Autumn’s mauling masterclasses

Just before the 2015 Six Nations gets started, tGL decided to take a look back at the 2014 Autumn Internationals, specifically some of the mauling play on show in the England vs South Africa, and Ireland vs South Africa matches, and wonder whether we might see similar play in the Six Nations. Mauls originally belonged to an older style of rugby, one that resembled the big shoving contests of the sport’s earliest days when every attacking player’s job was to either push the maul forward or, if the ball escaped, secure possession and hold on until another maul formed. Mauls are associated with slow, boring and old-fashioned rugby, so why have they become a modern attacking weapon?

TRC 2013 – Out of the shadows

Ahead of New Zealand’s 2013 Rugby Championship home clash with South Africa, the Springboks had emerged as a genuine threat to the All Blacks’ supremacy – outscoring the world champions and topping the competition table after three rounds – and went to Eden Park sensing a real chance of a rare victory, especially given the All Blacks would be without injured captain Richie McCaw, but New Zealand didn’t need to panic, they had Kieran Read ready to step out of the shadows…

TRC 2013 – Can the Springboks take Eden Park?

Since they became world champions in 2011 and Steve Hansen took on the job as head coach, New Zealand have played 20 Test matches with an outstanding 90% win average. If that statistic isn’t impressive enough, they’ve put their wins together with an average 20-point winning margin while giving 16 Test debuts. Only Australia, who managed an 18-18 draw in Brisbane, and England, with a surprise 38-21 win at Twickenham, have spoiled an otherwise perfect record, but in 2013 South Africa have emerged as a threat to the All Blacks. In the Rugby Championship the Springboks have outscored them and sit at the
top of the table after three rounds, but New Zealand in Auckland in round four is the real test of their credentials – so how do the visitors step up from pretenders to victors?

TRC 2013 – Down Under Pressure

At the end of round two of the 2013 Rugby Championship tGL revisited the possession efficiency metric we first investigated at the beginning of the year; a measure of how well a team coverts its percentage of possession into points and how that affects match results. We considered the major annual international tournaments, the Six Nations and the Rugby Championship, in the period since the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and the most notable finding was that Australia were one of the highest accumulators of possession, but were also one of the worst convertors of the 10 Test teams involved. The Wallabies’ round-three 38-12 home defeat against South Africa presented evidence why.

Efficiency NOT an ugly word

Back at the start of this year during the Six Nations, tGL started looking at a new metric called ‘possession efficiency’ which quantified how well a team was turning its possession/territory percentages into points, and the dominant effect that factor had on match results. The opening round of the 2013 Rugby Championship supplied a pair of extremely efficient performances from New Zealand and South Africa and inspired tGL to revisit this interesting and significant statistic.

Lions 2013 – Bah! Humbug! part I

As it’s most commonly associated (thanks to Dickens’ famous character Ebenezer Scrooge) with Christmas, the phrase ‘Bah! Humbug!’ might seem a little out of place in August, but as its general intention is to draw attention to the belief of delusion and/or deception, it seems appropriate to put it to use in reaction to most assessments of the 2013 Lions tour. After a week of high-pressure build-up, the Lions finished off their tour of Australia with a highpoint 41-16 win over the Wallabies at the Olympic stadium in Sydney. The 41 points were the most the Lions had ever scored in a Test and, predictably, provoked all sorts of sensational ‘scoreboard journalism’ praise: ‘Gatland’s finest hour, by a long chalk’ (Delme Parfitt, Western Mail) and ‘Triumph enhances Lions’ and Gatland’s reputations’ (Bryn Palmer, BBC) just a pair of examples which, in turn, helped provoke tGL’s own reaction: ‘Bah! Humbug!’

Lions 2013 – The O’Driscoll conspiracy

After the Lions failed to beat defenders, muster significant metres with ball in hand, or make anything that looked like a clean break in the second Test, it wasn’t difficult to think back to a time when tGL was excited about the prospect of the best of Britain and Ireland going down south to take on the Wallabies in Australia. After Melbourne, that optimism felt like it was a long time gone.

Six Nations 2013 – How Wales can beat England

Both going into the match with two wins from two, there wasn’t much between the teams when they met at Twickenham in round three 2012; replacement Scott Williams’ converted try in the 75th minute the difference between four Owen Farrell and four Leigh Halfpenny kicks. England won their next two matches to finish second, but so did Wales, and with their victories came the Grand Slam. Just over a year later, it’s now England with the hope of a Grand Slam, but Wales and a trip to the Millennium Stadium that stand between them and a first clean sweep since 2003. So, as the visitors are the undefeated team, what do Wales need to do to beat England?

Six Nations 2013 – The lamentable absence of T-CUP

Ireland and France contributed the Six Nations’ lowest-scoring draw (13-13) in Dublin, but as is nearly always the case when teams finish equal on the scoreboard, one team would have been happier with the result than the other. Ireland captain Jamie Heaslip said there was nothing between the teams after the match and ‘supposed’ that the score reflected the match, but no doubt with something of a dejected tone. On the balance of play, it was a point lost for Ireland and a point gained for France, but even after Louis Picamoles’ try and Freddie Michalak’s conversion made it 13-13, with five minutes left to play there was still plenty of time for either team to win the match, but both lacked a bit of T-CUP in the last, critical moments and the scores stayed level.

Six Nations 2013 – England scrum problems a myth

The common story after England’s 23-13 win over France was that England had overcome a few set-piece issues and used their bench wisely to find some final-quarter dominance and ‘grind out’ their third Six Nations victory of the 2013 season. “With Thomas Domingo giving Dan Cole all manner of scrum problems, the lineout wobbling and tackles being missed far too often, Lancaster’s side had no foundations to build on,” was one of the lines that caught tGL’s attention; not because of the lineout wobbling (which it did) or the tackles being missed (which they were), but the part about Domingo giving Cole ‘all manner’ of scrum problems. Domingo certainly gave someone a lot of scrum problems at Twickenham, but it wasn’t Cole, it was referee Craig Joubert.