Scrumhalves touch the ball so often during a game that, rightly or wrongly, they become a representative of the team’s performance.
Maybe that explains the criticism that has come the way of Conor Murray in the aftermath of England’s decisive victory over Ireland in Twickenham on Sunday. The reasons for a bad loss can often be complex systemic issues that the average punter can’t really articulate so invariably the blame tends to fall on the most visible players – the halfbacks and, usually, specifically the scrumhalf.
But it’s a bit of a chicken/egg thing, isn’t it? Does the team play poorly because of the scrumhalf? Or is the scrumhalf playing poorly because the team aren’t presenting them with enough quality possession?
This is the question that is swirling around Conor Murray right now and one look at some of the content that has produced in the aftermath of Ireland’s defeat at the weekend would lead you to believe that Murray was the man to blame for everything from Ireland’s forwards not winning collisions to climate change.
We’ll accept, firstly, that a scrumhalf will seriously struggle to influence the game if they don’t have quality possession but, if they do have quality possession, then they have a responsibility to influence the game.
The question here is – what is quality possession?
For me, it’s a lot of things.
It’s a dominant collision, it’s a direct line to the ruck from the scrumhalf, it’s a clean ball presentation (accuracy of cleanout and ruck protection, essentially), it’s decisive hand action on the ball and it’s a range of pass options for the scrumhalf to choose once it’s time to release the ball.
When we have a combination of gainline, secure breakdown, clean ball presentation and direct approach from the scrumhalf, you get “quick ball”. Here’s a good example.
This is optimal.
But when you get a combination of a lost gainline, or a dirty ball presentation, or a cluttered “pocket” in the ruck, you get sub-optimal conditions. Let’s go into what we mean by these.
First, the presentation of the ball is a crucial part of it. It sounds obvious but at the high pace of test rugby, it’s far from a guarantee. A stray boot from a cleanout, or a loose hand from the carrier, or a disrupting counter-ruck could force a knock-on that would wreck an attacking sequence.
Look at the challenges on this 4-second ruck which . I’ve slowed it down so you can have a look at what’s going on from Murray’s POV.
Underhill is a factor in the pocket, Kilcoyne’s bracing leg is in an awkward spot across the space where Murray would typically look to sweep the pass out for the next phase so he has to readjust his arms to get a two-hand grip on the ball. Toner has to be keyed in to release the ball and does eventually.
This was all on a four-second ruck from when Murray arrived to when he passed.
But why was Kilcoyne’s leg in a suboptimal position? We have to go back two phases to answer that question.
This is what I mean by stacking good phases ontop of each other when you’re building an attacking sequence. Ireland got a good collision point with all the qualities we’d look for on an individual carry and then followed it up with a terrible one.
Have a look.
Murray passes to Henshaw, who tips onto Ryan, who gets over the gainline, commits defenders and sets decent ball back. There’s a slight readjustment because Stockdale wipes across the ruck but it’s nothing fatal.
Murray makes a good pass to Toner. It’s got good height, pace and Toner doesn’t have to change shape to catch it while running onto the ball but he gets wiped out in contact, driven back and, ultimately, stopped behind the gainline. Kilcoyne has to readjust his latch route on the carry and get back around to secure the ruck from an angle.
By the time Murray has run back around the lost collision point – and every other Irish player has to readjust backwards as well now – England have already reset their defensive line. Even then, it’s recoverable as long as we can do something on the next phase.
Murray’s work at the ruck is pretty quick given the mess on the floor but even then, look at the picture in front of him and Sexton.
We’re quite close to the gainline here (and quite shallow in general) but we’re planning a split slide screen to Aki to try to shake off the English line speed and the lost gainline on the previous phase has meant we’re operating on a negative footing.
First, the split slide screen.
This is where a line of four players – Aki, Van Der Flier, Stander and O’Mahony – become a screen by splitting around Aki and then sliding outside Sexton.
It looks like Itoje is going catch Aki well behind the gainline and, spoiler alert, that’s exactly what happens.
The split slide screen is a device to separate out a blitz and tax the oppositions line speed leader by bringing them deep into the attacking line.
The only problem here is that Itoje started way too close to the Irish attacking unit – a direct result of the previous phase – and so there was no distance penalty for striking beyond the screen. Look at his stride. By stride five, he was at the screen. By stride eight, he was on Aki. It takes him less time to advance onto our attacking line, so we have less time to play.
Why didn’t Ireland get deeper? Because the lost gainline from the previous phase chewed up our time. It took six seconds from Murray’s initial pass to Toner releasing the ball to Murray after the tackle. In that time, England have advanced by 3 metres while we’ve remained stationary in the outfield. If we had even managed to get parity on the gainline, Itoje and the other English blitzers would have to run farther to get to our screen.
The longer England are in motion off the line, the more things that can go wrong for them. Do you stand up on Stander’s line? Or O’Mahony’s? Does Van Der Flier’s slide line stagger one of the defender’s lines? Does Sexton use the extra second of space and time to target Joseph (top of the GIF) under a high ball with Conway lurking?
Why are winning collisions important? Because they earn you space and time and when you have space and time, you can score tries. Losing collisions costs you space and time and gives it to the opposition.
To cycle this back around to the scrumhalf, we should play the phase through at regular speed.
Aki gets swallowed up behind the gainline so now everyone in this space has to retreat back behind the 10m line at pace. Murray has to run backwards (at pace) to get at the breakdown, as do the rest of the players.
Losing collisions cost us territory and it made each subsequent phase more difficult for the scrumhalf to perform optimally.
This was just one example but there were many more.
These are the factors that can affect a scrumhalf’s work. The #9 is judged on his speed to the breakdown – and Murray was consistently good in this regard – their handling at the breakdown and then the accuracy of their pass or kick and the quality of the decision at the ruck i.e. did you pass left when the right side was a better option? When Murray had good presentation conditions, his work at the breakdown was quick and accurate.
In general, Murray’s ball carrying and defending was really effective – 50% of his seven carries were over the gainline and he had a number of good stops on forwards and midfielders in the wider channels.
I went through Conor Murray’s 54 minutes on the field and watched every single ruck and assessed each action under the following headings – Good Kick, Bad Kick, Good Pass, Bad Pass.
Good Kick: An exit that made good distance straight to touch, a contestable kick that a chaser is in range to make a play on that is also a decent distance away from the kicking point.
Bad Kick: A kick that is charged down, a kick that does not make good distance or that is too far away from any reasonable chase.
Good Pass: A pass that – is made quickly from the base in line with the speed and quality of presentation; that has good pace and shape on the ball; that is targeted at an area that does not require the carrier to overly change their shape to take the ball without losing momentum.
Bad Pass: A pass that – is slow relative to the presentation; that loses speed in the air; that the carrier has to greatly adjust their body shape to take.
With that in mind, here is the table;
| Scrumhalf | Good Kick | Poor Kick | Good Pass | Bad Pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conor Murray | 6 | 4 | 52 | 3 |
I rated his decision making as good, based on the footage I had available but as my angles were limited I couldn’t make it an official metric as there may have been options I didn’t see given the close focus on each ruck.
As for kicking, a lot of the problems seem to come up on the decision to kick. This is often mandated by overall team strategy or by reading the game as it’s playing out in front of you. If you’re playing in your own half of the field and losing ground phase for phase, what should you do? Continue to lose ground? Or kick possession away to reset? I’ve been over this before – here – so I won’t go into detail here but I will add this; every team box kicks, Ireland are trending downwards in kicks from hand compared to other teams, and when you’re losing the gain line battle, it’s as good a tactic as any and Murray is better than most.
Here are Murray’s kicks that I rated as “good” under my criteria;
Two of these are in a strange place rating wise as they led directly to transition events but, as Stockdale was in a position to make a play on both occasions but didn’t, I rated them as good contestable kicks.
I rated four of his kicks as “bad”.
The Itoje charge-down was an obvious one even though he was in a position where the schemed attack meant he couldn’t have any blockers (as they were all needed for the kick play described in the Wally Ratings).
As for the rest, I felt this kick lead to an Irish penalty but the kick itself is pretty poor.
The ball in air time is pretty good – 4 seconds – but the distance is around 11m away from where he kicked it, which is not what we want. The outcome was positive, but the kick itself was poor.
This box kick was poor from an execution standpoint; too far away from an effect contest in the air or a pressure tackle…
… and the return kick actually meant we lost a good bit of territory on this kick.
This one was a poorly executed exit box kick that went straight to an opposition winger while being well out of range of an effective chase.
Overall though, I thought Murray was pretty good during his time on the field.
As has long been the case, I think problems elsewhere in the squad – the tight five in particular – have negatively affected the performances of the halfbacks. If you are regularly playing with suboptimal position phase for phase, you can only turn so much chicken shit into chicken salad. If Murray was as bad as the papers and radio have been saying, we’d see a big drop off in his pass quality ruck to ruck, an increased error rate and a big drop off in his kicking from a distance and accuracy perspective that goes a lot deeper than 60%.
To use another bird metaphor, when the canary dies in the coal mine, it’s not a sign that the canary is leaking poison gas all of a sudden, it’s a sign that there are problems that run a little deeper.
