Jerry Flannery: 'I rate Marcus very, very highly. He's a fantastic player but Eddie Jones is the guy who decides'
Harlequins assistant coach Jerry Flannery has revealed that Marcus Smith has tightened his defence knowing he is being targeted by opponents.
Smith kicked 15 points in Quins’ 37-19 Gallagher Premiership victory over Northampton at Twickenham Stoop to be named official man of the match, but the more startling statistic was the 16 tackles he completed.
No other player worked as hard in defence and although the uncapped 22-year-old fly-half continues to be overlooked by England head coach Eddie Jones, Flannery views him as a rare talent.
“It’s important to be effective on both sides of the ball and most teams will go and target Marcus now,” Flannery said.
“He wants to improve every area of his game but when you’re a young 10 like him and you’re as talented as he is, teams will say ‘let’s run at Marcus Smith’.
“He put in some good shots against Northampton but if you want to play Test rugby you have to be consistent with that every week. He’s looking to do that and that’s the kind of ambition that he has.
“I rate Marcus very, very highly. He’s a fantastic player but Eddie Jones is the guy who decides whether Marcus is good enough to play Test rugby.
“You’d be hard pressed to find a more talented young player at fly-half. I’m glad he’s at Harlequins.”
Harlequins snatched the bonus point with 20 seconds to spare when Brett Herron finished a breakaway move from inside the 22, helping the club reclaim third place.
Since Paul Gustard stepped down as head of rugby in January, Quins have won five out of six games with their only blemish a narrow defeat at Newcastle.
“I don’t know if we can keep this going until the end of the season, that’s going to be a challenge,” Flannery said.
“There is real belief in the squad now and a lot of senior players are taking strong leadership roles. It’s whether we can keep our best players fit.
“This league is very, very tight. Two consecutive losses can drop you considerably. At the moment we have a bounce in form, but I can’t tell you if we’ll be top four.
“If we keep our best players fit we’ll be competitive whoever we play.”
Northampton dominated the final quarter but could not capitalise on Quins having two players in the sin-bin.
“To come away with no points is disappointing,” director of rugby Chris Boyd said.
“I wasn’t expecting to win at the end there, we were a fair way away, but it would have been nice to score one of the opportunities that we created at the back end of the game and perhaps come away with two bonus points.
“We created a little but the thing that’s disappointing was that last week we didn’t finish while this week we didn’t create.”
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Don’t pay a blind bit of notice to Lukie… he likes the sound of his own voice and is always looking for something controversial to say. He has been banging on about Leinster's defensive system all season like he knows something Jacques Nienebar doesn’t. Which is the reason why he didn’t apply for the job obviously
Go to commentsI’m all for speeding up the game. But can we be certain that the slowness of the game contributed to fans walking out? I’m not so sure. Super rugby largely suffered from most fans only being able to, really, follow the games played in their own time zone. So at least a third of the fan base wasn’t engaged at any point in time. As a Saffer following SA teams in the URC - I now watch virtually every European game played on the weekend. In SR, I wouldn’t be bothered to follow the games being played on the other side of the world, at weird hours, if my team wasn’t playing. I now follow the whole tournament and not just the games in my time zone. Second, with New Zealand teams always winning. It’s like formula one. When one team dominates, people lose interest. After COVID, with SA leaving and Australia dipping in form, SR became an even greater one horse race. Thats why I think Japan’s league needs to get in the mix. The international flavor of those teams could make for a great spectacle. But surely if we believe that shaving seconds off lost time events in rugby is going to draw fans back, we should be shown some figures that supports this idea before we draw any major conclusions. Where are the stats that shows these changes have made that sort of impact? We’ve measured down to the average no. Of seconds per game. Where the measurement of the impact on the fanbase? Does a rugby “fan” who lost interest because of ball in play time suddenly have a revived interest because we’ve saved or brought back into play a matter of seconds or a few minutes each game? I doubt it. I don’t thinks it’s even a noticeable difference to be impactful. The 20 min red card idea. Agreed. Let’s give it a go. But I think it’s fairer that the player sent off is substituted and plays no further part in the game as a consequence.
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