Oom Rugby

Hi guys, today I wanted to look at something that is frightening many teams in Super Rugby, and that is the Hurricanes’ incredibly aggressive defence.

They move up so quickly and so aggressively all the time that I think we can safely say we have never seen a rugby team defend like this before. Normally teams will use a mix of defence styles depending on the situation, but the Hurricanes fly up like kamikazes on almost every ball! Let us take a look below.

The ball came from a ruck and in red we see the offside line where the Canes defenders had to start from. The Highlanders manage two passes but already the Canes is up in their lines. Incredible aggression. The Hurricanes was face with a 5 on 4 and even though teams will maybe drift here, they completely shoot up. And look how narrow the Canes defenders is – they totally focused on killing this play early.

But it made me think what is the opportunities here for opposition coaches? We know that little kicks and grubbers work well against the rush, but the Highlanders also show some other weaknesses to exploit. In rugby everything come at a cost somewhere else, and the Canes is like a boxer taking big wild swings…

Here is a moment where the Canes again shoot up in a blur but we can see that if you have quick hands and you can get around the edge of that rush then they are in trouble. Maybe by standing a bit deeper we can manage this. And we can also look at giving the Canes shooters a target for their rush so that we can control where they go and create our channel on the outside. We can give them a “honey pot” to go to.

If you rush as often and as aggressive as the Hurricanes do then you will sacrifice line integrity at some point, and in the Hurricanes case it was sometimes the aggressive shooters in midfield who lose connection with the rest of the inside or catch-up defence. And if we have a fast 10 or we maybe bring in our blindside wing as a option then we can attack that hole as the flyhalf Fletcher Smith do above.

Above we see perfect example of why in rugby you must also have players who can dominate in contact. You can not just have sexy athletes. We always hear about “go forward” ball but what is it?

What we see above is a strong carry into contact that push the offside line back. So what happen now is that the Hurricanes defenders is taking some steps backwards before they can run forward. It is like asking Usain Bolt to take two quick steps back before he sprint. If we can establish a big carry and recycle quickly then we rob the defence of momentum and take out the “sting” of their ability to be aggressive.

Finally we see Highlanders avoiding wider plays completely and just punching up short in the same direction, phase after phase.

This is called “same-way” plays and our goal is to keep carrying in one direction so that the defence continually scramble to get men to the other side of the next ruck. Hurricanes wants to rush up, but now we pull them inside into a tight trench war. Highlanders played short 6 times in the same direction and scored. They should have played “same-way” much more often in this match.

So that is just some things I notice. Hurricanes wants to catch you deep behind the advantage line and kill your play early or spoil your ball.

All Out Rugby Stats tell us the Highlanders had 45 handling errors in the match! If you a team who like to give the ball air and you like to offload and play moves then the Canes can make you pay. It is a hell of a scary defence to face and things happen quickly on the rugby field.

But if you know your enemy and you have some plans in place then you will be surprise how you can turn the tables. Let us see if anyone can do it this year!

Cheers guys.