Northampton v Thomas du Toit: How do you stop a 21st powerhouse prop?

How do you stop a scrummaging force like Thomas du Toit? That is the question Northampton Saints have been trying to answer all week after Bath’s giant Springbok came off the bench against Saracens and almost single-handedly turned defeat into victory.

The plan to stop the 21st 6lb tighthead in tonight’s Champions Cup quarter-final at The Rec began immediately after Northampton’s last-16 victory over Castres on Friday night, with scrum coach Jaco Pienaar, who coached Du Toit at the Sharks in Durban, uploading dozens of clips on to the team’s online platform Hudl. Footage is uploaded of all scrums Northampton pack down in, and players can access the database remotely to leave comments.

Since Pienaar moved to Franklin’s Gardens last summer, Northampton have not lost a single scrum on their own feed in the PREM. 

‘I code up plenty of scrums and we’ll look at Bath as a pack,’ Pienaar told Daily Mail Sport. ‘What makes them different to other teams is they go for longer scrums. They don’t just want the ball in and out, they try to build pressure and then get a crack.

‘Thomas has got the ability to stay low where others might lose their height. I coached him when he was 21 and he’s always been big and strong with a good work ethic. The way he’s been successful is through his ability to stay low.

‘Ultimately it’s our eight versus their eight. Their flankers will be up on the crouch, locks down on two knees, and then up on the bind call. That determines when the weight comes through and it’s something we’ll look at. We talk about protecting the seam between our hooker and our loosehead, where Thomas will sit. But Tom Dunn and Beno Obano are just as dangerous.’

Pienaar never played professional rugby but has coached around the world, working his way up from university level to Super Rugby to Japanese franchises.

‘I started coaching at 20 years old,’ he said. ‘I played hooker at Craven Week at high school in South Africa, then went to university and started coaching there. I could never say to the players, “You have to do it this way because that’s how I did it”. I have to convince them with stats and clips. It’s a different way of coaching.

‘Coming from South Africa, it’s all about their intent to go forward and stay in the fight. Sometimes you’ll go backwards but you go again. It wasn’t always like that when I coached in Japan. In Japan, they are very focused on the technical side of it.

‘With a senior prop against a junior prop, there’s automatic hierarchy there. In South Africa it can break out in a fight with guys going at each other. Here it is more like South Africa!’

The arrival of 23st South African lock JJ van der Mescht has added significant power to Northampton’s set-piece. The scrum is a series of kinetic movements combining strength, technique and collective willpower, and Pienaar uses ‘domino visualisation’ with his pack of forwards.

‘You have five phases at the scrum,’ he says. ‘The setup, into the bind, into the engagement, into the load phase, into the ball feed and release. The better you are in one phase, the easier the next one becomes. That’s why I show the lads slideshows using dominoes.

‘We set our height and we have a call for us to brace, so there’s no hip movement or shoulders getting manipulated through the opponent. Our call is “Mobbs” which had a bit of club history, connecting back to Edgar Mobbs who was one of the club’s war heroes.

‘For us, it’s about how level we stay. Are our shoulders and hips the same height? Are our hip, knee and foot angles right, so we can go forwards in the shot and still have something left? We don’t want a big shot and then recoil. We work hard on our core strength in the gym so you don’t get overextended. You want to lean forward in the bind phase but you don’t want to over-lean because you can get a free-kick against you. You need balance and control.’

Du Toit compares the scrum to an injection of ‘slow poison’ into the opposition’s legs. South Africans turn the scrum into a test of emotional resolve and Pienaar has built up his pack’s resilience over the course of the campaign. On the training pitch, Northampton’s pack prepare for long, draining scrums by using iso-hold drills – where they hold a challenging pose (in this case a scrum) for an extended period of time.

‘Scrums vary from team to team,’ said Pienaar. ‘The Boks are happy to keep the ball in, build pressure and get a reward for it. Other teams want to get the ball out and play. If a team wants the ball in and out then it can be over in under 10 seconds. If you want to keep the ball at the back with the No 8, then it can be anywhere from 15 to 25 seconds.

‘Bath don’t go for that snap early. They try to build pressure so we train our iso-holds to negate that. We take away the shot, so there’s no engagement, and I get the players at a height where they’re comfortable. Then we just keep it there to build the tension. They will range from 25 to 35 seconds. It gives you some conditioning in your legs and it will highlight if we are not looking after our seams.

‘It’s about building that pressure and seeing who breaks first. Who’s going to have a pressure release by slipping a foot, losing their seam or losing their height? It’s a tonne each side. Bath have a heavy pack but we are up there with pure weight. You just have to keep in the fight.’

Despite Du Toit’s two tries when the sides met in the league at the same venue in December, Northampton roared back to claim a thumping 41-21 win, in Bath’s only home defeat of the season. With the likes of Alex Mitchell and Fin Smith returning for Northampton’s back division tonight, the challenge is whether the heavyweights up front can provide the platform for another victory.