A look back at UBB’s victory over Racing92 and the new weapon of the Bordeaux attack: surfing. Our guests: André Berthozat, French champion 91 with Bègles and journalists Richard Escot from l’Equipe and Jérôme Prévot from midi-Olympique.
Has Noël McNamara, the Irish attack coach of the UBB since 2013, found a new weapon?Between us we call it surfing.” said Matthieu Jalibert at a press conference after the match against Racing 92. A way of moving between the lines without the ball. What is it exactly? Jérôme Prévot from Midi-Olympique was at Chaban Delmas last Saturday and for him, it is above all the touch of Noël McNamara: “I think it is representative of the quality of Irish training. Over the past fifteen years, Ireland has gone from being a Third World rugby nation to a leading, elite nation, thanks to the quality of its coaches, and Noël McNamara is one of them. There are what they call schemes, complex schemes linked to the movement of players. The players have a lot of things in their heads. And when you have the speed of a Bielle-Biarrey, a Penaud and a fantastic Matthieu Jalibert it does damage. But it is true that Ireland is a leading nation in training and in the precision of game launches“.
A strategy that already existed in the 80s…
After the press conference on Saturday evening during which Matthieu Jalibert spoke about surfing (listen below), the phones of some old-timers vibrated! And in particular that of Richard Escot, senior reporter at l’Equipe because these old-timers rediscovered an old technique: “In the 80s, some Bordeaux academics, I was one of them, had created a club in Poitiers, the PORC, the Poitiers Olympique Rugby Club. This notion of surfing had already been invented. That is to say that without the ball, the three-quarters rotated from one wing to the other while the ruck was being made, or even during the scrum.. And I can tell you that it created a monstrous mess in front of us. And when we saw surfing resurface through Jalibert’s mouth, we all laughed and said to ourselves that rugby is an eternal recommencement. This permanent movement without a ball, UBB is giving it letters of nobility, with Damian Penaud as libero as was David Campese in the 80swith this idea of moving without the ball so that the defense in front does not know which defense model to use because you never know where your opponent is going to be“.
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…and even more recently at UBB!
There is perhaps no need to look back to the 80s. André Berthozat, French champion in 91 with Bègles, is a bit like the game that was played from 2009 to 2015: “UBB has already experienced this with Vincent Etcheto as backs coach with Blair Connor who was inside outside with Heini Adams at the scrum, it existed, they were already doing it. It’s true that Blair did it really well, he was unpredictable and they scored a lot of tries at that time.“.
This is an analysis that can be concluded with the words of the chemist Antoine Lavoisier: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed“
