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The Scarlets brought smiles back to West Wales without even having to play this week as other URC results guaranteed their place in the top 8 and qualification for the Champions Cup next season. It’s a just reward for a campaign of consistent performances, genuine quality and looking inward, not outward, for solutions.
Masuku (38'), Fassi (52', 68', 80')
Penalties
Drop Goals
Costelow (40')
The Scarlets brought smiles back to West Wales without even having to play this week as other URC results guaranteed their place in the top 8 and qualification for the Champions Cup next season. It’s a just reward for a campaign of consistent performances, genuine quality and looking inward, not outward, for solutions.
Last season the Scarlets were a mess. A dysfunctional coaching ticket, scattergun selection and set piece that lacked credibility. Meanwhile, the Welsh rugby world around them was burning. The national team on a record breaking losing run, scandal upon scandal in the board room and budgets slashed left, right and centre. Thus, the narrative became that any Welsh side getting into the top half of the URC would take a miracle.
But the Scarlets refused to let others write their story. Over the summer they took themselves behind closed doors and began the search for solutions. Those inside the leadership group have admitted that some of those meetings were uncomfortable, as pride had to be swallowed and old plans had to be thrown away.
The management team needed a re-jig; roles were reassigned and, crucially, in came the experienced Leigh Jones as rugby performance director. The former director of rugby of title winning Leicester Tigers provided a shoulder to lean on for the talented but inexperienced head coach Dwayne Peel. He also brought a highly qualified and analytical eye to review the whole organisation and identify areas of improvement.
Immediately, two things improved. First, injuries reduced. The Scarlets worked on their fitness and invested in recovery equipment. There have still been bangs here and there but nothing like the 20+ long injury lists that were a regular feature of previous seasons.
Second, recruitment got smarter. A 4.5 million pound budget +2 marquee players was never going to bring in the big names, so they had to be clever. In the backs, in came Blair Murray from NPC level in New Zealand and Elis Mee from Nottingham in the Championship. Neither drew admiring glances at the time but both are now capped by Wales.
In the pack, the lineout was revolutionised by the arrival of Marnus van der Merwe from the Currie Cup and Max Douglas from the Japanese league. The former is now taking part in Springbok alignment camps and the Scarlets lineout is operating at 91%, making it the 6th best in club rugby globally.
Perhaps most transformationally, the addition of experienced international props Alec Hepburn and Henry Thomas turned the scrum from the butt of jokes in Wales to, statistically, the 3rd most successful in the world. They are also both vastly underrated in the loose and bring a calmness to the lineout.
A functional set piece has allowed Peel - a genuinely innovative attack coach - to sculpt the talented young backline into a potent attacking force. The Scarlets may not score tries freely, but the tries they do score are aesthetically pleasing and only get better the more you watch them, such is the detail and invention.
Their style of play is contemporary, focusing on keeping the ball alive and following the global trend of cutting down the ruck count - the Scarlets best performances have all come in games where they have fewer than 60 rucks. 64% of their tries now originate from the stabilised set piece - the 5th most in the league and the tackle evasion and the line break conversion stats are both also high.
Assistant coach Jarred Payne has made the defence credible, too; of the 8 league games they’ve lost they have a losing bonus from 4 and just 8% of missed tackles lead to a try conceded - the 5th best in the world. 52 tries conceded in total (less that 3 a game) is the 4th best in the URC. Against the Sharks, the conceded not one single line break.
Dwayne Peel deserves a huge amount of credit. He has been under a huge amount of scrutiny for the last two seasons but he has turned the ship around. Wins against Leinster and the Bulls at Parc Y Scarlets will be remembered by fans for years to come.
The fact is, he can claim to have turned an entire backline of either academy products or lower league signings into Welsh internationals. Small wonder Ioan Jones, who had played for England at U20s level, needed no second invitation to jump to Llanelli from Gloucester.
They’re not a perfect side, far from it. The squad is paper thin, with Peel often choosing to leave substitutions unused as he stuck rigidly to the 25 or so players that he trusted. They are over reliant on kicking 3 pointers - which they have done more than anyone else in the URC - and don’t register enough try bonus points to make their top 8 position truly secure. Their restarts and exits also need serious work, whilst the injury to fly-half sam Costelow saw their game management go out the window. Finally, their crazy discipline will leave you with your head in your hands at times.
Everyone at the region is well aware of these weaknesses and are frustrated by them. Far from patting themselves on the back for getting top 8, if you speak to people at the Scarlets they all say the same thing: ‘we should be higher’. And they’re right; they should. They let winning positions slip against Benetton, Connacht, Glasgow, the Ospreys and Ulster. A top 4 spot was a real possibility, and missing out on it hurts them.
And that just speaks to how the West Walians achieved the turnaround they have: by refusing to lower their standards. Under the constant rain cloud that is Welsh rugby, it has become all too easy to shrug one’s shoulders and say ‘we are where we are’ and make excuses. The Scarlets didn’t. They got fit, they got smart, and they got busy. Da iawn.
