HEINEKEN CUP POOL SIX:CLAIMING KNOWLEDGE of frontrow play should basically be confined to members of the frontrow union, those who have toiled there and can speak from experience. Everyone else must exist on a diet of half-truths, perceptions or in the case of some pundits, translucent guesswork.
Scrums crash to earth with monotonous regularity, the referee peering at the debris of bodies searching for signs of guilt. When the official’s patience is exhausted – usually about on the third reset – he will invariably alight on a culprit, muttering about something to do with a bind. He’s talking grip, not his own predicament that invariably questions the accuracy of his decision. Props sigh and shake their heads when charlatans (definition: non frontrow people) dare to ask what actually happens in a scrum.
Nuggets of insight are difficult to mine so when Leinster tighthead prop Mike Ross explained the dynamics of combating a hooker who is a noted for his ability in that facet of the game, he had a captive audience. He was discussing the merits of Scarlets’ hookers, Lions and Wales’ Matthew Rees, currently injured, and Ken Owens, who played against Leinster in last weekend’s Heineken Cup match at Parc y Scarlets as he is likely to do again at the RDS on Saturday.
Ross, who celebrates his 30th birthday on Monday, pointed out: “It’s not one on one if you’re a tighthead (prop) because you have the loosehead and the opposition hooker trying to pincer you out of the scrum. So a good scrummaging hooker makes a huge difference. If you have someone who is really aggressive it will make a big difference.
“The scrum becomes tighter. You’ve got more weight coming through the frontrow and it makes it easier to put pressure on their tighthead. They (Scarlets) have two decent operators there in Iestyn Thomas and Deacon Manu. They are both boys who have been around the block and there aren’t too many flies on them.
“I think they’re missing Matthew Rees a bit because if you look at their scrum against London Irish, who have a decent scrum themselves, they certainly put them under a lot of pressure and walked them backwards and got a few penalties. From what I’ve seen of Ken Owens I’ve been impressed. He’s very good around the field, doing well for them.”
Ross came off the bench last week, replacing CJ van der Linde. He’d love to start this weekend but since his summer move from Harlequins, he’s had to be patient. With mention of the English club and Leinster’s quarter-final opponents last season in the Heineken Cup, a match that spawned the infamous “bloodgate”, the Fermoy-born prop demonstrated strong feelings about the whole affair.
Ross owed his presence at the English club to the now banned former Harlequins coach Dean Richards. They shared an agent and Richards offered him a three-month trial initially. Ross continued: “I played two trial games in April 2006 and they gave me a three-month contract on that basis. I started my first game against Leicester in about the fourth game of the Premiership and I got an 18-month extension after that and then another one-year extension.
“He (Richards) was very good for me. He gave me a chance to play professionally. I do think that what’s happened to him is quite disappointing really. He’d be an asset to any rugby club. He made a mistake, people do make mistakes, but they’ve essentially taken away his livelihood which I don’t think is a very good thing for anybody.”
Ross had already decided to return to Ireland and take up Leinster’s offer when the “bloodgate” scandal broke in earnest. He conceded it was strange looking back. “It was a bit, because I never really expected it to grow legs as much as it did. If you look at the fallout from it, they tried to change the course of a game and you should be punished and rightly so, but you can argue about the severity of the punishments they’ve inflicted on various people.”
It’s important to understand that without ’Quins Ross would probably never have become a professional rugby player – he was playing with Cork Con and made the Munster bench once at that time – as he’d probably have headed to the United States with his American-born wife and done something with the degree in biotechnology that he earned from UCC.
Coming back to Ireland was purely a rugby decision to foster his international ambitions. Harlequins wanted him to stay but he knew he couldn’t control his own destiny in terms of being released for training camps with the national squad. He hasn’t regretted a moment.
Like any good professional all he craves is more game time and the opportunity to consistently showcase his ability.
