena] and they were ferocious at the breakdown with multiple numbers on the basis that they know you are not going to move the ball wide because it is so dangerous in the conditions in your own half to do that so they pile multiple numbers in.
“We got caught with that, not aware enough, probably not committing enough people to the breakdown. We changed that at half time, we talked about that and although it is still messy because it becomes like a free-for-all in that area, we dealt with it much better in that second half but I still think there are areas of our exiting where we need to improve on.”