[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”4″]F[/su_dropcap]inally. It’s finally here. The prestigious Autumn Nations Cup 2020 has arrived and, according to this press release, it is the test rugby event that is happening over the next few weeks. Who will win this prestigious trophy? It doesn’t matter. But what does matter is wins and losses to this Irish team right now and whatever about some Autumn Nations Cup, if Ireland are looking at two defeats out of three heading into December, the vibe will be even more negative than it was in the aftermath of Ireland’s defeat to France two weekends ago.
First up is Wayne Pivac’s Welsh side, who come into this tournament in as close to disarray as Wales have been since the mid-2000s. Such disarray, in fact, that they’ve parted ways with a long-time Pivac assistant, defence coach Byron Hayward after the defeat to Scotland. To put that into perspective, Hayward has worked with Pivac for six and a half years between Wales and the Scarlets and, just like that, he was out. The statement released in the aftermath of his sacking – sorry, mutual termination – was telling enough.
Pivac said: “I would like to thank Byron for his hard work with Wales and his honesty in recent meetings.”
His honesty in recent meetings? God above. Look, that is not the kind of thing you associate with a happy camp but that doesn’t mean that Wales will be any less dangerous in this fixture. If anything, it could have a galvanizing effect on a Welsh squad that hasn’t turned into a bad side overnight despite their slide to the not-Italy wooden spoon in this year’s Six Nations. I described Ireland’s victory over Wales in the second round of this year’s tournament as a “statement win” because of that belief in Wales’ inherent quality – remember that Welsh side pushed the eventual World champions all the way in Japan back in November 2019 – but even with that undoubted quality, it would be ignoring the blindingly obvious to claim that something about Wayne Pivac’s iteration seems “off”.
I also wrote the following;
In reality, Ireland haven’t gone from a side that was on the slide last week to one that’s going to walk a Grand Slam this week. I think what this result shows is that a lot of the commentary surrounding Ireland – both as a collective and with some of their senior players – was the worst kind of knee-jerk reactionism. The margins were relatively small last year and this improvement over a strong Welsh side was a tightening up of a key part of why last year didn’t work – the tight five dominating their opposing unit and winning more offensive collisions when the ball gets released beyond #10.
This is still true – when Ireland have that tight five dominance, we usually win. When we don’t, we look incapable of working out how to play with a physical disadvantage. Then, like now, Eddie Jones’ England loom large in Twickenham and we’ve seen what the value of a “statement win” over Wales means there back in February.
What does beating this version of Wales mean in November 2020? What does losing to them mean? We’ll have our answer Friday night.
Wales: 15. Leigh Halfpenny; 14. Liam Williams, 13. Jon Davies, 12. Owen Watkin, 11. Josh Adams; 10. Dan Biggar, 9. Gareth Davies; 1. Rhys Carre, 2. Ryan Elias, 3. Tomas Francis; 4. Will Rowlands, 5. Alun Wyn Jones; 6. Shane Lewis-Hughes, 7. Justin Tipuric, 8. Taulupe Faletau.
Replacements: 16. Elliot Dee, 17. Wyn Jones, 18. Samson Lee, 19. Jake Ball, 20. Aaron Wainwright, 21. Lloyd Williams, 22. Callum Sheedy, 23. George North
Most of what I wrote about Wales earlier in the year still applies.
But, if I was to pick out the areas where I feel Wales have fallen during Pivac’s reign to date, it would be their offensive breakdown. If you look at the amount of time that Wales have spent in possession – literally how long they’ve hung onto the ball – they have the highest number of minutes in possession per game in the tournament with 20.9 minutes of attacking possession per game. Not bad, right? It shows they’re capable of hanging onto the ball for decent stretches of the game and they had the most amount of ball carries in the competition (655) but the problems, for me, show up elsewhere – their offensive ruck speed.
It’s a bit of a misconception that you must have sub-three-second rucks to play good attacking rugby but when you start to go north of three seconds, it starts to get a little difficult to play the style of rugby you want unless you’re reliably getting over the gainline. 18% of Wales’ rucks took longer than 6 seconds to complete (the highest % of slow rucks in the competition) and if you look at their ratio of sub-three-second rucks and plus-three-second rucks, 54.55% of their rucks take longer than three seconds.
When we compare that to the rest of the Six Nations, we see that places Wales bottom of the championship for offensive ruck speed;
- Italy – 2.08 seconds
- Ireland – 2.09 seconds
- Scotland – 3.11 seconds
- England – 3.26 seconds
- France – 3.35 seconds
- Wales – 3.48 seconds
When you also throw in their metres per carry metric which, while a bit of an ungainly metric, puts context on their overall carrying efficiency;
- Scotland – 5.96m per carry
- France – 5.95m per carry.
- Ireland – 5.8m per carry.
- Italy – 5.7m per carry.
- England – 5.6m per carry.
- Wales – 5.4m per carry.
Why are England so low down on this particular metric? They are something of an anomaly in that they are extraordinarily efficient off their lineout when it comes to scoring tries inside three phases and they tend not to play a whole lot of dead phases, as they kicked the most out of any team in the tournament by some distance.
Wales, on the other hand, have had the most amount of passes in the tournament, offloaded more than anyone other than France and threw the most amount of bad passes in the tournament.
You start to get a rough approximation of what Pivac’s issues are, right?
Wales are hanging onto the ball longer than anyone, struggling with slow ball half the time and struggling to gain metres on their carries generally. While they are attempting to move the ball around with passing and offloading, they are also making more passing errors than anyone and, with a scrum that has the lowest non-Italian completion percentage in the tournament and the joint highest penalties conceded, they consistently find themselves losing ground.
Frustrating, isn’t it?
My main issue watching Wales back over the Six Nations was how reliant they are on Alun Wyn Jones for almost everything. He’s still one of their top forward ball carriers, their tighthead lock scrummager, their top lineout target and caller, their most effective defender from a raw numbers perspective and when you consider dominant tackles and – and! – Jones is still Wales’ top offensive breakdown attendant and second-highest defensive breakdown attendant.
Jones is 35 years of age and this will be his 150th international appearance.
Right now Wales seems little like they’re between two stools when it comes to their overall style. They’re clearly looking to transition to the style Pivac is known for but part of me wonders if they have the player set to make that happen at test level?
I remember Pivac making a statement about Tadhg Beirne in the aftermath of his move to Munster where he wondered aloud if he had the size to be a test second row. I think he might be correct in some ways but the same might also be true of Pivac’s style of play. Pivac’s Scarlets were never a side that needed to bang over the gain line dominantly to beat teams, they would often produce wins with very little in the way of what you’d call impact ball carrying through the forwards but what ball they did carry usually had lightning-quick ball so when the Scarlets would “superload” the short side, as they often would, the opposition would become unbalanced, drop some bad folds or alignments and the Scarlets’ slick hands and pace would have them away.
Look at Wales work here – I’ve timed the rucks to illustrate what I mean. Less than three seconds is quick-ball and the longer you go above three seconds the harder it is to get the next phase rolling into space.
The first bit of action off the scrum – some slick interplay to be fair – is really nice and it generates a three-second ruck. I am classing the second that you make contact as the “ruck” because it represents the period of time that the ball has a position where it cannot be passed until the ruck is recycled.
Look at the first ruck.
Faletau’s position beyond the ruck is quite notable because he was running a deep offload support line.
That takes him away from the next phase – which is always the downside of deep offload support lines like this – and that leaves the next phase as a clear set-up to a punch back in the direction of the lineout.
Here’s the shape off the first ruck.
Williams is holding width well here but it’ll take something special to engineer a break here. It doesn’t happen and Wales get dragged into a six-second ruck because the standard of cleanout from the outside backs involved isn’t anywhere near good enough.
As I said, I think the optimal play here would be to strike the Scottish line at the second last primary defender, pull the guts of the Scottish line across to fill the space taken up by Biggar, Adams and Williams before coming back across the field to these forwards who aren’t busting a gut to make it around the centre-field ruck for a good reason.
But the six-second ruck kills the play. By the time the ball is usable, Scotland have had ample time to pick their targets and snuff out the Welsh attempted super-load.
This ruck speed problem is killing them.
Check out this longer sequence. It ends with a pretty positive outcome – the kick down the line is good – but showcases some of the Welsh problems.
That big latched carry from Jones stands out, doesn’t it? The only problem is that unless he was going to run that all the way to the try line all it was really doing was binding three Welsh attackers against two Scottish tacklers and allowing Scotland all the time in the world to pick their targets in defence.
What has to happen on this phase to unlock the Scottish defensive alignment here?
Quite a bit, in my opinion. The kick isn’t a bad play at all but it’s turning over possession with a hope to pressure, not kicking to attack.
This is the crux of the Welsh problem and I think an Irish problem too – they need to up the power somewhere in their ball carrying rotation. They have a lot of talented handlers and runners but they’re struggling to strike the opposition gainline with the power they need to unbalance opposition defences and the outside back cleaners to dominantly win collision points in a way that will play into their attacking system.
Look at this work off a pretty decent scrum;
It’s a nice break from Faletau followed up by some pretty weak ruck support, a poor pass from Adams, a lost collision, a 10-second ruck, a blocked grubber kick and a turnover penalty.
Wales need to be playing with width and quick pace on the ruck. You can live with moderately slow ball if you’re getting over the gainline more times than not and winning the quick rucks you really want but right now Wales are getting the worst of both worlds, no gainline and slow ball.
It’s no wonder they look so poor. For Ireland to pile on the misery, they need to hit the same notes as everyone else – dominate the forward collisions, invest numbers in slowing the Welsh ruck regardless of position and then pick your targets as they go deep and wide to try and play around you. They have the best goal kicker in the competition so if we’re inaccurate with our breakdown, they’ll punish us but I think we’ve got a defensive lineout that can really hurt their progression up the field and our scrum should stack up well with theirs going on what I’ve seen so far since the restart.
Whatever happens, there’ll be some underpressure coaches seething on the losing side.
Let’s hope it’s Wayne Pivac, eh?
