Box kicks are no longer worth the risk.

I get them – and I get why you’d do them – but it’s become a difficult strategy to stand over as the interpretation of a few key rules begins to change over the last 12 months.

When legislated consistently, box kicking can be a hugely effective means of turning any exit into an excellent attacking platform. There is always an element of risk attached to it because kicking the ball away is gambling with possession whenever you do it but a good box kicking team – from scrumhalf to chasers – can cause the opposition backfield defence a world of problems a reliable percentage of the time.

As the season developed, though, Munster’s box kicking regressed quite a bit when it came to raw effectiveness. Why? Well, we can look at the accuracy of some of our box kicks and the quality of our chasing as a factor but the biggest thing for me was the refereeing of blocking routes on chases.

It started with Exeter in Thomond Park.

Watch how Exeter closed off the chase routes of Earls and Conway.

The blocking players are clearly changing their lines to block the chasers but it’s not given as the obstruction penalty that it should be. The same thing happened in the Aviva against England and again against Saracens in Coventry.

Spencer is clearly – and I mean obviously – eyeing up his receiver to run a blocking line on any potential chasers.

It’s playing someone without the ball but… I get why referees started to call this infringement less often. Just from a practical perspective, anything that reduces the number of aerial collisions that you have to referee – often with yellow or red card outcomes – is a good thing. A senior referee who I spoke to a few weeks back said that adjudicating aerial collisions is the worst part of the game for him, given the hard and fast guidelines around “foul play” in these situations.

Referees don’t want to be carding players, believe it or not, so it’s not really a surprise to see a minor penalty being ignored for the sake of having to make a game-altering decision elsewhere. If you can block chasers on 90% of most box kicks now – obstructing them off the ball without penalty, essentially – then box kicking as a contestable play becomes a liability.

When box kicks go wrong, you;

• Concede penalties
• Give up dangerous transition events
• Burn out your wingers chasing sky balls 10/11 times per game

So what do you do?

Well, sometimes you are better off without the ball, I think we can agree on that.

Nobody wants to be playing around inside their own 22, for example, or burning useless phases in the middle of the field when you don’t have quick ball. This is “possession pressure” i.e. you have the ball, but you’re not dictating the game to the opposition while you have it. It happens to every team in every game, and the best remedy is usually to kick the ball away. A lot of teams – Munster chief amongst them – like to box kick the ball in “possession pressure” situations in the hope of getting the ball back 20-ish metres up the field and attacking again in a more favourable position. Some like to kick up and unders from first receiver but there are lots of ways to approach it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been looking a lot at different rugby from 2018/2019 to see what kind of approaches that different teams have when it comes to relieving “possession pressure”. I’ve been watching other PRO14 teams, NRL, Gallagher Premiership, Top 14 and Super Rugby. Of all the teams I’ve seen, I think I’ve been the most impressed with Los Jaguares. And why not? They’re in their first ever Super Rugby final against the Crusaders and they’ve got there by playing some fantastic, high tempo rugby. When you think of Los Jaguares, though, I made the mistake of assuming that they were just a high tempo, wide running offload party but that’s far from the truth. In fact, I think a lot of what Los Jaguares are doing with regards to how they structure their play will be quite influential going forward and, to tie this back in with the intro, they don’t really use contestable box kicks.

I’ve watched them four or five times from this season and their last two knock out games, in particular, and I’ve noticed that they don’t really approach their exits or tactical kicking in the same way that Munster/Ireland/Leinster do. Not a surprise, you might say, given the geographical and style differences between Argentina and Ireland but I felt the way they structured their kicking game was worthy of a closer look.

Firstly, just because Los Jaguares don’t kick a lot from scrumhalf, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exit from the base of the ruck or even contest a box kick – they do.

Here are Cubelli’s kicks from the base of the ruck against the Brumbies last weekend.

Only two of those could be considered “contestable”, in my opinion.

Most of Cubelli’s kicks are aimed at moving the defensive lines or getting the ball off the pitch up the field – I’ll deal with the second part of that later – but you’ll notice the difference in approach in a lot of these kicks compared to Munster towards the end of last season.

These kicks are purely to move where the game is played, with not much consideration given to who has possession.

When we look at the range on this exit – straight into the backfield – we can see the athletic, Jaguares press coming up to meet the potential transition.

Have a look at it in this frame here.

When the Brumbies fullback, Banks, takes this exit, he immediately sees the openside of the pitch swarming with Jaguares players. Spreading the ball across the field on a transition isn’t a realistic option for him, so he has to carry the ball up.

The blindside is just as tough, with the Jaguares pressing hard into the space as a tight unit and pressurising the next ruck position, rather than the initial kick reception. Banks is under pressure here, despite the lack of bodies on him when he took the kick.

The length of the kickback from Cubelli – rather than a shorter contestable kick – puts the pressure on the Brumbies primary defensive line to reset into an attacking/supporting position before the Jaguares chase line can overwhelm the kick return. Essentially, by going for length on most of their exits that don’t go off the park, the Jaguares are using their collective speed and defensive unity on transition to squeeze the Brumbies possession on the floor, rather than in the air. Whatever about winning an aerial battle, when you know that the opposition will have the ball and have to run back into your defensive line with little or no ruck support to help him, you are pressurising the opponent in a way that encourages a kickback sooner or later.

It was the Jaguares kicking from #10 that most impressed me, though.

Boot It

The Jaguares mentality with kicking seems to be based on the idea that they are happy enough to allow you to have possession, just not where you want it. They mostly want to get the ball off the park and challenge your lineout, where they are incredibly athletic and competitive with their counter jumping.

Kicking from the base of the ruck doesn’t really allow for a lot of length on the kick if attacking the opposition’s lineout is your aim. Exiting to the touchline from the ruck is risky enough because the ball gets put into a trajectory where it’s more likely to get charged down. So, because the Jaguares don’t really like contesting under the high ball, most of their kicking gets done by their flyhalf to get more length from exits and as a tactical option during phase play. In comparison, the Brumbies kicked 13 times from halfback – 7 from scrumhalf and 6 from flyhalf – on 50% possession. Jaguares kicked 19 times from halfback, with 13 of those coming from Bonilla at flyhalf.

Have a look at some of these examples from their knockout games against the Chiefs and the Brumbies.

There’s an element of risk in some of these, for sure, but regardless of the outcome, Jaguares were happy enough to concede lineouts in both games because they knew they had a counter-jumping lineout that competes with anyone – even the likes of Brodie Retallick and Rory Arnold.

The Jaguares were excellent at kicking for lineout position and then disrupting the opposition’s throw. In some ways, the Jaguares used the Brumbies defensive structure against them. Look at how the Jaguares moved the ball to the edge and then kicked into the backfield once they drew the Brumbies wingers out of the second layer.

Pablo Matera – a flanker – made two of these kicks, and it showed how comfortable the Jaguares were with putting the ball into space and losing possession if required, as long as the position was advanced. Given Ireland defend with a similar defensive system as the Brumbies, this kicking style is something that should be of interest.

Lineout Defensive Offence

If we look at both KO games, the Brumbies had 22 lineouts but lost five of them, with the other 18 successful ranged from low quality to average for the most part. The Chiefs had 15 lineouts and lost five of them.

Let’s have a look at the lineouts the Brumbies faced heavy pressure on. One of these doesn’t count as a steal – because the ball was knocked on the Jaguares – but you can see they’re under massive pressure.

Why is this?

Well, on two of the throws, Los Jaguares are putting two launch pods in the air which immediately pressurises the Brumbie throw but the alignment of the Jaguares defensive set up is what interests me.

Los Jaguares are aligning inside the Brumbie line, allowing space on the outside for the Brumbies to play into. The Jaguares position their two strongest counter jumpers – Desio Ortega and Guido Petti – in this compacted line to give the Brumbies a simple choice.

Go to the space at the tail patrolled by Petti or the space at the front patrolled by Ortega?

From the Jaguares perspective, both of their primary jumpers have space to run and attack any throws to the front or tail while they have pods in place to lift in position at the middle if the Brumbies go there.

The Brumbies, seeing the space at the tail, call it there on a few occasions but find that the Petti is quick enough over the ground to fill the space and get into the air ahead of the offensive jumper.

The Jaguares stacked the front to tempt the Brumbies to the tail where the Australians were beaten into the air. A lot of blame has fallen on Fainga’a, the Wallaby hooker, in the aftermath but I think that’s a little reductive. Some of his throws were a little “fat”, for sure, but the Brumbies lack of pace into the air and the agile Jaguares set up were bigger factors.

The Jaguares found a way to kick tactically in a way that removes the need for contestable box kicks.

They back the pace and defensive positioning of their defensive line to make up ground on long exits and, crucially, they back their lineout defence to crank the pressure on the opposition’s lineout, sometimes winning possession back outright but always forcing decisions.

It’s an extremely effective way of relieving your own possession pressure while minimising the risks associated with traitional box kicking.