Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Some say statistics are like children’s modelling clay, you can make them into any shape you want, roll them up and start all over again when it suits you. However, some can help tell you the true story.
Professional rugby teams are up there with any other sport in terms of analysing opposition footage and their own performances to see if the team is effective in implementing the strategy set out by the coaches.
During the Six Nations match, each country’s coaching staff will rely on their video analyst to supply them with the stats relevant to their team’s performance.
The coaches break down the game into three key areas but they all impact on each other.
Defence
The standard target defence coaches set for their players is to have less than 10% missed tackles in a match. Both teams were successful in this regard with success rates of 93% and 91% but both defence coaches would have different feelings about their teams’ defensive performance.
Shaun Edwards will feel his side were aggressive and forced Ireland to kick the ball through good line speed and limiting the players they put into defensive rucks.
Ireland were very passive, both in resetting and getting off the line. They soaked far too high a percentage of play which means they allowed the ball carrier make it over the gain line. The more tackles you soak, the quicker the ruck ball and the harder it is to regain possession or make impact tackles.
Ireland lost this match because of our poor defence and inability to keep the ball in hand. If we have only 40% of possession on Saturday night in Paris, we will lose again.
Set piece
The Ireland match is slightly unusual in that the set piece didn’t really have a huge impact on the game. There is a widely-held belief that you can’t win a match without a scrum, and it’s rare that you see it. However, remember Northampton versus Munster a few weeks ago — it can happen.
But to succeed you must dominate in all other areas of the game. In the Aviva their was only five scrums in total with two on an Irish put in and three for Wales.
Neither side had dominance in the scrum and the penalties/free kicks that were awarded were against the attacking team (which is unusual).
Ireland had a clear dominance in the lineout winning 40% of the Welsh throw and 100% of their own which is a great return. But there is another story to this. When you look at the amount of lineouts each team were awarded you get a sense of both teams’ strategy. Ireland only threw into five lineouts which shows Wales probably feared the lineout maul and also the fact Ireland have generally been a very good team at striking off lineouts.
By starving them of throw ins Wales took an area of strength away from them. Wales had 14 throw ins and this was down to Ireland’s reluctance to keep the ball in hand and play territory. While Ireland had success on the Wales throw, Wales managed to win the important ones deep in their 22 or in attacking situations, one of which led to the second Jonathan Davies try.
Possession
It’s important to be able to analyse what your team did with possession following a set piece and its in these statistics that you get a clear picture of why we lost to Wales.
Wales dominated all the key possession indicators. 90 rucks and passes to Ireland’s 58, 113 balls won in open play to 80 and 201 passes completed to the home side’s 153. All that allowed Wales spend an average 57 seconds in possession before they kicked it in comparison to Ireland’s 32.
But the most telling stat for me was that Wales took Ireland through 10 or more phases on four occasions while Ireland only managed it once.
Defensive systems are built on being able to get reset into a good shape on the average of a four-second ruck. The more times you force a team to reset or the quicker your ruck ball is, the less likely they are to be in the correct system and therefore errors occur and points are scored.
The really surprising stat was that Ireland threw double the amount of offloads to Wales (six to three). Wales are a team that usually throw a lot more than that but I believe because Ireland tackle high and try "choke" the ball makes the offload risky. They changed their strategy for this game. Its ironic that two of Wales three offloads led to both tries for Davies.
Ireland offloads tended to come from carries in which they were being driven back so weren’t as effective.
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