AMONG THE THINGS that excite Sam Prendergast most when it comes to rugby are what he calls the “phase-play intricacies.”

The Kildare man, who turns 22 next week, loves scanning the defence to see where the space is and picking out the ideal pass to get the ball there.

“Every different situation has a different solution which is quite exciting,” is how Prendergast puts it.

Well before he has the ball, you can see Prendergast sweeping his eyes across the defensive line and the backfield to check where his team can go next. When it’s in his hands, he assesses the changing picture on the move, looking to pull the trigger at the perfect moment.

It’s easy to pick out space when you’re up in the stand or watching on TV. It’s much more difficult when you’re down on the pitch with everything moving at high speed and defenders thundering at you with the intent to leave a physical mark. 

It’s the job of every out-half but Prendergast has obvious decision-making skill in this regard.

His assist for Bundee Aki’s try against England was a simple example of Prendergast making a good decision and executing well. 

Ireland’s forwards are carrying from left to right initially but Prendergast directs scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park to move the attack back in the other direction.

Ireland have numbers on their feet on the left and Prendergast wants to use those forwards to carry.

He follows across to that side of play himself, swinging underneath the ruck after Andrew Porter carries.

Prendergast is out of shot for the next few phases but he has his head up watching England’s defence as the Irish forwards continue to carry in the tight.

Two phases later, England centre Henry Slade [yellow below] folds across to the far side in response to Garry Ringrose taking a wider position on Ireland’s right.

We can also see that Marcus Smith [pink above] in the backfield moves into the more central position as Slade folds across.

As Jack Conan picks and carries, three English forwards fold across too.

So all of a sudden, England centre Ollie Lawrence [spotlight below] is tight to the ruck on Ireland’s left-hand side and wing Tommy Freeman is worried, calling and beckoning for more width in the defence on that side.

Sitting away to the left, out of these shots, Prendergast has been watching all of this unfold as Ireland’s narrow carrying successfully lures England into leaving themselves exposed in a wider position.

Prendergast has already called for the ball in the moment above, pulling the trigger to move the ball away from the previous narrow carries. Aki has also probably been communicating about the space further out but it’s Prendergast’s job to call the shots.

And Prendergast does a good job of preserving as much space as possible for Aki by picking the right pass.

Prendergast [yellow below] has fullback Hugo Keenan [red] running a short option outside him.

The combined effect of Keenan and Prendergast moving ‘square’ upfield is that England scrum-half Alex Mitchell [blue below] can’t drift out to Aki early.

That means Aki can get outside Mitchell and into a one-on-one with Smith [pink above].

Prendergast throws an accurate pass with great pace on it, giving Aki as much time as possible to get past Mitchell and run at Smith.

Smartball data provided by Sage Insights reveals that Prendergast had the highest average pass speed of any out-half in the opening round of the Six Nations at 33.3 km/h.

The score still takes serious finishing from Aki as he smashes through Smith and then rides the despairing efforts of Mitchell and Freeman chasing back.

But it’s also a basic example of Prendergast reading the defensive picture, making a good decision, and executing accurately.

There was something similar from the out-half before Gibson-Park’s first-half try.

Initially, Prendergast throws a loose pass as Ireland attack from a lineout on their left-hand side.

Mack Hansen has to turn back to retrieve the ball and momentum seems lost in the Irish attack.

Gibson-Park therefore begins to prepare himself for a box kick to put some pressure on England in the air.

But as we see below, he gets a call from the left – where Prendergast is set up behind a pod of forwards – to pass instead.

Again, Prendergast has had time to scan the English defence, as well as listen to communication from team-mates like Aki and Ringrose out on his left, and he decides that it’s not yet time to kick.

Prendergast takes a sweep pass from Ryan Baird in the pod of three forwards and throws a screen pass behind Tadhg Beirne to Ringrose, who floats a long bridge pass out to James Lowe.

And all of a sudden, from a seemingly unpromising situation, one of Ireland’s most powerful players has a one-on-one against one of England’s weaker defenders. Lowe blasts past Mitchell and sets Gibson-Park away for his side-stepping finish.

This 24-metre pass by Ringrose was the longest pass by any player in the opening round of the Six Nations and it was just one of a large number of wide passes from Ireland.

Indeed, 21% of Ireland’s passes were long [more than 10 metres] according to the smartball data. The next highest percentage of long passes was from Italy with 14%.

Ireland were intent on creating scenarios like these for players like Aki and Lowe against Mitchell and Smith, with Prendergast doing his part in getting the ball wide.

The Leinster out-half clearly enjoys throwing long passes, as he does in the instance below to send Keenan into space on penalty advantage, although Mitchell does well to tackle the Irish fullback on this occasion.

Again, there is great speed in Prendergast’s pass and we see how it catches the advancing English defenders off guard. 

While he doesn’t always need advantage to be ambitious, Prendergast generally looks to try something when advantage is in play. He was intercepted in one such instance in the first half after a knock-on in the tackle by Maro Itoje.

“I knew there was advantage but it was a bit loose,” says Prendergast of this moment, “still probably shouldn’t have thrown it.

“You know when there’s advantage, you can try and create something out of nothing.”

He didn’t manage to turn another advantage close to the English line into a score in the first half.

“The ball just sprayed out to me, I wasn’t sure had we knocked it on, had they knocked it on,” he says of the moment above.

“I think I definitely made the wrong decision. I’m not sure what the right decision was but I definitely made the wrong decision.”

Prendergast might wonder if he could have darted at the line here, taking Slade on and trying for a finish himself or perhaps played an instant pass to Robbie Henshaw outside him. Of course, it’s easy to see those options with the benefit of multiple replays.

Prendergast ran a lovely loop play with Aki and Ringrose at one stage in the first half as Ireland put together a promising passage of phase play after a lineout turnover.

Ringrose’s short line off Aki sits Slade down and as Prendergast gets the ball back from Aki, he’s outside Slade.

Prendergast turns the corner and straightens up. 

He could probably carry the ball himself with his next action, having beaten Slade and with Freeman turning out onto Keenan.

In the split second he decides to pass, Prendergast can feel Slade close to him, stretching to tackle, and can’t be certain that Slade will slip off him. So he passes to Keenan, who makes it up into the English 22.

Prendergast isn’t needed in the breakdown and his movement off the ball on the next phase is excellent.

As Beirne sweeps a pass to Aki behind the pod of three forwards, Prendergast swings all the way out to the slot in behind the next pod of two forwards, allowing him to take the second pullback pass from Aki.

England’s defence is now stretched and Prendergast makes a good decision to hit Josh van der Flier [yellow below], who has clear space in front of him.

We can see below how Prendergast delays his pass, fully drawing in England flanker Tom Curry before releasing the ball.

It seems like a big break is on but as we see above, van der Flier opts to cut back inside with England centre Lawrence tracking across.

And on the next phase, Ireland lose possession as Slade forces a knock-on from Aki after an inaccurate Gibson-Park pass.

It’s a frustrating end to a passage that promised.

There were other bursts of attacking quality in the opening 40 minutes aside from Gibson-Park’s classy try.  

A clever three-phase power play from a right-hand side lineout saw Ireland use a ’21′ pattern – two phases infield before bouncing back the other way – and allowed Prendergast to send Hansen into space.

As we see below, Prendergast initially shows on the left-hand side of the second carry before swiftly redirecting.

Prendergast’s role is to swing all the way out to the right along with Hansen, who has also shown infield initially.

Aki – who made the first carry from the lineout – hits Prendergast with a sweep pass and Prendergast squares up to the inside shoulder of Smith before passing short to Hansen.

This power play from Ireland sees them target Smith and Mitchell alongside each other on the edge of the English defensive line, showing once again that this was part of their attacking strategy.

As we see below, Smith does turn back out onto Hansen but he can’t complete the tackle on the accelerating Irish wing.

Ireland nearly score on this third-phase strike as Baird beats Cadan Murley out wide but the Irish flanker is dragged down just short of the line.

Still, Smith is offside on the next phase and he gets a yellow card after England having been warned earlier about penalty infringements, so it goes down as a highly successful Irish attack.

Ireland attempted to play out from deep on several occasions in the first half, getting themselves into some stressful situations.

They’ve had initial success up the right in the instance below but then play into trouble as Prendergast goes out the back to Ringrose, who is shut down.

Ben Earl wins a clean breakdown turnover after Ringrose is tackled by Ben Curry and England are into a promising position from which to counter-attack. 

It seemed as though Ireland had planned to run the ball on some of their exit plays in this game but they were guilty of overplaying in their own half at times in the opening 40 minutes.

Prendergast and Gibson-Park are the key decision-makers when it comes to this part of the game, so they’re likely to have reflected critically on their calls in this regard. This was only Prendergast’s fourth Test cap so he will be learning huge amounts as he goes.

Defensively, Prendergast wasn’t heavily involved in the game, with just one completed tackle. Ireland’s out-halves tend to be in the backfield a lot when they’re defending, while Ireland’s strong lineout defence almost certainly spared Prendergast from having first-phase ball carriers coming down his channel on several occasions.

He has been working on this part of his game behind the scenes and has shown a greater appetite in recent months, but it’s a key area for Prendergast to keep improving, by his own admission.

He was steamrolled by Lawrence with the carry below off an England scrum in their 22.

There is cover around Prendergast so it’s not a grave missed tackle but he might reflect on his tackle selection given Lawrence’s power.

Prendergast tries to tackle Lawrence’s upper body but is passive, sitting back to absorb the contact. He might have had more success with a lower tackle focus.

In the first half, Prendergast was involved when England made a midfield linebreak between him and Baird.

Baird is advancing from the defensive line as the ball goes across his face from Smith to Earl and while he might have assessed the English threats better, we can see that Prendergast is completely disconnected on Baird’s outside.

Ireland’s defence usually demands players in Prendergast’s position here to be more aggressive in coming forward to make reads, whether hitting front-door options like Earl or swimming out the back onto backs set up in behind forwards, as Lawrence is here.

Ideally, Ireland would have Baird tackling Earl in this instance but most systems demand that if one player jams in, everyone outside does the same.

Kicking is a big part of any out-half’s job and we looked at Prendergast’s involvements in this in-depth piece on the Irish kicking, including his poor spiral kick that led to England’s opening try through Murley.

“There were a couple in the first half which weren’t accurate enough, gave them space and time, and you cannot give them space and time at this high level,” is Prendergast’s assessment of back-to-back poor kicks. “You can’t do that and that was disappointing.”

As highlighted in our earlier piece on Ireland’s kicking, Prendergast had some nice touches with the boot as he settled into the game after a start in which he struggled to make ideal connections with the ball.

A cross-field kick and a nice second-half grubber showed that he has range in his kicking skillset, which also includes lengthy line kicks with penalties.

The effort above was the third-longest penalty kick to touch from any player in the opening round of the Six Nations.

Prendergast’s early chip-kick attempt from inside his own 22 was a planned play and even though he didn’t connect with it as he would have hoped, it showed confidence just minutes into his Six Nations debut.

Prendergast is also good at restarts and the towering effort below resulted in an English error straight after the Murley try.

Prendergast had a disappointing miss off the kicking tee with his first conversion attempt following Gibson-Park’s try.

As pointed out by James Tracy on The 42 Rugby Weekly Extra podcast, he might not have been helped by Gibson-Park throwing the ball away in celebration, given that the time limit for conversions is now down from 90 seconds to 60 seconds, but it’s still one Prendergast was very frustrated with.

Prendergast was narrowly wide with his much more difficult second conversion attempt following Aki’s try.

“It‘s frustrating, shouldn’t have missed them, especially that one on the 15[-metre line],” says Prendergast. “You shouldn’t be missing them.” 

He did land a 44.8-metre penalty with one of his final acts before being replaced by Jack Crowley.

This was the second-longest goal kick from any player in the opening round of the Six Nations, second only to Paolo Garbisi’s 45.7-metre effort for Italy.

With a predicted success rate of 51%, it was a pleasing note for Prendergast to end his evening’s work on given that it nudged Ireland in front for the first time in the game. 

Crowley, who recently turned 25, brought instant energy for Ireland when he came on in the 59th minute. 

His first involvement was the excellent clearing kick that we highlighted in our piece about Ireland’s kicking game.

Crowley shows confidence to deliver this kick with his first touch and it also demonstrates the power he can bring to the kicking game. 

There was variety in Crowley’s kicking against the English as he hung up two booming contestable kicks – one on first phase off a lineout, the second from a free-kick.

That kick from a lineout was the second time inside a minute that Crowley kicked directly onto Smith, who had moved to fullback, so clearly Ireland had planned for that scenario or made an in-game decision to go after the Harlequins playmaker in the air.

Crowley also had a couple of touches with the boot that he would have been disappointed with as two of his contestable kicks had too much distance on them, but he contributed to Ireland’s control of the kicking battle in the second half.

The Munster man was alert to the counter-attacking possibilities in the instance below after an English knock-on, playing the ball skillfully off the ground to Ringrose.

There’s an even more eye-catching flash of skill from the defensive turnover below as Crowley flicks the ball instinctively behind his back but Iain Henderson can’t hold it. 

Crowley fitted into the Irish attack seamlessly after coming off the bench.

He played some simple passes on a couple of Irish lineout attacks as they carried directly, including for the Beirne try, passing short to Henshaw before working around the corner to occupy defenders on that side as Ireland bounced back to their left.

The highlight moment in terms of Crowley’s attacking input was undoubtedly a slick catch-pass to put Ireland into space wide on the left on a lineout attack.

Crowley [red below] starts as the possible first receiver from a right-hand-side lineout and has wing Hansen [yellow] tucked in behind him.

Van der Flier passes to Gibson-Park off a maul break, allowing them to manufacture width from a lineout win at the front.

And as Gibson-Park passes to Ringrose with Henshaw and Caelan Doris on either side of him, Crowley and Hansen have swung in behind.

Slade [pink below] gets a read on the Irish play as Ringrose begins to pass out the back of Doris to Crowley.

But Slade is beaten by an excellent catch-pass from Crowley to Hansen on his outside shoulder.

While holding his feet just a hint, Crowley does a good job in a technical sense.

He reaches for the ball, looking to catch it early rather than waiting for it to come to him.

As we can see above, his hands form a ‘W’ shape, often a sign that the player will get a greater surface area of their whole hand onto the ball rather than trying to catch with the tips of their fingers. 

Even though it’s the briefest of touches here for Crowley, it’s important that he makes a good connection as he rapidly transfers it across his body before Slade can hit him.

He does so sharply to set Ireland away and Hansen then hits Keenan for a grubber kick that forces Murley into an error.

After Keenan and Lowe cleverly lift Murley into touch, Ireland attack from a five-metre lineout only for Crowley to be turned over close to the posts.

It’s excellent breakdown work from Tom Curry to earn the turnover penalty but Gibson-Park might reflect that it was one he needed to accelerate into and hit.

And Crowley possibly could have passed rather than running in this instance.

As we can see above, he has Henshaw and Ringrose swinging outside him.

Keenan is very flat so he’s not a realistic passing option for Crowley, while Hansen is out of shot on the right along with England fullback Smith.

Perhaps the ideal option would have been to pass to Ringrose, who could have moved the ball to either Keenan or Hansen, but Crowley is under severe pressure from the fast-advancing Slade and opts to duck back under.

Again, it’s easy to suggest options after the fact but Crowley’s call to carry doesn’t pay off.

Generally speaking, Crowley’s ability to threaten the line with ball in hand is a strength, while the same is true of his tackling. So he’d have been disappointed to miss a tackle for England’s third try in the final passage of the game.

Crowley doesn’t manage to get his feet in close to England hooker Theo Dan, looking to initiate the tackle from some distance away. It means he can’t land his left shoulder on Dan, who breaks through Crowley’s outstretched arms.

Dan draws in Ringrose and passes to Freeman, who brushes off Henshaw’s tackle attempt to break through and score.

Crowley has always been combative and accurate in defence for Munster and Ireland, so it’s a rare enough error in his area.

He was successful with both of his shots at goal against England.

The first was a straightforward chance from close to the posts, but the second was an impressive effort from wide on the left.

Ultimately, both Prendergast and Crowley contributed to Ireland winning as a combination for the second Test in a row.

Both of them made errors, as every player and person does, but they delivered classy moments of quality too. They’re young players and should continue to improve.

It hasn’t always been the case that Ireland had two out-halves who contributed notably to wins in the same matchday 23 and it’s not long since there were huge worries about what life after Johnny Sexton would look like.

With all that in mind, this is a happy place to be.