Greg Woolard has spent his week grappling with what might be described as the toughest task in rugby: picking out potential flaws in the all-conquering Leinster machine.
Glasgow’s lead performance analyst — a key cog in Franco Smith’s support staff — is confident that he has helped equip the Warriors with a plan that will see them to a shock Champions Cup quarter-final win at the Aviva Stadium on Friday night.
You would, of course, expect him to say that, but the journey the club have been on in recent years appears to have inspired a genuine trust and belief in their methods.
Dublin has proved an important staging post on a couple of occasions — most obviously the URC quarter-final shellacking by Leinster which ushered in Smith’s arrival, but also the 43-19 Challenge Cup final loss to Toulon at the end of his first campaign. Along with last year’s Champions Cup exit at the hands of Harlequins, the experience heavily informed how the Warriors then approached their run through the URC knockouts and eventual title triumph.
“As much as losing that Challenge Cup final hurt at the time, we learned loads from it and then we implemented it at the back end of the competition last year,” Woolard says. “Going away to places like Munster and Loftus [Versfeld], they’re intimidating grounds. We know the Aviva’s going to be a sellout too and it’s just about embracing that and using it to our advantage.
“We know their strengths and weaknesses but we know what we’re good at as well. It’s really about using your own strengths to exploit their weaknesses. We won’t necessarily change a whole lot of what we do, but within our systems, what is the best plan to go up against a team like Leinster?
Fagerson ruled out with concussion
“There are definitely opportunities. They’re a good side, everybody knows that. They’ve been trying to get that fifth star [Champions Cup title], so we know they have big ambitions in this tournament but so do we. We’re not there just to compete, we’re there to impose ourselves. We know if we can go out there and execute our game plan, we give ourselves a shot. We know if we bring what we do and do it well, we can beat any team in Europe. We’re certainly not frightened of a challenge, but at the same time we know we need to do our very best to achieve our dreams.”
Woolard and his two deputies, Aidan FitzGerald and Eilidh Wright, begin detailed analysis of the opposition ten days out from the match, which means that they are already working on next week’s trip to Zebre and initially had to prepare material on both Leinster and Harlequins before Danny Wilson’s team went down 62-0 at Croke Park last weekend.
“That’s the beauty of knockout rugby: you have to do double the work and only get half the reward,” Woolard says with a wry smile. “The analysis game has changed a little bit. It’s not about giving a 100-page dossier to the coaches — it’s now about the big rocks, the big themes coming out of their [the opposition] camp.
“Obviously we know about Leinster’s defensive system [the Jacques Nienaber-inspired blitz] so that’s something that sticks out. But again when you go through that Quins game, they maybe fed them just a little bit too much. We have a plan that we believe is strong and that we can really attack Leinster.”
Woolard sits beside Smith at games, feeding real-time statistics to the coaches to inform decision-making. Post-match, he works long into the night to unpack every tackle, every clearout, every break, every knock-on as he prepares individual clip packages which detail each player’s involvement.
“I’ve got a three-year-old son who’s not a great sleeper, so I’ll sit up until he wakes up around one or two o’clock then just crack on first thing in the morning to get it all turned around by lunchtime.
“Theming and storytelling is a massive part of what we do. Coming up with different stories or different themes for the week, or it can be a season-long theme as well. Franco is big on that: I’ll keep it under my hat, but we’ve got a good theme going this year and it’s developed as the year goes on. Players learn differently too. Some people learn visually, some people like sitting and taking notes, some people are terrible at that and they’re the doers, they have to go out and physically do their prep, which we do as well. We have clarity sessions during the week: walking pace, going through new plays that we introduce that week to exploit weaknesses that we see in a defence or we might walk through defensive systems if we’re making little tweaks ourselves. We try to cover off all bases in terms of that communication and learning environment.”
Woolard came onto the Warriors staff in 2014, having previously been an intern for a couple of seasons. He has seen the role of analysis evolve, while also having to adapt to the different ways in which different head coaches lean on it.
“When I first came into it, I think analysis didn’t really know where it sat, whereas now it’s very much in that coaching group. You’re almost like a third pair of coaches’ eyes that can sit and go through games and be able to speak about rugby in a way they can interpret.
“You can have those important conversations about what you’re going to do that weekend or from a review point of view, what went well, what didn’t. It’s all very aligned now.
“The players are excellent when it comes to analysis. We’ve changed our set up in terms of where the computers are. The players have a lounge area, so it’s more informal; they were maybe a little bit intimidated back in the day because the computers were set up in the office and they had to sit next to coaches.
“You see them having little conversations in their little unit groups, whether it’s the centres together or game-managers. You don’t need to prod and poke them anymore. They’re very self-driven.
“Franco, too, is an extremely driven man: he wears his heart on his sleeve and that rubs off on you when you work so closely with him. Yes, he’s demanding, but he brings the best out in people, whether that’s the players or me and my department.”
Something close to perfection right across the board will be required for Glasgow to upset all the odds.
Glasgow Warriors have been dealt a body blow in advance of Friday’s Champions Cup quarter-final away to Leinster after Zander Fagerson was ruled out of the Dublin clash due to concussion.
