Garvey makes case for the defence

This season’s new breakdown directives — and subsequent avalanche of turn-overs — have made teams positively terrified to take the ball into contact.

Instead, the kicker is king and possession is routinely booted from one 22 to the other and back again. And again ad infinitum.

The idea behind the new directive is to cause chaos in defences by creating quick-fire turn-overs which, in theory, lead to more tries and, ultimately, a better spectacle. However, the opposite has been the case with defences spreading across the field, stifling space for the opposition back three, and a dearth of tries has been the overall result. This trend has certainly been evident with Worcester. Warriors’ Billy McGinty-organised rearguard has not shipped a league try since Rob Vickers’ 14th-minute effort in the 14-3 defeat at Newcastle Falcons on November 1 — almost four hours of rugby.

However, it is not as though Worcester have been capitalising on this by raining in tries. Quite the opposite in fact — it has been even longer since they breached a team’s try-line. That score was Callum Black’s 80th-minute touchdown against Harlequins on October 24.

So, it is fair to say it has been a difficult time for winger Marcel Garvey.

“It has been frustrating this year because both teams are trying to put each other under pressure and there is a lot more kicking — we basically play ping-pong,” he admitted. “If you look at the Premiership as a whole, tries are down by about a fifth compared to last year and definitely the new laws have something to do with that.

“I think the new laws need to be looked at — I’m not the powers-that-be, but I do think it will be looked at again next year.

“All the referees seem to have their own interpretations of the breakdown and sometimes they seem to favour one team over the other.

“At the moment, that is the defending team so, if you’re attacking, you tend to be penalised. That’s why teams have gone to the kicking game as it is almost better to not have the ball than have it at the moment.

“We’ve worked a lot on our kick-chase in training. In previous seasons, it has been quite disorganised and we’ve been carved up. But we’ve gone a long while without conceding a try now and teams are struggling to break us down this season.”

Garvey is full of praise for McGinty’s hard work in bolstering Worcester’s defensive prowess.

He added: “Plenty of credit has to go to Billy, who has done a lot of work with everyone — especially the tight five.

“They are doing an exceptional amount of work for us, covering a lot of ground and defending well.

“I think some of the structures we’ve had in place in the past haven’t always been the best suited to us.

“Now we’re taking a lot more line speed into our defence and teams are starting to find it hard to attack us.

“We see that as a big bonus, because our defence is one of our main weapons this year. A good example of this was Miles Benjamin’s try-saving tackle on Danny Grewcock against Bath at Sixways.

“Milo showed great endeavour to get across and make the tackle.

“He doesn’t know how he did it, but he got his head in there and had some help from Sammy Tuitupou coming across too!”