The Waratahs have featured quite heavily in our The Anatomy of a Try section. Folau and Beale (in a Wallabies jersey) have both touched down, and this week it's the turn of Bernard Foley.
I'm a big fan of Foley, he is a talented footballer who played and captained the Australian 7's on the 2010/11 IRB World Sevens circuit. He's a classic Australian 10 sporting a great running and passing game, bags of guts and is rapidly developing a cultured boot to add to his bag of tricks.
In a lot of ways he reminds me of the great Michael Lynagh and personally I think he’s one of the most under rated 10’s in world rugby.
This week in the Super 15 Semi-Final against the ACT Brumbies he dotted down an absolute peach of a team score right when the Brumbies were desperately looking to work their way back into the game. I did an Anatomy of a try analysis for Green & Gold Rugby and i'm sharing it here as it's an interesting try to look at. We'll go through it in a little bit of detail in the video below, but the thing I really like about this try is the fact Foley gets involved on a number of occasions.
The great Mark Ella had a saying about support running that went something along the lines of: “if I touch the ball once in a move, we might score. If I touch it twice we will score and if I touch it three times I will score”.
Foley crops up a couple of time in this move, making the initial tackle on Speight, then passing to Folau who drifts and switches to Horne. Foley then pops up again on the end of what can only be described as a magnificent run by the towering Will Skelton who literally skittles Brumbies players out of the way.
It’s a good try, with each man playing heads up Rugby and the correct decision at each contact point and Foley's contribution is a perfect example of never giving up, digging deep and keeping yourself in the game. It's also worth noting that there are no lucky passes, both Horne and Skelton look at who they are offloading the ball to, it's not just flung in an attempt to keep it alive.
Author: The Dead Ball Area
