Dan Biggar filled the vacuum, his hold on the game slackened only slightly – and slightly weirdly – by the knee to Rhys Webb's derriere, the bruise that meant his scrum-half partner was not able to offer him the breathing space that comes with an alternative threat.
As soon as the worst of that crisis was over, reform efforts slackened.
As El Niño slackened, a stubborn dome of high pressure and dry air settled over the Florida peninsula, locked in place by the jet stream.
Helped by a fall in petrol prices, CPI inflation slackened in October, to 2.3%.
The pace of change has slackened and Russians are preoccupied less with the threat of civil war than with bewildering economic transformation, much like their bourgeois great-grandparents in the 1890s.
Although the pace of consumer spending slackened in the middle of the 2000s, that was against a background of remarkably low real income growth, which meant that consumers had to resort to extra borrowing.
The British left wing, after its first victorious advance on Saturday, was compelled to fall back a little, and the rate of progress, therefore, slackened.
Estonia could be assessed a few months after the other two entrants: by then its growth and inflation may have slackened.
It has brought the prices of materials and energy down sharply and slackened the labour market.
Russia's GDP growth slackened to 4.9% in the year to the first quarter.
Briefly, the violence slackened, to return in full force with his continued incarceration.
