The modern game evolves every six months.

A lot of modern punditry usually evolves every 10 years.

How many times have you heard a decision to kick the ball described as “being out of ideas”? How many times have you heard commentators groan whenever there are more than two kicks in a sequence? Every other game, right?

It’s a natural reaction of people who don’t quite understand what they’re seeing. You can do three things on the rugby pitch to affect the flow of the game – run with the ball, pass the ball and kick the ball. Everything else is an extension of those three actions. From those actions, we can begin to understand game states and then pick ways of playing to hit the game states you want.

The advent of the 50/22 law and, almost more importantly, Law Trial 12.12.b which states;

An attacking kick, other than a kick-off, restart kick following a score, drop goal, drop-out or penalty attempt, is grounded or made dead in in-goal by the defending team.

have been major drivers in the change in tactical thought since the beginning of this season because, in my opinion, they have tilted the balance of the game in a very tangible way, to the point that strategies that worked last season, no longer work to the same degree this season.

The first thing that I think these new kicking laws have achieved is to diminish the value of the Q2 box kick exit to the opponents’ half of the field. That kick was a massive tool in the Lions Series over the summer but seems to have gone way back in usage since the start of the new season. I’ll have exact metrics on that after this Autumn Nations Series but from what I’ve seen so far, too much box kicking to the opponents half of the field opens up the possibility for a 50/22 in return. Maybe not on the first or second one, but all it takes is one spilt ball, one over-eager outside chaser and the lane for a 50/22 kick is open for an elite kicker to target.

Law Trial 12.12.b has also baked in a reward for longer kicking, especially when combined with 50/22. If defenders have to drift wider to guard the touchline of the 22, then it stands to reason that central spaces will be less guarded. If a talented kicker can kick long enough that the ball will hit the edge of the 5m line with an aggressive enough chase, you will now be rewarded with a goal-line dropout.

In essence, Law 12.12.b is a licence to print territory, if you have the tools to chase after it. You kick long, you chase, you pressure the opposition on a bouncing ball and, if they dot the ball down under pressure, you get the ball back just outside the 22 or nearer the halfway line with a massive space in front of you to exploit. Last season, you were getting that ball back beyond your own 10m line or on a heavily contested aerial challenge on their 10m line.

With these two law changes, the value of an attacking lineout has been higher but the same is now also true of kick transition attack.

A good attacking side will kick long and kick often. This can be counter-intuitive to understand because people don’t usually associate kicking with attack unless it’s a nice grubber or a crossfield kick. I’m talking about long kicks from your own half that maybe target a 50/22 – but not always – and maybe target a particular receiver – but not always – and maybe go long enough to force a goal-line dropout but, as before, not always. The key is in the length you get from the kicks and the vertical spacing that it provides.

One of the key aims of the law variations that we are seeing this season was to make the game more free-flowing and to promote attacking play. The 50/22 law has been spoken about as a means to get defenders out of the primary defensive line and into the backfield but I don’t think that’s the reality. I think what it really does is increase the stress on outside edge defenders on their routes to and from the primary defensive line but, in combination with Law 12.12.b, it’s also meant that the game is played out over a longer space.

In a game with a lot of contestable box kicks, the area between the point where the ball is kicked and where it’s received is usually pretty small – 20/25m. Teams like Saracens and the Springboks – and Munster, at times – would box kick to the opponents’ half of the field, pressure the receipt of the ball and then stress the next three or four phases with line speed or breakdown pressure with the idea of winning the ball back directly, winning a penalty or getting a kickback in a better position than where you got it.

But that game isn’t fully viable now. The risks of running it have increased incrementally with 50/22. You can’t afford to flood the field because 50/22 means that what would have been a reset lineout after a great kick last season is now a defensive lineout in your red zone this season.

The balance has shifted.

So what do you do?

You’ll still see #9s exiting their own 22 via box kick but now a lot of kicking will fall to the #10 or other, wider kickers because that’s what is rewarded now.

The All Blacks are often credited with running the ball from everywhere but they often outkick their opponents by a considerable margin, just purely on a “number of involvements” basis.

On Saturday, for example, Beauden Barrett’s on-ball involvements against Wales were; 13 kicks, 15 passes, 6 carries.

Wales’ Gareth Anscombe’s involvements in the same game looked like this – 5 kicks, 18 passes, 5 carries.

Why are the kicks important?

Well, variety of action is an important one but the number of kicks that the All Blacks do – 12% of their ball usage were kicks – is directly related to the game state they most want to go after, which is kick transition. A lot of Barrett’s kicks were on kick transition to further double down on that game state. Kick long to generate the vertical space you want.

Any time you kick, it’s with the intention of getting the ball back in a more favourable state. It might seem counter-intuitive to “give the ball away” to get it back in a better position but it’s a key attacking strategy for the All Blacks.

According to the excellent @rugbycology, in the All Blacks last 8 games in 2021 against Tier 1 opposition, 14% of their in-game point-scoring actions have been kick transitions from their own half and that has generated the second most amount of points per game for them in that period.

But you won’t get those transition opportunities unless you kick yourself. It’s the easiest way to consistently generate that game state from your own possession.

It isn’t even about kicking loosely to the All Blacks. Their kicking tendencies generate enough workable kick transitions that they’ll get a window eventually. I think it’s this aspect of their game that most clashes with the Springboks, a side who play a heavy kick pressure game of their own and who do so without giving up the kind of long transitions that Wales did here while also having a scrum and maul that can punish any turnovers or lineouts that result from the ball being moved up and down the pitch with such velocity.

Either way, you can see how much time the All Blacks dedicate to kick transition in their preparation and their selection. When you see Reiko Ioane float from #13 to #11 across different weeks the main thing is that his work on kick transition is preserved regardless of what number he wears on his back. When you play this way, the biggest quality you need in your outside backline is mobility, kicking ability – at least three kickers – and their skill set on transition.

The All Blacks have identified this area of the game as the one key point of difference between themselves and their opponents and have the kicking ability to generate it consistently against anyone.