Attack: Tahs show Reds how it’s done

The conventional wisdom in the lead up to the Lions tour was that the Wallabies attack wouldn’t be able to function without playmaker Quade Cooper as the conductor of the orchestra. Interestingly enough, as we now look back at the scoring over Super Rugby regular season, the attack and scoring stats certainly don’t support that view.

In terms of try scoring, the Reds (31) are only above the Western Force (26) and Stormers (30) across the whole competition when it comes to the total scored. At the other end of the spectrum the Waratahs with 45 tries are only behind the Chiefs (50).

The Waratahs take it to a whole other level though when it comes to the attacking stats below that. They are first in the competition when it comes to line breaks (115) and offloads (190) and at 10,251 metres, are the only Super Rugby team to break the 10k. That’s quite some rugby behavioural correction experiment Michael Cheika has been running this year.

Are the Waratahs efficient with that attack though? The ratio of line-breaks to tries would indicate that the Rebels (0.61) and Brumbies (0.60) are better at converting chances, with the Tahs only scoring 0.39 tries per line-break. However, even if this is a meaningful stat (some game styles may rely less on line-breaks than others) NSW are still on parity with the Reds, who score 0.37 tries per line break.

The ultimate measure though has to be ladder, and despite their attack spluttering this year the Reds are in the finals and the Waratahs aren’t. This is clearly down to their defence.

While Queensland has only averaged two tries scored a match this season, they are also one of only two teams to average just one conceded: the Reds have yielded 23 tries and the Stormers 18, no other team has kept it below 30.

This is where tackle completion stats become useless. All teams in the Super Rugby 2013 have averaged somewhere between 85 and 88 percent in tackle completion and the differences don’t necessarily correlate to tries conceded.

Line breaks conceded are a slightly better indicator, with the Highlanders (112), Rebels (113) and Kings (110) being the only three teams to yield more than 100 over the season. However, the Waratahs (71) allowed even fewer line-breaks than the Reds (73) and yet conceded 34 tries to the Reds 23.

Clearly where those line-breaks are on the field will be important, and while the Tahs average another freak competition low of just 15 kicks per match (even the Highlanders manage 17), the Reds have kicked far less than in previous years, averaging just 20 per match, where the competition mean is 21.

Many other factors will play a role in the Reds defence, but a key one is their excellent scramble defence. In the ratio of tries conceded to line-breaks conceded, the Reds ratio is 0.32, the lowest in the competition.

So there you have it – the Reds, far from being the Harlem Globe Trotters of the Aussie conference, look far more like the stingy Stormers, to the chagrin of many fans. Ironically though, as we enter the finals of the competition, this may well be the best place to be.