The Crusaders, long held as the gold standard for effective, winning and attractive rugby in the minds of rugby pundits the world over caught my eye this week. Scott Robertson was talking about props. Big props. Crusaders’ tighthead Oli Jager, himself 6’4″ and 128kg, is out with an injury at the moment so Scott Robertson was talking up the young players who will replace him in the early going of the new Super Rugby Pacific season.
Namely Fletcher Newell and Tamaiti Williams.
Fletcher Newell is 6’1″ and 121kg. The 21 year old Tamaiti Williams is 6’5″ and 144kg.
Williams used to play in the back row in school but focused on the front row in his later years at high school. The only way Williams will not become an All Black is he (a) picks up too many injuries at this stage of his career or (b) he’s a washout in the scrum. He doesn’t have to be a great scrummager, he just has to be passable at test level to the point where he isn’t on referees’ radar as a liability. If those things hold true, Williams will be a guy who will play for the All Blacks sooner rather than later.
Why?
Because he’s got the size and power you need to be successful in the modern game in the modern tight five. There is an old school way of looking at props that mean you look at scrummaging first but I’m not sure if that’s a logical way of identifying talent there given the way the game has been played over the last few years.
The number of scrums per game is going down – an average of 14 per game – but the average number of scrum penalties has decreased incrementally. At the 2019 World Cup, the average scrum retention rate – where the attacking team retained the ball after the scrum was completed – was 95%. Munster currently have 100% scrum completion in the URC this season, which is the best record in the tournament, but only generated 9 penalties from that platform which is only enough to rank 10th in the competition.
Now we’ve used that scrum platform really well to launch Gavin Coombes off the back a few times but ask yourself this – how many times have you seen the technically dominant scrum get rewarded with penalties to the point that it contributes to the win?
For that, you need a referee toward a clean penalty almost every time for being a top-class scrummager to be “worth it” as the primary identifier of front-row talent. Genuinely, if you gave me the choice between a 5’11”, 115KG scrummaging genius and a 6’4″, 130KG behemoth who is passable at the scrum, at best, I’d take the behemoth every single time, please and thank you.
Scrum penalties, on the whole, are going down year on year. The World Cup final in 2019 – wherein South Africa won 5 scrum penalties for a total of 9 points kicked off the tee – was a massive outlier against the backdrop of trends of the modern game.
On Saturday, Andrew Porter conceded two penalties at the scrum and generally had a difficult time there but would I fish him off early because he was under pressure there? Hell no. Even if he conceded another two penalties, Porter’s work around the field would still have been worth it. Even with his difficulties there, Ireland were still at 100% completion on our own put in.
Those are all hard numbers but I’ll season them with some anecdotal evidence. Referees’, in general, don’t want the scrum to decide games and will only reward clear, dominant forward movement or obvious collapses. Even this season, I’ve seen incidents in games where a penalty was awarded to one side for collapsing when you could equally pin the blame on the opposition prop. This is the key thing about scrummaging as the dominant factor in selecting props – the human element of the referee.
So if there are fewer scrums, fewer scrum penalties and the penalties that are awarded are either clear, rolling you back on ice skates dominance – which happens so rarely these days it’s memorable when it does happen – or a lottery. I think the fundamental point I keep coming back to is that I genuinely think World Rugby wants the scrum to be more about a restart to the game and less about a battle for possession, which given the average win rate for scrums is 95%, it already is.
So what does this mean?
It means that power, size and weight in the front row – and front five – have never been more important than they are today.
France and South Africa understand this concept perfectly and balance their starting and finishing pack with power that will last for the full 80 minutes.
They use Paul Willemse (6’7″ and 135kg) to play 55 odd minutes a game, with Romain Taofifénua (6’6½” and 133kg) in the second row.
They use hooker Pietro Mauvaka (125kg), tighthead prop Demba Bamba (124kg) and Jean-Baptiste Gros (a relatively light 110kg) off the bench to cover for Cyril Baille, Julien Marchand and the 155kg Uini Atonio. All through France’s tight five, there is multiple 120kg plus forwards capable of keeping the power going throughout the full 80 minutes. Whenever I talk about this, I always get messages from people who are keen to say that size isn’t everything and they’re right – it isn’t. But in rugby, it’s a lot
Being bigger doesn’t mean you’re better but there’s a direct correlation between elite size and/or power in the front five and winning rugby teams.
Look at Toulouse last year, look at Leinster, look at the Springboks, look at Wales, even. That size/power in the front five is there in all of them.
There’s something of a disconnect when I talk about power like this, especially in an Irish context. Just being heavy, or tall isn’t really the point of what I’m talking about. I saw one of my points badly butchered on Reddit the other day about Dan Sheehan over Ronán Kelleher because Sheehan was “bigger”. Kelleher is a better hooker and a better power player than Sheehan right now in my opinion. The best Irish pack has Ronán Kelleher as starting hooker and it’s not even a debate at this point. Furlong and Porter are certain starters too but that combination of power, size and explosivity doesn’t roll around all that often in the front row.
If it did, everyone would have players like that and believe me, they don’t. Everyone wants them! Go back to the 2019 World Cup and look at the All Blacks jettisoning one of the best scrummaging props in the game, Owen Franks, in favour of younger, bigger more explosive options that weren’t as good in the scrum as Franks, plainly, but that didn’t matter. Power matters.
From an Irish perspective, I think it’s fairly obvious that we need at least one more power forward in the front row replacements – ideally two – and a power forward in the second row. Sheehan is well on the way to filling out one of those slots in my opinion. He just needs a bit more size, I think. After that, things get a little more complicated.
Bealham is the next man up on the tighthead side at the moment but he does not fit the criteria, in my opinion. Tom O’Toole has potential in that role but needs seasoning. The gap behind Porter looks pretty wide from where I’m sitting at the moment. Healy is a modern great for Ireland but he’s clearly on a downslope from a power perspective. You could argue the same point with Kilcoyne. After that, you’re looking at guys like Ed Byrne and Eric O’Sullivan but even then, they haven’t been selected in wider squads for a while now and I’d be surprised to see either man make a run at the test squad at this stage in their career.
The second row is more complex. France have freaks like Willemse and Taofifénua to use as they see fit but we don’t have that type of player here – at least not like for like. Quinn Roux and Jean Kleyn fit the bill to an extent but they were and are out of favour at test level for whatever reason. Kleyn, at 6’8″ and 121kg, fits the bill from a size and power perspective but I think he has been damaged by Munster’s injury and power issues in the tight five. Kleyn would be perfectly suited to being a heavy support forward in the same guise as Willemse.
Willemse’s role for France is mainly focused on the offensive breakdown, heavy scrummaging and heavy mauling. He only carried the ball five times against Ireland and made 7 tackles – missing three – but who can doubt his impact on Ireland’s pack? Kleyn could do a similar job but he has been forced off-role at Munster due to a lack of power forwards after the injury to Snyman and Jenkins. Kleyn, as his best, would be a heavy support forward who would carry four or five times max outside the opposition’s 22, generate quick ball against anyone and throw his weight into the lineout maul and scrum on both sides of the ball. But at Munster this season he has been used as a primary ball carrier in the absence of the guys we signed to beef up our tight ball carrying rotation. As long as Kleyn is used in this way, he’ll still play relatively well – he’s very rarely poor – but he won’t be as effective as he could be, which is as a burden lifter. You don’t need to expend calories on the tighthead side the scrum, you don’t need to hit 30 rucks a game, you don’t need to burn energy as the primary driver on maul sets because Kleyn will do all that for you.
Can you see how a player like that would help, say, unburden a guy like James Ryan who looks to be weighed down in an off-role position that sees him doing a little bit of everything to a lower standard than he did three seasons ago?
I’m not saying start Jean Kleyn but that’s the type of player I believe Ireland need to get the best out of our centrally contracted locks/half locks. Whatever happens, we need to find power somewhere or that loss against France will be as predictable as gravity.
