It’s an oft-repeated trope in Irish Rugby Media Circles™ that Scotland under Gregor Townsend are a side that relentlessly talks themselves up only to, almost inevitably, brown their slacks when it comes to it. Most of that has come from Matt Williams on Virgin Media, believe it or not, who has every reason to want to dump on Scotland given how lowly regarded he is by the rugby community there.
I’m not sure if the concept that Scotland are useless braggarts oblivious to their own limitations fully scans, to be totally honest. Scotland have had some good results over the last few seasons and while they haven’t been able to string those results together in a sequence, I think picking up those wins over Australia, England (x2) and France indicate a good, if chronically incomplete, side.
Of course, the news that a gaggle of senior players blew off rules laid down by Gregor Townsend after beating Italy suggests that as well as being incomplete, there is also significant dissent in the ranks. Finn Russell, in particular, just doesn’t seem to be all that bothered about listening to a word his head coach says. How important that will be to Scotland’s chances of getting a win in Dublin remains to be seen. One thing that seems to be certain though is that Finn Russell is more important to Scotland right now than Gregor Townsend is, otherwise Russell would be watching this game on TV.
For Ireland, everything seems to be rosy in the garden. A bonus-point win will put pressure on France – and it’s Ireland to do just that – but questions remain about the reliance on Johnny Sexton. The most important player that there has ever been in Irish Rugby seems like he will remain just that until the date he has said he will retire in 2023. Who else has been the combination of being the primary playmaker AND captain AND the man who the entire attacking structure seems to be built around. Last week’s win over England was in the balance until the last 15 minutes but Farrell never once looked at changing things up at #10 until the bonus point had been won. Not just the win. We wanted the bonus point and didn’t think anyone other than Johnny was capable of that.
Sexton came off with two minutes to go once that bonus point had been secured but stayed on the sideline to watch the win unfold. Even replaced, he loomed large over the field. Nothing we’ve seen from Farrell this season suggests that he intends to scale back Sexton’s on-field and intellectual importance any time soon. Sure, Carbery started two games but one was when Sexton was injured and the other was against Italy, which one assumes Carbery would have started regardless.
That division of minutes when it comes to “live” minutes doesn’t suggest there is a lot of faith in handing the reigns over to Carbery any time soon and, in reality, Ireland’s attack as it is currently constructed seems to fit poorly with what Carbery does well as the primary playmaker. I think the reluctance you see from Farrell to risk Carbery in that game against England is almost an admission that they would need to radically shift elements of our phase progressions and structure to get the best out of Carbery and, boiled down to last week, to score the two tries needed to get the maximum.
In reality, we are exactly where we were before the Grand Slam game in Twickenham in 2018.
Performing well in the Six Nations, looking like dangerous dark horses for the World Cup the year after and Sexton at #10 as the key part of the puzzle, as he has been for the last decade or more. The truth of it is that this Sexton’s Ireland for now until the World Cup, I’m almost sure of it that is, unless, an injury between now and then dictates otherwise.
Ireland need a bonus-point win here to keep the pressure on France and I’d be pleasantly surprised to see Carbery take the field at #10 if it’s gone beyond the 60th minute and Ireland only have one or two tries.
Only then will we know what Farrell really thinks of the guys behind Sexton.
Scotland Rugby: 15. Stuart Hogg, 14. Darcy Graham, 13. Chris Harris, 12. Sam Johnson, 11. Kyle Steyn, 10. Blair Kinghorn, 9. Ali Price, 1. Pierre Schoeman, 2. George Turner, 3. Zander Fagerson, 4. Jonny Gray, 5. Grant Gilchrist, 6. Rory Darge, 7. Hamish Watson, 8. Matt Fagerson
Replacements: 16. Fraser Brown, 17. Allan Dell, 18. WP Nel, 19. Sam Skinner, 20. Josh Bayliss, 21. Ben White, 22. Finn Russell, 23. Mark Bennett
Scotland’s regression this season has been pretty stark.
A loss in this game will, if England get zero points in Paris, almost certainly see them finish 5th which is the new Wooden Spoon since Italy have been on their seven-year losing streak. What’s gone wrong? They’ve had more or less the same injury and illness issues that everyone else has had – nothing too bad to be notable. Sure, they badly miss the power that Duhan Van Der Merwe gives them since his suspension but they haven’t really been hit with the kind of extenuating circumstances that might explain what happened to them since the England game in the opening round.
Having looked at the numbers from the previous four rounds, I think it’s fair to say that Scotland’s over-reliance on the transition game is badly undermining their chances of success.
To play on the counter-attack as Scotland do, you have to have a good defence. At their best in the last few years, the Steve Tandy drilled Scottish defence was able to slowly convert Scottish kicks into prime counter-attacking possession. The principle is simple – kick the ball long when you choose to kick, pressure the opposition’s run back at the breakdown with a highly mobile, breakdown dominant back row and midfield as well as a power winger that can dominate one on one collisions high up the field.
Those conditions produce opposition kickbacks, which allow guys like Hogg, Russell, Graham and that mobile back row to play in a kind of structured chaos. Russell, in particular, is excellent in these scenarios with a wide variety of passing skills – via foot and by hand – that he uses to open up teams on transition.
But the problem is that while Scotland have been scoring tries on transition – 40% of their tries have come on the counter-attack and they have a huge amount of broken tackles on transition – their defensive performance has regressed quite a bit. They allow the longest carry metres of any non-Italian side, which you would expect when Russell and Hogg are #1 and #2 in the Six Nations for the most amount of metres kicked but, not only that, they have the worst defensive record in the tournament for allowing the opposition over the gainline 55% of the time on average.
To compensate for this, Scotland should have a very high number of breakdown turnovers and tackle turnovers but they’re solidly middle of the pack on both. In fact their percentage of Dominant Tackles per defensive set is the lowest in the Six Nations so far. In short, Scotland kick longer than anyone bar France but do not have France’s ability to punish teams on defensive transition in a manner that can force penalties or breakdown turnovers. As a result, Scotland have to overplay the counter-attacking phases they do get which can lead to inefficient sequences of possession.
A team that kicks as long as Scotland do should have a low Ball Played By Hand percentage. What that means is that if they kick long, they should handle the ball less often as the flipside to that long kicking strategy. France manages their energy incredibly well by kicking a lot, rather than kicking overly long per kick. They have kicked the ball an average of 1041m per game in this Six Nations but only played the ball by hand an average of 207 times per game. They have the most amount of turnovers won at the breakdown. They kick to you, you run back, you lose the ball quite often so eventually, you just kick the ball back to them Scotland, on the other hand, kicked an average of 848m per game but played the ball by hand average of 270 times per game. What does this mean? It means that Scotland are kicking longer to force transitions, they are not winning the ball back at the rate they should be and, as a result, they are then forced to overplay the transition phases they do get to try to force a return out of the strategy. The core of their game is an off-ball strategy – kicking long – but they end up playing a tonne of on-ball possession regardless.
In a way, they are quite like Connacht who play a variant of the same strategy. Scotland, like Connacht, have an issue with tiring out at the end of each half as playing a long kicking game like this is particularly exhausting for your pack. Scotland have the most amount of non-Italian tries conceded in the second and fourth quarters of games this Six Nations and I think their kicking strategy plays a large part in that.
When you kick long, you have to chase long and that means a lot of empty metres being burned for your front five so it’s not a shock to see Scoland conceding more penalties and more points at the end of the first half before any of them can be replaced around 55/60 minutes. They particularly tend to bleed points in the period right before halftime, so keep an eye out for Ireland upping the pace there.
For Ireland, the key is attacking off the lineout and lineout maul. We have scored 35% of our tries off the lineout and Scotland have conceded 54% of their tries off the lineout. When it comes to that facet of the game, it’s the unstoppable force meeting the very moveable object. If that part of our game holds, Scotland have shown that they will concede tries within one or two phases and if we can get our maul going, this game only ends one way.
