[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap] have criticised Rory Scannell quite a bit over the last two seasons. It feels that way anyway and, when I went back and checked, it actually was that way.

During 2019/20, Rory Scannell averaged 2.8 stars per game in the Wally Ratings on the games where he was eligible for a rating. The average rating for backs in 2019/20 was 3.2 stars per game, an underperformance of 0.4 stars per game compared to the other backs.

It didn’t get much better during 2020/21, where Rory averaged 2.6 stars per game in a season where the general rating for backs was 3.4 stars per game, an underperformance of 0.8 stars per game compared to the average performance of the other backs.

He wasn’t notably worse than the year prior, in reality, it’s just that he was involved in some poor squad performances this season, played at #13 on four occasions and he had a number of games where he wasn’t on the field long enough to warrant a fair rating. That lack of involvements was a theme over the last season of PRO14.

In 2020/21, Rory Scannell was involved in 20 matchday squads, starting 65% of the games he was involved in for a total of 1042 minutes.

That was his lowest amount of involvements for a number of years but a continuance of a downward trend since 2018/19 

• In 2019/20, he started 67% of 21 matchday involvements for a total of 1,277 minutes.
• In 2018/19, he started 88% of 25 matchday involvements for a total of 1,682 minutes.
• In 2017/18, he started 81% of 27 matchday involvements for a total of 1,835 minutes.

In that context, you can see how I rated Rory down on the Five Star Wally Ratings scale year on year despite playing broadly the same both seasons. To add even more context, he is being directly compared to a World Cup winner this season who plays in the same position, which will hurt how he is perceived in a general sense and, for me, explains the bigger drop in the general standard of his performance relative to the other backs this season. He is playing less often, coming off the bench more often, and has been played out of position more than he ever has in his six seasons as a full professional.

In the last few years, players who rate lower than their positional average in the Wally Ratings have tended to leave the province at the end of their contract cycle. It happened with Alex Wootton the season before he went on loan to Connacht, Sam Arnold, Conor Oliver, Darren O’Shea, Ronan O’Mahony, Mike Sherry and a few others.

This season up until Christmas, the guys with the highest usage rate and lowest relative rating to their position were the following;

Italics – player leaving the province at the end of the season 
* Contract ended in 2021
+ Contract was renewed in 2021
** Contract ends in 2022

At the time of writing, four of those players are due to leave at the end of the season. For a while this season, I felt that Niall and Rory Scannell might struggle to get an offer that matched their seniority and relative usage rate across the season. Both players have suffered from, in my opinion, consistent issues with their roles. For Niall, I felt that was taking on too much tight ball-carrying off #9 and losing a lot of those collisions which impacted his rating for me repeatedly. Rory, again, in my opinion, suffered from a lot of the same problems in that he seemed to take on more offensive collisions that were optimal for his frame, losing a lot of those collisions and then seeing the quality of the rest of his involvements degrade as a result.

I’ve been pretty consistent in my critiques of Scannell’s onfield performances – I tend to rate him down when he plays a heavier, collision-based game and rate him higher when he has a successful, pass-dominant game. The shitty little thing there is “successful” because the more subtle a player’s game is – the more reliant they are on hitting a wide range of accurate passes, kicking offensively and running plays – the more vulnerable they are to errors that determine the perception of a player’s performance. In some ways, hitting a ball up is “easier” in that you either win the collision or you don’t.

The variant here is that we don’t know what Rory Scannell, or any player, is asked to do by their coaches over a period of a few seasons.

Rory Scannell certainly seemed to bulk up quite a bit after his breakthrough season. We would expect that anyway for all players as they progress deeper onto their senior contracts but for a relatively smaller inside centre like Rory Scannell – especially with Rassie Erasmus as the Director of Rugby – we can make a fairly good guess that he would have needed to throw on some extra KG in a hurry to beef up his carrying and impact defence.

Rory certainly seemed to do that and, to a point, I think it was needed as he went from an academy deal to a development contract and then his first full senior deal in 2017/18. Playing in midfield as a smaller player – Scannell is listed at 5’10” and around 96KG – there would be a need to get your playing weight up to increase your versatility to the coaching staff, especially when he was nominally looking to be a starter next Tyler Bleyendaal during his year on a development deal while knowing that he was going to progress to a two-year senior contract in 2017/2018.

Tyler Bleyendaal was an important cog in Munster’s scheme at the time and projected to be so going forward but he was a player that needed an element of insurance outside him, defensively speaking. For Scannell to be of consistent use in Munster’s scheme at the time, he needed extra size to be a true regular option.

This comes down to role balance, as is often the case for midfielders, who can often be asked to perform a number of complementary jobs in an overall scheme.

A lot of modern midfielders act as auxiliary flankers when you break down what they actually do on the field. Bundee Aki, for example, can act quite like a traditional ball-playing openside flanker when you look at his usual ruck arrival stats, defensive ruck arrivals and ball-carrying output. Aki’s even built like a traditional flanker, if you take your idea for what a flanker used to look like around 2008.

Robbie Henshaw, at 6’4″ and 99KG, is closer in stature and output to a player like Imanol Harinordoquy – one of the best #8s of his era – than he is a guy like Gordon D’Arcy who wore the same Leinster and Ireland #12 jersey as recently as six years ago.

Where does that leave a relatively smaller player like Rory Scannell? Does he try to go north of 100KG, like Bundee Aki who’s roughly the same height? I’m not sure that would have worked for him but for a while at least – since 2017 at least – it seemed Scannell was playing pretty heavy relative to his frame. He wasn’t at that 100KG mark but you could see that extra bulk on his frame.

At the elite level, a few KG here or there can be quite significant. I’ve touched on this topic a fair bit over the last few months because I think your playing weight is a huge part of your effectiveness at the top level. A guy like Hamish Watson is often spoken about as being “too small” to play for the Lions but it doesn’t matter what weight he is on his own as long as he’s at the best weight for him to be effective on a personal level and surrounded by enough size around him in the pack to be effective in a general sense.

In that regard, the conversation about whether Player A is only four KG heavier than Player B who plays in the same position is only half the conversation. A player who weighs 101KG at 5’10” might only be 5KG heavier than a player of the same height but that doesn’t mean the lighter player can or should put that weight on to get to the same level. There is a point where you can be too heavy for your frame and in that space, you are more likely to get injured, more likely to drift out of games because your effectiveness phase for phase is reduced and you are more likely to play off-role. That is to say, you end up focusing more on what you’re big enough for in theory rather than what you are good at in practice.

What does this mean for Rory Scannell? Well, I think he’s slimmed down in the last few months from the weight he played on during the earlier part of the season. I noticed it specifically in the last few weeks against Ulster, Cardiff and Zebre. He seemed a little quicker over the ground, a little sharper on his support lines and playing across a wider range of the field.

Even better, his role seemed to have been tweaked from what we’d seen earlier in the season.

***

Rory Scannell’s average star rating in the Rainbow Cup increased to a 3.6 star average, a full star more per game than I had rated him over the season to date. Over his last four games total, he was at a 3.75 star average. What changed? Well, I went back to look at Rory’s pass-per-carry ratio.

Essentially, how many times did Rory Scannell pass relative to the number of times he carried the ball into contact?

• Rainbow Cup 2021: 1.7 passes-per-carry
• 2020/21: 1.3 passes-per-carry
• 2019/20: 0.78 passes-per-carry

When Scannell passes more than he carries, I think he plays better. He’s not a player who can play offensively in the same manner as Damian De Allende or Chris Farrell. I don’t think that’s where his best game is. In the last few weeks, I’ve seen him rotate to more of a secondary creative player who operates deeper and wider, almost like a ball playing fullback.

I think this could be part of Munster’s wider evolution over the preseason into next year, especially with the number of creative players capable of playing 10/12/15 in the squad next season but it’s a great use of Scannell’s strengths. He’s using tendencies in his own game to open up other opportunities for himself and others. Where he used to step fake and carry, he’s now step faking, drawing defenders in who think they can smash him in contact and then releasing the ball to other runners. It’s been hugely effective and the standard of his passing at short, medium and long-range has been really good.

He’s now passing a lot of balls that he used to carry. I think the numbers I’ve seen back that up and when he plays deeper and wider, it brings more out of him.

It’s the variety in his game as of late that has really stood out to me. If he was only ever passing then it would be a problem at the other end of the scale. He’s mixing up his on-ball usage quite well and seems to be hitting the line with more zip than earlier in the season.

I had to double-check who this was when I was running this game back because it didn’t really look like Scannell. Some of the bad tendencies I’d seen in his carrying earlier in the season were just gone. He seemed like he’d lost a few KG off his playing weight too and it suits him. This is an excellent passage of play from Scannell showcasing what he’s good at.

When he rotates to that wider, deeper position, it gives him opportunities to make plays and he’s got the passing range – both out of hand and off the boot – to create opportunities for others as well as score tries himself.

In my opinion, we are entering the era of the playmaking triumvirate in the backline with multi-faceted, all-court creative options at 10, in midfield and in the back three.

If you go back and watch the Munster A vs Connacht Eagles game from back in March, you can see the embryonic stages of that system. I truly believe that multiple all-court creators with big, strong explosive wingers, a big hitter in midfield and a strike wing forward to find in edge spaces will be the norm in years to come.

It makes sense for Munster from a squad perspective – we’ll have Joey Carbery, Jake Flannery, Jack Crowley, Ben Healy, Simon Zebo and Rory Scannell who are capable of filling all three of those slots in a matchday XV and replacements – and it makes sense for Rory Scannell to be an experienced, durable, highly capable component of that system. This role, as a deeper, wider creator and facilitator, can push Rory Scannell back to the performances he’s capable of.