Alan Tait admits ruling will cause him a few headaches

Jun 30 2009 by Nick Purewal, The Journal

“The ability to pull down a maul within the rules certainly helped snuff it out as a danger, but teams could also maul if they did it cleverly. Generally though we didn’t see a lot of it, and now we expect it will be back with a bang. That means you need a different type of player in the back-five of the scrum, to deal with that threat but also to provide that threat in attack. The line-out takes on extra significance as well, because defensively you’ll need to be stealing as much ball as possible to stop teams at source rather than on second or third phase.

“But Steve has carried out the recruitment with all of this in mind.” The Falcons have brought in towering London Irish lock James Hudson to lord the line-out in the wake of Geoff Parling’s move to Leicester Tigers, while also securing the services of Samoan back-row powerhouse Filipo Levi.

Those two in particular are expected to boost the battle against the driving wedge that can often turn a match on its head in minutes.

Expecting the return of the classic catch-and-drive try to punish penalties given away in the middle third of the pitch, Tait said discipline will be at an even greater premium than ever this term.

“Teams will definitely look to punish penalties in that old method,” said Tait, “and obviously what you don’t want to do is invite pressure on to yourself by conceding a penalty that turns into a five-metre lineout.

“You would never want to do that anyway, but this coming year it will be doubly important.”