Ex keo
If only we could get rid of numbskull South African coaches, our gifted players would be free to express themselves on the field and our teams would be unbeatable. Scoreboards at rugby stadiums across the country would explode in a shower of sparks as our most electric runners carried their teams to triple-digit wins.
Obviously, this is perception and not fact, but South African sides are indeed coming up short on attack and it is costing them wins.
Why, you ask, do none of our Super Rugby franchises feature among the top teams for tries scored? The short answer is: because of a low-risk rugby philosophy, an inability to launch properly, and a reluctance to have a go when rival teams make mistakes.
Before we go any further, it’s important to appreciate that the objective of the game is not to score tries, but to win by scoring more points than your opponents (An important point for the oaks to note!).
It may seem obvious, but one visit to the local pub on a Saturday afternoon would convince any American tourist that pushing the ball into the turf at the far end of the field is what it’s all about.
Tries scored definitely contribute to achieving the end goal, though getting across the white line is in itself not the ultimate objective. After 13 rounds of Super Rugby action, the combined log reflected this point.
The top five try-scoring sides took up these log positions: first (Brumbies, 30 tries), second (Chiefs, 36), fifth (Blues, 30), eighth (Waratahs, 33) and 12th (Rebels, 29). The Bulls were tied ninth for tries scored (25) and yet they occupied third place overall.
Unfortunately, Frans Ludeke’s team were this country’s only serious contenders for the title, and the fact that South African sides had combined for just 111 tries – less than their Australian (136) and New Zealand (143) counterparts – suggests there is a flaw in our attacking play as a nation.
THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAY
You’re pumped up about how well the Cheetahs have done this year? They’re showing Bok coach Heyneke Meyer exactly how the game ought to be played, right?
Did you know that, after 13 rounds, Naka Drotské’s boys led the competition with almost 290 kicks, and only three teams had made more tackles?
Despite popular belief, the five South African franchises are similar in the way they attack. They play to win and the statistics show that – under the laws – playing for territory, generating pressure through defence, and scoring from turnovers is the shortest route to victory.
Actually, it isn’t an approach exclusive to South Africa, it’s common to the teams that contest the knockout rounds of Super Rugby every year, and the numbers validate it.
Of the 390 tries scored in Super Rugby up until 12 May, a measly 24% originated from the far side of the halfway line. The average Super Rugby runner made 6m per ball carry, and 54% of all the tries scored came within the first three phases of attack. The logical conclusion is that the attacking team needs to open fire from within 20m of the tryline to have the best chance of scoring.
Some advocate a purely ball-in-hand approach but, across the competition, just 3% of all possessions lasted more than eight phases, while 84% of all possessions ended within the first three phases of play.
The point is that South African sides try to create scoring opportunities without – rather than with – the ball, and they consequently score fewer tries because they attack with less frequency. While this may account for a lower volume of tries, it does not explain why our strike rate (the percentage of attacks that end in tries) is the worst in the competition.
As the Stormers have proved for the past three seasons, when crunch play-off games pit like-minded teams against each other, the difference in attacking alacrity is what generally separates the winners from the losers.
FAILURE TO LAUNCH
The biggest source of tries is the set piece. Almost 200 of the 390 forays that ended in paydirt during the first 13 rounds of Super Rugby had their origins in a scrum or lineout.
Being awarded a set piece, specifically one within striking distance of the tryline, is a high-return opportunity to attack. Or at least it should be – while South African teams are moderately effective from the lineout, they have the lowest strike rate from the scrum.
The two reasons for this are a departure from scrumming for physical supremacy and an attack that is generally aimed at sustaining pressure through ball retention, as opposed to cutting through the defensive line in search of the white line.
On the first point, South Africa’s strike rate from the scrum is pathetic. The Sharks (4%), Stormers (2.7%), Kings (2.3%), Bulls (1.4%) and Cheetahs (0%), ranked last in Super Rugby based on their ability to score tries from the scrum.(I have said for years we do not scrum our strength due to POOR technique - as much as backline creartivity has been lacking so here we have lacked - POOR COACHING BEENO ON THE BUTTON AS USUAL )
A few years ago, the International Rugby Board (IRB) decided that scrum resets were hurting sales figures and they empowered referees to guess who was at fault when an engagement collapsed, rather than waste precious minutes reassembling the heavies.
The result was that the scrum became a lottery, especially when the Australians – bereft of any respected scrum juggernauts – mastered the art of averting an honest shoving contest.(Hoor ,Hoor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Their techniques included crabbing sideways, wheeling, refusing to take the hit and intentionally collapsing the set piece. Obliged by the IRB to make a call, cornered refs awarded a string of inexplicable, and sometimes game changing, penalties (And with nz refs favouring OZ GUESS who got the short straw!!!! Got the jarpies they did).
Tired of finding themselves on the wrong end of the whistle, South African scrum coaches shifted the focus of their training from scrumming for physical dominance towards scrumming for ‘accuracy’. That’s a euphemism for not conceding a penalty at the scrum.
So, instead of exploding into the opposing front row with full force to win the hit, secure possession, drive through and gain a psychological edge – thereby committing the defending loose forwards to the scrum and releasing the attacking back row in run support – South African teams began to measure scrum success based on how few penalties they conceded and how many they won.
Getting the bind up and giving the appearance of staying square, shoulders above hips, became the new imperatives and, given that the pack wasn’t really expected to scrum for keeps any more, South African props were increasingly scouted and selected for what they offered in general play as a ball-carrier or cleaner, instead of for their scrummaging prowess.
South African attack coaches are routinely blamed for the drought of tries, but our scrums have degenerated into a faulty launchpad for strike moves.
It is startling that, in the first 13 rounds, New Zealand sides scored 30 tries from the scrum, Australian teams weighed in with 24, and South Africa’s dismal tally was nine tries.(Please NOTE OAKS!)
The numbers are somewhat more encouraging at the lineout where the Sharks ranked fifth with an 8% strike rate and, combined, local teams accounted for 45 tries from the jumpball contest – three more than the Kiwis and two less than the Australians. But even then, the goal seemed to be to milk a penalty in every circumstance except when the opposition surrendered to the attrition of the Republic’s battering rams.
South African sides accounted for 370 of the 810 mauls formed in the competition (46%). Led by the Bulls, Sharks and Stormers, South African sides opted to drive two-thirds of their lineouts compared to Australia’s 32% and New Zealand’s 19%.
Captain Pierre Spies will rightly point out that the Bulls had converted a competition-high 20 place kicks from penalties awarded at the lineout.
However, while South African sides had profited the most from penalties at the set piece, scoring 231 points from 77 kicks (Australian teams: 210 points from 70 kicks; New Zealand teams: 165 from 55), our Antipodean nemeses had more than made up for the deficit with tries, bettering the local count of 270 points from 54 tries with 355 points from 71 tries (Australia) and 360 points from 72 tries (New Zealand). And that’s before the conversions are added.
The teams based beyond the eastern reaches of the Indian Ocean like to have a full go from a set piece in the strike zone, and this explains why South Africa’s median of 114 passes and seven offloads per game had been trumped by the Kiwi (150 passes and 11 offloads) and Aussie (131 passes and 10 offloads) averages.
TAKING IT BACK TO THE HOUSE
It’s all good and well using possession to pin the opposing team deep in their half with pin-point tactical kicks and impermeable defence. But then, when they crack under the pressure – spilling the ball in an ill-fated run, or punting a wild, uncontested kick to a waiting wing – they must
be punished with verve. (Exactly So)
South African teams have become so wrapped up with generating pressure to force mistakes, they’ve forgotten that the mistakes don’t turn themselves into tries. Of the 94 tries scored from a range of more than 50m, South Africa accounted for just 20 – thanks mostly to the Cheetahs (six) and Kings (five).
Half of the problem is conservative coaching, the other half is related to personnel.
As discussed, South African teams need to recommit to having a real go from set pieces within range of the white line but, if you’ll excuse the pun, a big reason local teams don’t launch attacks from set-piece territory is because, unlike their counterparts, South African backlines are bookended by light bodies. (BUT OF COURSE WITH ALLISTAIR COETZEE BEING THE WORST CULPRIT - YOU WONT ATTACK MUCH WITH A BACKLINE WHO WILL LOSE THE COLLISIONS AND NOT RETAIN POSSESSION!!! )
The Waratahs back three of Cam Crawford, Peter Betham and Israel Folau averages 1.93m and 100kg. The Stormers equivalent tips the scales at an average of 1.77m and 86kg.(As I was saying - the twit Coetzee plays De Jongh before Allende, doesnt play Van der Heever or JJ Du Plessis or even Howard all around the 100 kg mark - the mind boggles how daft the oaks is!)
The Waratahs had scored 11 tries from the other side of the halfway line; the Stormers had two to show for their efforts.
The average wing or fullback who jogs on for a South African Super Rugby side is 1.82m and 90kg, compared to Australia’s average of 1.87m and 96kg, and New Zealand’s 1.85m and 96kg. ( But here we turn backs into loose forards - eg Spies, Burden Kan kan Deon fourie also could have ade a grat inside center. We love insist small guys can cut is and no materr how many are in the backline. We are out gunned. jake saw that when he became bok coach and had a big fast backline. Even Habana is around 96 kg. Jaque Fourie, Jean JP etc)
This also clarifies why South African coaches have narrowed the width of their attack and scaled back what were already conservative counter-attacking policies – wafer-thin wings are easily manhandled, and turned over, by bigger defenders. In spite of this undeniable physical inferiority, there is no excuse – other than a compulsive fear of allowing a mistake to be made – for the failure of local teams to convert turnovers into tries. (Weight of Lions wings - 112 kg and 108 kg)
Aside from the Cheetahs, who had scored 13 times from turnovers, the remainder of the South African sides were woefully inept at harvesting the fruits of their pressure-tactics labour.
The Stormers, who proudly and exclusively depended on kick-and-defend tactics last year, had scored just four tries from turnovers in general play.
And again, South African sides had delivered the worst strike rates in this category in the competition. Where the Chiefs (10.2%) and Crusaders (8.3%) were the most effective sides at punishing opponents for unforced errors, the Stormers (4%) and Sharks (3.5%) were inept against the run of play.
And the variance was even greater in taking poor kicks back to the house, with the Blues topping the list at 5.2% and the same two South African sides converting just 0.6% of their kick receipt into five-pointers.
THE VERDICT
The clamour for South African coaches to drag and drop a conservative blueprint into the recycle bin is unfounded because pressure tactics continue to offer the shortest route to victory. However, in order to restore this country’s attacking verve, the collective must refurbish the scrum as a launchpad, replenish backline stocks with more beef, return to punishing rival teams for bad kicks, and pounce on unforced errors with zeal.
I think this guy has hit the nail on the head and its time we got these issues sorted. No more small backline players unless they are really brillaint and then only one. That unfortunately causes quota issues but we have to decide whether we want to win or make up the numbers. WE need t oimprove our scrumming technique and then go for it.
We also need to get in some real attack caoches. We can import all these guys if necessary.
Work tirelessly to expose bent refs is a MUST.
At the Stormers fire the status quo!
