Banquo wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 10:01 pm
whats also interesting is that 30% is top of the tree, when box kicking say is often labelled as 50/50 giving away possession....and its way worse, with a lot of hard work and sometimes selection calls to get it up to 30. Obviously more to it than getting it back, but pause for thought..?
This was my reaction to this stat too. 70% of the time (maybe 75% if you're not good at it) you're actually giving the ball away. It seems to be a tactic which should be used sparingly and with consideration, rather than frequently and robotically.
I guess the theory is that if the ball is kicked decently (into the opposition's half) then they can't 'just' score, even a penalty wouldn't be kickable. 'Playing in the right areas' <-- Borthwick says this a lot'. We should back our defensive system to stop them from that distance - as the Wibble rugby video highlights the defensive system that we are trying to use 'may bend and bend but not break' (staying in the fight). The further out we are from our own goal line, the more space to bend into. I am processing this via the understanding that this is a very stats lead approach, and obviously a team can run it in from their own 22 - but % chance of that should be small, especially if our defensive system works.
I'd like to re-iterate 'I guess..' I'm not a rugby coach or a stats wonk but our current coach, Sidewinding Bucephalus, seems to be both.
Banquo wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 10:01 pm
whats also interesting is that 30% is top of the tree, when box kicking say is often labelled as 50/50 giving away possession....and its way worse, with a lot of hard work and sometimes selection calls to get it up to 30. Obviously more to it than getting it back, but pause for thought..?
This was my reaction to this stat too. 70% of the time (maybe 75% if you're not good at it) you're actually giving the ball away. It seems to be a tactic which should be used sparingly and with consideration, rather than frequently and robotically.
I guess the theory is that if the ball is kicked decently (into the opposition's half) then they can't 'just' score, even a penalty wouldn't be kickable. 'Playing in the right areas' <-- Borthwick says this a lot'. We should back our defensive system to stop them from that distance - as the Wibble rugby video highlights the defensive system that we are trying to use 'may bend and bend but not break' (staying in the fight). The further out we are from our own goal line, the more space to bend into. I am processing this via the understanding that this is a very stats lead approach, and obviously a team can run it in from their own 22 - but % chance of that should be small, especially if our defensive system works.
I'd like to re-iterate 'I guess..' I'm not a rugby coach or a stats wonk but our current coach, Sidewinding Bucephalus, seems to be both.
There are certainly many factors to be considered:
Commentators often say that defending is more tiring than attacking, which suggests keeping the ball and making *them* tackle *you* would pay off later in the game
What percentage of the time could a team make the same territorial gain by running the ball, with the obvious benefit of retaining possession?
What are the subsequent benefits of giving the forwards a couple of minutes' snooze while the aerial ping-pong continues above their heads?
What's the difference in success if the opposition are expecting it, rather than it being a surprise? (The 1 ball and back to the hooker at a lineout is often a surprise, but doesn't often give much benefit as it gets pinged for not striaght, forward, not five or barrelled into touch too often.)
Off out now, but I'd summarise by saying that this is a tactic, but probably not successful enough to be the tactic.
Banquo wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 10:01 pm
whats also interesting is that 30% is top of the tree, when box kicking say is often labelled as 50/50 giving away possession....and its way worse, with a lot of hard work and sometimes selection calls to get it up to 30. Obviously more to it than getting it back, but pause for thought..?
This was my reaction to this stat too. 70% of the time (maybe 75% if you're not good at it) you're actually giving the ball away. It seems to be a tactic which should be used sparingly and with consideration, rather than frequently and robotically.
as the Wibble rugby video highlights the defensive system that we are trying to use 'may bend and bend but not break' (staying in the fight).
I've not watched the video yet, but find this interesting.
My interpretation of bend but not break comes from NFL defences where that is used for defensive systems which are happy to give up a couple of yards here or there, on the trade off of having coverage systems in place that mean those small gains never turn into blow out losses.
The system we're currently running appears to be much more along smashmouth lines where the aim is absolutely to batter the attack into submission by forcing them back and limiting their space to play. The obvious trade off to which is that, as we've seen so far, when it fails, your scrambling cover better be good as you're giving up plenty of yardage and possibly scores.
If we pick a 2nd row at 6 we are in a position to attack the opposition line-out, making the old fashioned bounce-into-touch kicks a more sensible territorial tactic than kicking down the middle, IMO.
I think the bend don’t break analogy isn’t quite right, especially in the NFL* context. I’d characterise it more as taut and if it does break, and it will from time to time, you can immediately mend it.
*to my understanding, a bend don’t break NFL defence is a soft/passive/reactive one that F. Jones’s certainly isn’t. I’d liken it to a blitz heavy (pressure breaks pipes as Wink would say) scheme with a secondary primed to snuff out the big time play as soon as it happens.
Minute 71: Murray's kick is shocking, going only about 7 metres forwards, but it obviously moves in the air as Martin misjudges it and ends up knocking it on back to the Irish. Ireland regather and reset a ruck in almost exactly the same spot. Go on Conor, have another go!
This kick is better, just over halfway. Smith gathers and arcs inside, but the Irish defensive line is very solid, so he passes inside to Furbank. Furbank cuts back against the grain, but is tap tackled as he goes, leaving him falling at the feet of two Irish players who go in over and win the penalty.
Riffing off another thread's conversation topic, this turnover is not Furbank's fault - it's one part bad luck and good effort by Ireland, and one part Alex Dombrandt who casually watches Furbank jink past him and ambles away towards first receiver before belatedly realising that Furbank's in trouble and he should really be getting in there (at which point it is, of course, too late). I called his appearance anonymous earlier and that's backed by this being the first time I mention his name (or notice his existence) in 6 minutes of being on the pitch, but it's definitely not better to be noticed for that.
Minute 72: Crowley pulls out a belting touch-finder and Ireland have a lineout 12m out. They throw to the middle and form a decent-looking maul, but it gains them a metre or two at most and they're forced to play away. Aki runs to the line and offloads for Henshaw - Daly makes the tackle, but gets himself in the wrong position and chooses poorly in his first movement on how to get out (not helped by Henshaw placing the ball back into him), so the ref gives Ireland the advantage under the posts.
Ireland go through a forward phase to try and narrow us up and it definitely works - we have numbers that have folded around to the correct side, but we're not pushing our defenders further wider. Ireland do a simple pull-back ball and they're on the outside, with simple hands seling the 3-on-2 overlap to put Lowe in at the corner.
Minute 73: Replays - crisp handling, but that feels like tiredness, combined with basic alignment mistakes. Maybe we are missing Slade?
Minute 74: Crowley misses the tricky conversion and the score remains 20-22. England kick off long to Aki again and IFW puts in the tackle. Murray box-kicks away...
Minute 75: ... and Furbank gathers near halfway. He feeds Smith inside, who decides to jink back toward the touchline in the hope of rounding the one chaser and making hay down his channel. He has misjudged the situation and gets caught, offloading to Care before the Green Bay Poachers can come in. Care decides he wants none of it and fires a pass at Daly, who looks at the Irish defence and decides he wants none of it, jinking back inside where we finally set up a ruck. All a bit harem-scarem there and I'm relieved when we secure the ball.
Dan offers himself as a hard running option off the ruck and requires three Irish defenders to bring him down and then, literally just as the commentator finishes saying "Daly's presence on the pitch will remind Ireland that they can't afford to give away any penalties near the halfway line", Ireland fail to roll away from Dan and the referee gives us a penalty just beyond the halfway line.
Daly is straight over to Itoje, asking to be given the shot, and Maro signals to the ref that's what we're doing. It's not a terrible call - worst case scenario, we'll likely get the ball back from the 22 drop.
Minute 76: It's not a terrible kick, but it's never on the right line and the curve takes it away from the posts. I wonder what Daly's percentage is from those long-shots? If he's regularly knocking over 55-60% of those in training, then it's worth doing, but it *feels* more like a 1 in 3 chance in actual games and, if that is the case, I think we'd've been better going for touch and getting possession in the 22.
The television director once more goes to Owen Farrell in the crowd, which at least shows they're not just picking on Ford, but is comedy cause Farrell would not have made that.
Minute 77: Ireland are in no hurry to take the 22. When they eventually do, it's kicked long and Smith gathers on our 10m line and it's time for the most satisfying play of the match - sending Chandler Cunningham-South into contact with a long run-up. He has a 5m run-up to get up to speed before Smith passes him the ball and then 10 metres before he hits and runs over Tadgh Beirne. Beirne does well enough to put his shoulder in and knock his feet out, but the momentum takes him another 3m before he's stopped. Martin and Marler have anticipated where he'll stop and clear out, so it's instant ball again. Itoje runs it up and pulls it back to Smith, who evades a shooter to find Daly. Daly runs sideways and throws *almost* a glorious miss-pass - if it was to hands, Freeman was away down the wing, but it bounces in front of him (frankly, it's a forward pass as well) and Freeman has to stop to collect it. Still, he makes a little ground, before stepping inside and running upright into three low Irish tacklers - poor mistake and very lucky that Earl is in support. Earl gets low and tackles the nascent maul at thigh height, knocking everyone's legs out and getting Freeman's knees to the ground, likely about half a second before Amashukeli was due to call maul.
As it is, Ireland have to release and the ball is played out again, Itoje drawing the shooter up onto him before tipping on to Dan on his outside shoulder who attacks the hole the shooter had left. He's brought down, but it's front foot, quick ball again. We run two phases where it's forward runners off Smith - the first is Dombrandt, which is solid and unremarkable, but keeps the momentum. The second involves Marcus Smith throwing the most overblown dummy-with-the-eyes, whipping his head around like he's in a driving test trying to persuade the instructor that he's checking his mirrors, before putting the little pop pass to Cunningham-South who is running short and hard off his shoulder. It's excellent all around - Ireland's defence hesitates and follows Smith's eyes and CCS at speed is going through them anyway. He offloads out the tackle to Smith who has followed around and is through. He outpaces the first cover defence and makes it all the way to the 22 before he has to slow to attack the full-back and is hauled in by Aki. Furbank is first there and does a fantastic job of securing the ruck - worth a note to say that he's been superb there all game. It's not traditionally what you pick your full-back for, but it's happened a lot of times where he's been first man over and has put in some strong and technically skillful rucking and ball protection which has gained us quick ball. Unseen work.
Unfortunately, this beautiful bit of work is then utterly ruined by Care picking and going and then attempting a grubber through. It's just never on - it would have to make it through two sets of Irish legs to even go anywhere and, even if it makes it through, Ireland have a player coming across. If he'd kept it in hand, it probably wouldn't've been an immediate score, but Lawrence and Dan were looking to run hard against a retreating defence and it would definitely have been another half-break and more momentum.
Maybe I should start a count about the number of times Daly and Care have pissed me off, cause they are absolutely reinforcing my pre-existing impression that they came close to losing the game for us. It's enough to make me rethink my opinion on starting a debutant on the wing next weekend.
Minute 78: The blocker grubber ricochets around to the dulcet sounds of tens of thousands in Twickenham screaming, "WHY DID YOU KICK THAT?!?!" and Ireland manage to dive on it and set up a ruck. Despite having two scrum-halves on the pitch, none of them are available to pass the ball away, so Crowley steps in and feeds another forward rumble to rest things for the clearance. Lowe kicks long, but he doesn't find touch and so Furbank passes it infield for Earl to do his best CCS impression. He's not quite as imposing and certainly not running the straight up-down route that CCS took - he goes wandering across the pitch, throws a little dummy and then accelerates into a gap between two defenders, knocking through a weak shoulder to set up possession about 35m out.
The ball goes Care -> Smith -> Dombrandt and the latter shows a bit of why he's picked, attempting to take on Henshaw on the outside to set up a 2-on-1. He does get around the centre and nearly put Freeman away, but Henshaw just scrags him from behind before Gibson-Park is forced to step in and Freeman ends up with a 1-on-1 in only 2m of space. He goes for it, chucks the ball back inside before he's tackled into touch, but only succeeds in getting Furbank tackled into touch as he catches the ball. Ireland lineout just inside their 22.
Minute 79: Piss. Cunningham-South is down injured and, after a lot of physio consultation, decides to go off. It looks like a calf strain, rather than anything with the joints, thank gods for the future, but we're down to 14 players for the last 2 minutes.
Ireland take a lot of time with the lineout and then throw something which is marginally straight to the tail, only just evading Martin's fingertips. They break and run Conan at the 10 channel, but it's Earl that's standing there and he chops him down. This is the advantage of the blitz defence - Ireland are on the edge of their 22 and might've felt like playing a few phases to try and wind down the clock, but the pressure our defence can put on makes that far too risky to try and last out 90 seconds, so Ireland set for a box-kick. Murray puts it very firmly into the stands and England get one last shot with a lineout about 37 metres out.
Minute 80: Dan misreads the lineout call and ends up dummying the lineout, but recovers well enough to get away with it and throw to Itoje at the middle. Lucky the ref didn't see that - would've been an anticlimactic way to end the game and I would be significantly more annoyed with Care kicking away that penultimate attack.
Care flings a wobbly, but accurate, pass wide to Smith who uses Earl as the dummy and feeds Dombrandt behind. Outside, the exact same pattern is run - Lawrence running the hard line and the ball passed behind to Daly. It's simple, but doen with enough skill and timing that the Irish defence can't ignore the hard runners and, when Daly arcs around, he's got a 4-on-2. He picks the right option to Freeman running short, as Lowe has shot up to block the outside pass. Freeman makes a lot of ground through contact again, but he's still very high and nearly gets held up.
He manages to get to ground, and even this "slow" ball is only 4 seconds. You can hear Marcus Smith screaming for the ball on the blind through the ref's mic and Care throws it for him to run onto. It's 2-on-2, but Aki is worried that Smith might outpace Doris and not worried enough that Feyi-Waboso might outpace him. He stays too tight and is burned when the pass goes out and Feyi-Waboso steps on the gas. Our man Manny sprints down the touchline, beats another defender with a step, and requires two tacklers to stop him driving through contact. Our ruckers pile in and Lowe has no chance to roll away, giving us the penalty advantage.
We go with one-out runners four phases in a row, with Marler and Stuart making a metre each to take us up to the 5 metre line and Earl and Dan making the gainline, but not over it. Every ruck is well resourced and Ireland don't even have a sniff of a turnover. Dombrandt is next and he busts through a weak shoulder from Crowley before being hauled down a couple of metres out. Furbank calls for it out on the blind-side and it seems an iffy call - he's all alone and there's a lot of Irish defenders, but he does run hard enough that Beirne flops down over the top of him. Itoje gets there to form the ruck and Amashukeli gives Beirne every warning and every opportunity to release it before losing patience and signalling the second advantage, this one eminently kickable.
We don't need it though. Marler very ostentatiously arranges a forward pod and screams unconvincingly for the ball while giving little nods and winks to Care about Smith standing wide, but the farce isn't really necessary - Care passes out to Smith who pots the straightforward drop goal to kick off the wild celebrations.
What I learned from this m-b-m:
I was right in thinking that we didn't radically change what we've been doing this 6N, but IFW made a massive difference to how we did it. He's just very good at making ground from nothing, which is immensely useful. The back row looked good and I was definitely wrong about Chessum at 6. Ford was much better than the press would have you believe and I would have no problems with him holding Smith off for the France game (although I would take the opposite happily as well). Furbank made more simple mistakes than I thought, but also did some really good nuts and bolts stuff - definitely worthwhile persevering with.
Mostly, what I learned was to unironically say IBWT again, if only for the short-term until I'm next disappointed . There appears to be method to the madness and it's not just kick-kick-kick - there's a plan there that can possibly take us to the top. Now let's see whether the next part works.
Mellsblue wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 2:49 pm
I think the bend don’t break analogy isn’t quite right, especially in the NFL* context. I’d characterise it more as taut and if it does break, and it will from time to time, you can immediately mend it.
*to my understanding, a bend don’t break NFL defence is a soft/passive/reactive one that F. Jones’s certainly isn’t. I’d liken it to a blitz heavy (pressure breaks pipes as Wink would say) scheme with a secondary primed to snuff out the big time play as soon as it happens.
Yeah this was pretty much Tandy’s mantra when he came in for Scotland with his ultra-passive drift defence. It is then near enough useless against a team like Ireland who can keep their attacking shape and work-rate for 30 phases.
Watching the chaos of this blitz defence is certainly more fun.
Whoops. More nonsense for Puja to move to another thread.
Mellsblue wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 2:49 pm
I think the bend don’t break analogy isn’t quite right, especially in the NFL* context. I’d characterise it more as taut and if it does break, and it will from time to time, you can immediately mend it.
*to my understanding, a bend don’t break NFL defence is a soft/passive/reactive one that F. Jones’s certainly isn’t. I’d liken it to a blitz heavy (pressure breaks pipes as Wink would say) scheme with a secondary primed to snuff out the big time play as soon as it happens.
Yeah this was pretty much Tandy’s mantra when he came in for Scotland with his ultra-passive drift defence. It is then near enough useless against a team like Ireland who can keep their attacking shape and work-rate for 30 phases.
Watching the chaos of this blitz defence is certainly more fun.
Whoops. More nonsense for Puja to move to another thread.
Yep, and it hadn’t even occurred to me, England are suddenly fun to watch for the first time this decade. It’s a sample size of one, admittedly.
Which Tyler wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 5:07 pm
Thanks Puja - sterling work as ever
Could do with some gifs, maybe a nice little infographic for ruck marks? Maybe a little musical score to reflect the ebb and flow of the game. A solid start though.
Which Tyler wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 5:07 pm
Thanks Puja - sterling work as ever
Could do with some gifs, maybe a nice little infographic for ruck marks? Maybe a little musical score to reflect the ebb and flow of the game. A solid start though.
I leave these for an exercise for the viewer .
Well, all but the gif, of course. I can provide a gif for you:
Thx again Puja. I noted Minute 24 "Furlong goes in for a jackal and is cleared out by Genge in a fashion that I'm really glad didn't see a TMO replay - looks like another tucked shoulder, "
I saw that too + we dodged a bullet there. Could have cost us the game - and Genge had a similar let off against Scotland?
loudnconfident wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 10:18 am
Thx again Puja. I noted Minute 24 "Furlong goes in for a jackal and is cleared out by Genge in a fashion that I'm really glad didn't see a TMO replay - looks like another tucked shoulder, "
I saw that too + we dodged a bullet there. Could have cost us the game - and Genge had a similar let off against Scotland?
Someone needs a quiet word, methinks.
Agreed. I've since read an article that said that the angles not shown by the television suggest shoulder on shoulder contact and that Furlong was taking a dive by going down clutching his head, but it doesn't change the fact that he's being reckless. The incident against Scotland and this one weren't head contacts and weren't red cards, but that's not because Genge has some special aim with his tucked arm shoulder charges, but because he's been lucky. At some point, someone's going to change position unexpectedly and he's going to brain someone, which won't be good for anyone involved.
loudnconfident wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 10:18 am
Thx again Puja. I noted Minute 24 "Furlong goes in for a jackal and is cleared out by Genge in a fashion that I'm really glad didn't see a TMO replay - looks like another tucked shoulder, "
I saw that too + we dodged a bullet there. Could have cost us the game - and Genge had a similar let off against Scotland?
Someone needs a quiet word, methinks.
Agreed. I've since read an article that said that the angles not shown by the television suggest shoulder on shoulder contact and that Furlong was taking a dive by going down clutching his head, but it doesn't change the fact that he's being reckless. The incident against Scotland and this one weren't head contacts and weren't red cards, but that's not because Genge has some special aim with his tucked arm shoulder charges, but because he's been lucky. At some point, someone's going to change position unexpectedly and he's going to brain someone, which won't be good for anyone involved.
Puja
Agreed. I like the intensity but he needs to dial it down a notch. He's becoming a leader and an important bit of the team. Him getting himself sent off unnecessarily is going to damage that and probably cost us the game.
loudnconfident wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 10:18 am
Thx again Puja. I noted Minute 24 "Furlong goes in for a jackal and is cleared out by Genge in a fashion that I'm really glad didn't see a TMO replay - looks like another tucked shoulder, "
I saw that too + we dodged a bullet there. Could have cost us the game - and Genge had a similar let off against Scotland?
Someone needs a quiet word, methinks.
Agreed. I've since read an article that said that the angles not shown by the television suggest shoulder on shoulder contact and that Furlong was taking a dive by going down clutching his head, but it doesn't change the fact that he's being reckless. The incident against Scotland and this one weren't head contacts and weren't red cards, but that's not because Genge has some special aim with his tucked arm shoulder charges, but because he's been lucky. At some point, someone's going to change position unexpectedly and he's going to brain someone, which won't be good for anyone involved.
Puja
Yeah this is exactly the sort of thing we need to cut out, but Genge seems like a bit of a slow learner in that sense. I understand we can only really punish based on outcome, but the fact he doesn't hit anybody in the head feels more like chance than judgement, as you say. Ideally it's been flagged that he's escaped 2 of these incidents and that's enough to change his actions.
Banquo wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 10:01 pm
whats also interesting is that 30% is top of the tree, when box kicking say is often labelled as 50/50 giving away possession....and its way worse, with a lot of hard work and sometimes selection calls to get it up to 30. Obviously more to it than getting it back, but pause for thought..?
Worth noting, that's 30% of all kicks (from hand, presumably) - so that's box kicks, kicks to compete, clearance to touch, keep deep for territory, cross-field kicks, 50:22 attempts... the lot.
No-one's ever claimed that all kicks are 50/50. No-one in their right mind have claimed that any box kick to touch off a restart is trying to get a 50% chance of retaining possession.
Which Tyler wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2024 12:44 pm
No-one in their right mind have claimed that any box kick to touch off a restart is trying to get a 50% chance of retaining possession.
Banquo wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2024 10:01 pm
whats also interesting is that 30% is top of the tree, when box kicking say is often labelled as 50/50 giving away possession....and its way worse, with a lot of hard work and sometimes selection calls to get it up to 30. Obviously more to it than getting it back, but pause for thought..?
Worth noting, that's 30% of all kicks (from hand, presumably) - so that's box kicks, kicks to compete, clearance to touch, keep deep for territory, cross-field kicks, 50:22 attempts... the lot.
No-one's ever claimed that all kicks are 50/50. No-one in their right mind have claimed that any box kick to touch off a restart is trying to get a 50% chance of retaining possession.
If that's the case, it means the square root of nothing then. deep for territory = 0%, cross kick pass = probs about 75% touch clearance= 5% (unless a penalty and your lineout) etc.... So a pointless debate then .
....I wasn't claiming it was a very scientific claim, its just a phrase that's used often and blatently inaccurate. Even then, I did qualify with using the phrase 'box kicks'
. There appears to be method to the madness and it's not just kick-kick-kick - there's a plan there that can possibly take us to the top. Now let's see whether the next part works.
.