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I was watching the 1014's review of this weeks rugby and saw something I found quite interesting was their (Opta's) ruck chart, so I went back to the week 1 review to see if the trend continued there which it did. (Screenshots at 10.52 for Italy here
and France (Dark green) at 28.34 here )
We have considerably less rucks ~35-15m from the try line than we do between and just inside the 10m lines and within about 10m of the line, it says a lot about our game plan. We're far less conservative from 60m-15m from the try line than we our behind our own 10m (understandable, our game is very much territory based) and deep inside the oppositions 22 wherein lies the issue. For whatever reason we find it very difficult to suck in opposition defenders in the redzone while its quite easy for us to manipulate defences and quickly gain about 40 m outside it. I'd imagine its because oppositon are more likely to stack the pillars and in their own 22 and from an eye test we gain a lot of metres exploiting gaps 10-15 metres either side of the ruck, we rarely use numbers advantages in the opposition 22 either because we don't have the advantage or because we don't have a second back with quick enough hands to exploit it, I couldn't tell without being at matches. Therein lies our problem, we can give ourselves fantastic position but the skills aren't their to suck in the opposition, to exploit numbers advantages when we do or both. Fix this, make it stick and don't let it be at a cost defensively and I think we'll become formidable af. I don't really see how at the moment, disregarding defence I don't think Larmour or Conway can help this but Carbery certainly could and has with Leinster. Outside of that there's the Carbery to 12 bandwagon I drive with few enough people on it but I'm going to add a "He won't be too small in September" banner to entice fellas, hope Rory Scannell does something to get himself to the level required or see if Henshaw, Aki and Ringrose can improve their skills in the coming months. There's some really fine margins stopping us from scoring more tries and we honestly won't know if its endemic until we face Wales and then England (Scotland's defence is a little porous) because France really was a shitshow in terms of weather and refereeing where only something World Class from an exceptional player in top form could produce a try and equally win the game in return
and France (Dark green) at 28.34 here )
We have considerably less rucks ~35-15m from the try line than we do between and just inside the 10m lines and within about 10m of the line, it says a lot about our game plan. We're far less conservative from 60m-15m from the try line than we our behind our own 10m (understandable, our game is very much territory based) and deep inside the oppositions 22 wherein lies the issue. For whatever reason we find it very difficult to suck in opposition defenders in the redzone while its quite easy for us to manipulate defences and quickly gain about 40 m outside it. I'd imagine its because oppositon are more likely to stack the pillars and in their own 22 and from an eye test we gain a lot of metres exploiting gaps 10-15 metres either side of the ruck, we rarely use numbers advantages in the opposition 22 either because we don't have the advantage or because we don't have a second back with quick enough hands to exploit it, I couldn't tell without being at matches. Therein lies our problem, we can give ourselves fantastic position but the skills aren't their to suck in the opposition, to exploit numbers advantages when we do or both. Fix this, make it stick and don't let it be at a cost defensively and I think we'll become formidable af. I don't really see how at the moment, disregarding defence I don't think Larmour or Conway can help this but Carbery certainly could and has with Leinster. Outside of that there's the Carbery to 12 bandwagon I drive with few enough people on it but I'm going to add a "He won't be too small in September" banner to entice fellas, hope Rory Scannell does something to get himself to the level required or see if Henshaw, Aki and Ringrose can improve their skills in the coming months. There's some really fine margins stopping us from scoring more tries and we honestly won't know if its endemic until we face Wales and then England (Scotland's defence is a little porous) because France really was a shitshow in terms of weather and refereeing where only something World Class from an exceptional player in top form could produce a try and equally win the game in return
