Ella's approach to playing the five-eighth position was unique and different from that of any other five-eighth of his era, and involved many obvious characteristics different from those of his five-eighth contemporaries. Gareth Edwards writes in "100 Great Rugby Players" that: “Firstly, he stands closer to his scrum-half than most other stand-off halves I have played with or against, so that he pulls back row forwards on him at an angle which makes it hard for them to change direction, once he has released possession, to harass the midfield.” Ella describes the distance from which he stood from the scrum-half in his book "Running Rugby", “Generally, I stood about 5 metres from the halfback and about 4 metres behind him. According to the old formula for the right-angled triangle, this means I was no more than 3 metres wide of him.”