Done well it’s a thing of beauty. It doesn’t perhaps make the greatest spectacle for television viewers, but to execute a driving maul well and to make it look so easy, as Saints did last Saturday, takes real skill and control.
Sometimes your game plan needs some revising on the morning of a game with one look out of the window at the conditions and you really need to look at horses for courses.
Saturday afternoon in High Wycombe was one of those days.
Baltic conditions, driving snow and a mercury level in thermometers barely registering positively.
It was not a game for width and expansion and played right into Saints’ big strengths and conversely into Wasps’ big area of weakness.
On a dry, warm flat track Wasps and their talented backs, back-row forwards and generally mobile pack have been a real revelation this season.
But in poor, heavy conditions, Wasps have shown that they have struggled up front as they simply don’t have the heavyweights.
Referee David Rose certainly saw things Saints’ way, however looking at things objectively there was not too much for Wasps to whinge about.
They were taken apart up front and in reality Rose was actually a lot more lenient than he could have been with the yellow card.
Once a rolling maul gets moving forwards at a rate of knots it is almost impossible to stop legally.
Wasps had no answer to it and neither did referee Rose have any option when reaching for cards.
Perhaps Wasps could have contested the ball at the lineout a little better, rather than letting Saints win the ball so easily, but then you take an even bigger risk of not being able to stop the maul.
It’s a gamble but perhaps was one worth taking after the first few driving lineouts simply shattered the Wasps defences.
Coach Dai Young was fairly philosophical afterwards and he evidently has a lot respect for the Saints tight work, although he wasn’t exactly complimentary about their one-dimensional tactics.
But what exactly would he have done with that firepower at his disposal?
Answer – exactly the same.
Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight he should have started with his England forwards Joe Launchbury and James Haskell.
I am sure he had his reasons and perhaps wanted them to earn their way back into the team rather than just walk back in but he could have done with their ballast to try to stop the Saints.
Taking the positives out of the situation, he ought to reflect on how far Wasps have come this season considering that a year ago they were candidates for the drop.
He has done a very good job on limited resources set against an uncertain financial future.
It’s been a very tough job and he has earned a great deal of respect around the rugby world for how he and his coaching team have handled it.
Saints seem to have well and truly kept their feet on the ground for the big east midlands clash this coming weekend and rightly so.
Skipper Dylan Hartley was absolutely spot on with his assessment of the Wasps performance; they will need much more than the driving maul to get a much-needed win over Tigers who would also count that as one of their major weapons.
In the last four meetings Tigers have come out worthy winners and to be honest Saints have struggled, but it is important to get into context how far Northampton have come over the past few weeks since the Gloucester game.
At that point very few people would have given them too much hope against Tigers, but the past few games has not only put them firmly back into the frame for the top four but down to the recent slip ups by Quins it has opened up the other home semi-final slot.
Tigers’ form has been nothing fantastic during the Six Nations and they themselves have a few questions to answer, but rather like my predictions for the clash in Cardiff two weeks ago, this is Saints v Tigers, you can almost throw the form book out of the window as they will both raise it several levels for one of the highlights of the season.
There is no need to name Lions captain
It’s the hot debate around the rugby clubs and pubs of the Britain and Ireland at the moment, but I think this is the first Lions tour that I can remember where there is no obvious candidate for the captaincy.
There are a number of contenders but there are plenty of questions about whether some of them will make the Test line-up, one of the pre-requisites for the role is that you are a shoo-in for the Test team.
Alun Wyn-Jones is being touted from many corners and he certainly would be a strong contender for the Test team, but is he an absolute guaranteed starter?
I am not so sure.
The same goes for the likes of Rory Best, Gethin Jenkins, Chris Robshaw and even Brian O’Driscoll.
I am starting to wonder whether there ought to be a break from tradition and that a captain should be named on a game-by-game basis and then the real contender can emerge as the tour progresses.
If there is no outstanding candidate, then why put pressure on by naming somebody that you might have to leave out when it comes to the Tests?
That will only serve to create a media frenzy should that player miss out – the last thing the Lions need to hand to the Australian press pack is an own goal.
One thing we know about Lions tours is there are always a few surprises when it comes to the naming of the team to take the pitch in the first Test.
Players that were ‘definites’ at the start of the tour can get a knock miss a game or two and one of the ‘possibles’ takes their chance, form can start to desert certain players and so on.
One thing is for certain, it will take a huge element of clairvoyance to name the exact starting line-up for the first Test just yet, and there is still plenty of rugby to play before the naming of the squad so plenty of time to play yourself in or out of Warren Gatland’s notebook.