I spend most of my time analysing the work of other coaches, be it Munster, Ireland or the sides both of those teams end up playing throughout the course of the season. I’m asked quite a bit about what my own philosophy on the game actually is given my recent criticism of the praise directed towards Connacht when they were in the midst of a run where they lost five of their last seven games.
Because Connacht are generally perceived to be a very attractive team to watch, there was a perception out there that I must, obviously, prefer conservative, box kick heavy rugby because these are, again, perceived by many to be opposite ends of the stylistic spectrum.
The first thing, for me, is that whatever about the style you play, it has to be winning rugby otherwise the only people you’ll please in the long run are neutrals who enjoy “fun” games that just stop talking about you when you lose too many games in a row.
I’m going to be writing “you must” and “you have to” a lot over the next section here so, to save time, just visualise that I’ve written “in my opinion” liberally alongside all of this because there is no one way to build a successful rugby side and this is just what I think will be the way the game will be played at the elite level within the next five years.
The key to understanding where the game is going is to understand where World Rugby want the game to go.
Post-pandemic, there will be a big focus on creating a sport that is exciting to watch and, as a result, that generates income at the gate and generates the kind of TV rights environment that keeps the sport sustainable as it is currently constructed. World Rugby have consistently tinkered with the laws and interpretations of rugby union to make it more entertaining over the years and that’s the exact same as other global sports like soccer, the NFL and NBA. The NBA, in particular, have heavily tweaked their ruleset over the years to make basketball more exciting, more fluid and a better product. Remember, at the elite level rugby union isn’t a sport it’s an entertainment product. In the post-pandemic era when building back finances is a huge priority across the board it would be foolish not to assume that the laws of the game will be tweaked heading up to the 2023 World Cup to make the game more exciting and more entertaining.
What does that mean? It means more ball in play, fewer incentives to defend and more scoring. We’ve already seen the game change over the last four seasons. In 2015, PRO12 teams averaged 1.89 tries per team per game over the preceding four seasons. During last year’s PRO14 (which featured 12 teams, so it can be compared like for like) the average was 2.66 tries per team per game, which would be on par with New Zealand’s Super Rugby franchises averages in 2015 if we take them over the preceding four seasons as we did with the PRO12. That’s a 40% increase in seven seasons or 5.71% per season.
This season in the URC so far – featuring 16 teams and an uneven number of games – is on track for an average of 2.72 tries per team per game which is a 2.25% increase season on season and that’s just about halfway through before we get to the warmer weather, harder track and better conditions of March, April, May and June.
Is this a side effect of 50/22 and other law trials? Perhaps it is, we’ll have to wait and see at the end of the season, but something is happening over the last seven years that is leading to this increase in scoring, even with the perception being out there that defences are more dominant in general. Players are getting better, yes, and attack is getting more sophisticated, but we can’t separate the impact of laws and refereeing interpretations from this too.
World Rugby wants a game that is safer, more free-flowing, more entertaining and more free-flowing with recent law tweaks like 50/22 being implemented to open up more attacking space and defang, to a certain extent, the impact of high line speed defences. Does it seem to be working? I mean, I think it is? Hefty scoring percentage increases year on year in the one tournament that regularly spans multiple union-controlled or heavily union influenced teams in both hemispheres is a sign that we are seeing more tries, almost by design.
But World Rugby want more. They want higher scoring games, they want fewer of the nasty impacts and injuries that make parents think that rugby isn’t for their child while, it also seems, reducing the number of “game ruining” red cards that are handed out but they mainly want a product that produces close, high-drama, entertaining games that generate revenue and market the sport to the casual viewer.
If the law tweaks and changes we’ve seen since 2015 continue – with the twin aims of improving player safety and increasing offensive output – what can we realistically expect the game to look like in 2024/25?
It’s A Ruck’s World
Over the last 10 years at Rugby World Cups – I’ve included 2007 for some prehistoric references to how the game used to be played pre-ELV law variations of 2009 – we’ve seen a massive jump in average carries per team, with average tackles per team increasing alongside it, as you’d expect.
That’s a 47% increase in average carries per team from 2007 to 2019 with a 53% increase in average tackles per game.
Rucks, across the same period, have increased by 26%.
That makes sense, though, when you think about it. In an environment where average carries per team and average tackles per team have increased, it would make sense that rucks would increase too. What happens when a tackle meets a carry more often than not? Yep, a ruck.
And in an environment where offloads have fallen by 98% since the 1987 World Cup with the number of turnovers conceded since then falling by 93%, the ruck has become a big driver of the modern game outside of the set-piece. Why are teams offloading less? Because when you offload a lot, your turnover rate goes through the roof and those kinds of attacking turnovers can be devastating. Offloads haven’t completely left the game – and seem to have made something of a come back in the last two seasons, to a certain extent – but rucks, on the other hand, give a team structured, coachable and plannable moments during phase play where you know where the defence will be and you know where your attacking assets will be.
So while the number of possessions per game have gone down, the average phases per possession have increased in line with the general decrease in offloads.
That APPP metric has stayed pretty stable since 2011. It’s no surprise either that this has coincided with the rise and then the stagnation of “pod play” where teams play with a pod of three forwards off #9, a screened handler behind them and then layered options off that handler.
How will rugby look to “break” the impasse to double down on the try-scoring improvement since 2015? They’ve tried to create more attacking space and reduce numbers in the primary defensive line with the 50/22 law trial which seems to have opened up the space World Rugby intended it to, for the most part. I still think teams haven’t fully opened up that to its fullest capacity yet either.
The second half of that linked article deals with the offensive breakdown law trial that was brought in at the same time 50/22 was but it hasn’t had the impact intended. You see a few more offensive off-feet penalties this season, I think – I don’t have metrics on this yet – but the lightning-quick penalties we saw being awarded at the start of the season with the slightest hint of holding on haven’t stayed for the duration of the year.
With 50/22 already implemented – and I think it’ll be kept on – we have to look at where the next frontier of law tweaks will look to increase ball in play time and offensive scoring. One obvious area where you can already see tweaks is the interpretation of jackal penalties, where only the most obvious are called to the point where it’s becoming a losing strategy to base your game on a primarily off-ball footing.
In the last few years, it was a strategically sound gambit to surrender possession through the box kick, chase, pressure the receipt and then flex your defensive line into position and look to stress the breakdown of the opposition. This season, the maths on that has changed in part because I think referees are becoming increasingly reluctant to call jackal penalties on the offensive side unless the poach is clear and obvious.
Watch for clarity to come around that area of the game in the next 12/18 months and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that you’ll see poaching become functionally more difficult through referee interpretation. I think, in an ideal world, World Rugby would get rid of the jackal altogether and return to counter-ruck only as that would allow more ball in play, make life easier for referees, remove a part of the game that has led to consistent injuries and “clean up” the contact zone for the casual viewer.
I think kicking, in general, will be legislated to offensive kicking primarily without adding anything more revolutionary than 50/22 being trialled. I think you’ll see the box kick continue to be squeezed in general and specifically. I wouldn’t be surprised if, to speed up the game, we see hard limits on timing and even a law tweak on caterpillar rucks to “nerf” it even further.
I think the last big change that World Rugby can make to improve the number of possessions, the average number of phases per possession, increase ball in play time even further and improve scoring is to make a change on the definition of obstruction. I think it’s only a matter of time before we see a change to Law 9.2 and 9.3 to open up more block line options for attacking teams. This is the last great frontier for rule changes in Rugby Union without radically changing the game. If I were making the changes, I’d limit it to actually pulling and dragging defenders off the ball but if you regularised some of the blocking actions that are already happening in the game, you open up new attacking frontiers, protect star players, encourage smaller, more agile runners and increase attacking complexity all while depowering collisions. It could be something as simple as “any player running a legitimate running line has no obligation to step off that line until beyond the gain line even without the ball”.
Whatever happens, we are moving into a period where high tempo attacking rugby will be the aim of World Rugby and anyone who is not adapting to that upcoming style right now is already behind the times.
In this series, I’ll be going into what I think those attacking systems will look like. This article is a good primer on what’s to come, but I’ll go into even more detail over the course of this bi-weekly series.
