Oom Rugby

Hi guys. Our boys opened their account in the Rugby Championship with a win against Argentina. It was a fantastic victory but I am sure you felt a bit worried like everybody else that the Boks was often so lateral in this game.

They were like a farm dog running up and down the fence looking for a opening! Here is a example of the Boks going through 16 phases and actually losing 7 meters.

The Boks gave the ball lot of air in this game but that is like a boxer who only throw jabs. They did not deliver enough big body shots to set up the head shots.

Fans always gets upset when we mention physicality but if you look at exciting teams like the All Blacks and the Lions, they first setting up their sexy plays with brutal direct rugby. Punch up straight into the guts of the opposition, suck in defenders, and create space to attack.

I am sorry for the bad news, but that is how rugby works. I wanted to look a bit deeper because I had a feeling there was something more interesting hiding in this game…

The graph above show the average meters per carry after the first round of the Rugby Championship. In other words how many meters on average was players making when they carried the ball. We can see the Boks sits at 5.8 meters per carry compared to New Zealand at the top with 7.4.

To give more of a idea, the three best Super Rugby teams also sitting around that 7.4 mark. So I think it is clear that something is not lekker in that lateral Bok attack.

But I wanted to look even deeper, because I am not actually interested in how many meters a player run with the ball. What I am more interested is if a team is making progress from the previous ruck. Because in that first picture we can see that a team can clock many running meters but actually ending up further back then when they started!

So what I measure was whether a Springbok ruck was further forward than the previous ruck, or whether it was further back than the previous ruck. Did we make a net gain with our carry or not? I excluded the first carry at set piece because I specifically want to look at Boks phase play penetration. This is what I found:

– Boks had total of 66 phase carries and gained 44.5 meters. So average gain of 0.67 meters from one ruck to next.

– They carried the most in channel two (18 times) but lost 0.5 meters per carry. So on average went backwards there.

– They carried least close to the rucks (only 6 times) but gained 3.8 meters per carry. It is where they got highest gain.

If we look at the top picture we see part of the problem. Argentina use spread defence, so most of the time they have enough men in the line to easily mark attacking runners. No gaps there!

Pumas usually have one guy poaching the ball at the ruck and then the other defenders just stand in the line. More men in the line mean they can also be more aggressive, so they have fast linespeed and catch the Boks behind the advantage line time and again. That is why we see this negative carries.

What the Boks needed to do was carry closer to the rucks and be more physical and direct before going wide. A big carry close to the ruck don’t give the rush time to operate and it force the defenders there to come in and help.

But here is the interesting thing… The Boks’ second-most carries actually was in channel one (17 times) but they had their second-worst gains here, losing on average 0.7 meter with every carry.

They simply did not have the players or the right attacking shape to make it count.

But there was a change after 60 minutes. Argentina got a try to take the score to 23-15 and Allister realise it is time for more iron. He brought on Kitshoff, Du Toit and Du Preez and immediately we see a shift.

Up to that point, the Boks played netball and only carried once close to the rucks, but in the last 20 minutes they did it 5 times for net gain of 4.2 meters per carry. Above we see Kitshoff forcing Pumas to engage. He is being direct and importantly he have the power to do it.

Easy to see that defence is not neat and spread and organised anymore. Boks will go wide to the left and then come back to the right to score against totally disrupted defence.

And speaking of wide play… Boks actually had lot of success with carries in wide channels. They carried there 13 times during phases for net gain of 3.6 meters per carry. On occasions that they could get around the Puma rush they caused trouble, and the key is that all players is able to protect the ball after contact so there is no fear of getting isolated. Here we see Serfontein and Skosan cleaning after a wide play from the other touchline.

So there it is guys. We can see big Franco influence in the speculative way the Boks attack but in many ways it is not practical, especially if the defence spread out and is aggressive. You can not just run around sideways waiting for a gap. Your opponent will track you and catch you deep!

We must first force him to be narrow and force him to engage before our finishers can go hunting for the spaces and mismatches that start to appear.

Allister still seem to be trying different game plans but hopefully he can settle into the role soon and this wonderful group of players can start to forge ahead with a clear vision. Bigger challenges are coming…