Waratahs deny they’re a kicking side. Are they right?
Columnist
By Spiro Zavos, 25 Mar 2010 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert
The Waratahs Berrick Barnes kicks the ball against the Sharks during their Super 14 rugby match in Sydney on Saturday, March 7, 2010. The Waratahs defeated the Sharks 25-21. AAP Image/Paul Miller.
The excellent rugby writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Rupert Guinness, has written an intriguing article arguing that the “the Waratahs have defied the perception they are a team reliant on kicking.”
The article quotes statistics compiled by Fair Play Sports Analysis Systems to show that last year the Waratahs recorded 33 kicks per game during the season, and that this year, it averages only 22 kicks a match.
For the record, the order of kicking sides in the 2010 Super 14 tournament, according to the statistics is: Sharks (32 kicks a game): Stormers (30): Brumbies (28): Cheetahs (27): Bulls (27): Highlanders and Lions (26): Reds (24): Chiefs (24): Force, Crusaders and Hurricanes (23): Waratahs (22): Lions (18).
The statistics place the Waratahs as the second-least kicking side in the tournament.
Guiness states that this statistic should be taken as “fact.” And Chris Hickey, the beleagured coach of the Waratahs, is quoted as saying: “The statistics show that despite the perception of some people we don’t kick the ball a lot.”
I would include myself as among the “some people” category. Do the statistics prove me and the other critics wrong?
It won’t surprise many people that I maintain that we (the “some people” group) are right to assert that the Waratahs tend to kick too much ball away to their opponents.
The first point I would make is that the statistics are averages.
In the case of the Waratahs, the non-kicking statistics are inflated because of the match against the Lions when the the Waratahs hardly kicked the ball at all. They were too busy running in 11 tries.
If the Waratahs had played their usual game of kicking the ball away, their average kicking statistics would be much higher.
There is something else wrong with the methodology used to establish these so-called facts.
The statistics tell us how many times the sides kicked on average in a match. They do not tell us what the percentage of kicks to possession is. And this is the crucial information.
Take the Chiefs, for example.
They kick far too much and, in particular, overplay the chip kick (especially the grossly over-rated Stephen Donald). Yet the Chiefs are recorded as averaging only 24 kicks in a game, well down the kicking list.
In their last two matches, according to their coach, Ian Foster, the Chiefs won only 35 per cent of possession. This means that although the average kicking count is lower than 8 other teams on the list, the Chiefs are ACTUALLY kicking away a very high percentage of their possessions.
The same argument applies to the Highlanders who have deprived their very good backline of ball to run with by incessant kicking by their halfback, Jimmy Cowan. This tactic is the single most important reason why the Highlanders are losing matches they should be winning.
You can’t score tries when the opposition is given the ball all the time.
I don’t have the possession statistics of the Waratahs. But my guess is that the Waratahs are a side that kicks away a high percentage of its possessions.
The essential point in all of this is that rugby teams must kick the ball. The game started as RUGBY FOOTBALL after all. But it is what you do with your kicking that is the crucial thing.
The Bulls, for instance, are a kicking side. But they are a good kicking side.
They generally don’t do chip kicks. The box kicks and high balls are invariably chased and contested. When kicking for territory is done, the kick is invariably long and directed towards touch.
The Waratahs kicking is none of these things.
They are a bad kicking side. The box kicks are rarely chased. The high ball never chased. There are too many chips that are not re-gathered, and have no chance of being re-gathered.
This is dreadful, brain-dead rugby.
Instead of a strong Waratahs side, which is loaded with Wallabies, sweeping aside most oppositions, opponents are kept in the game because of the fetish of kicking the ball away without any systems for getting the ball back.
Of course, it is not only the Waratahs among the Australian teams that are guilty of this kicking nonsense. The Western Force and the ACT Brumbies kick far too much, or put better, kick badly far too much.
Against the Blues last weekend, for example, the Brumbies were leading just after half-time when Josh Valentine, with no great pressure on him around his 22, kicked a high ball.
The Blues snaffled the ball, ran it wide and scored a try. This try gave them the momentum to score two more tries, including one from the ensuing kick-off when Rene Ranger made his startling break.
Valentine’s stupid kick started the scoring spree.
Someone once declared that statistics are like bikinis: “What they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is crucial.”
The kicking statistics quoted by the SMH, therefore, should be treated with some discretion before they are canonised as “facts.”
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Red Rooster said | March 25th 2010 @ 6:04am | Report comment
I think there is a significant difference in the use of kicks for attacking purposes. A source close to the Tahs tells me that while the kick numbers are low, they are made up of long kicks to space and worse directly to an opposition player. In this regard they are top 3 in the comp. Other teams use the kicks to break up defence to make attack possible rather than last years field position obsession that I note the Brumbies and Tahs seem to talk about every pre match and half time.
mungo said | March 25th 2010 @ 6:23am | Report comment
You should check whether Rupert Guinnes owes Hickey some money, the tahs have and have had for so long players whose first instinct is to kick, they need an instinctive running playmaker ala Larkham/Ella and a coach who encourages this, I think Beale might have been a different player if he had served his apprenticship under Mooney at the Reds.
CraigB said | March 25th 2010 @ 6:48am | Report comment
as i’ve written in other posts, kicking by itself is not a problem. Bad kicking is a problem and that is their any Tahs arguemnt falls over. The Crusaders kick alot, but with good kicks getting field position to launch a strike. Kick that go just beyond half way and straight to the oppn are infuriating and that is what the Tahs do alot
Maddog said | March 25th 2010 @ 8:10am | Report comment
Spiro,
This is one of the best posts I have read for sometime and I agree with you whole-heartedly. There most certainly is a place in rugby for kicking but it is the kicking for kickings sake that has plauged the Waratahs for well over a decade now. Their first instinct for the most part is to kick. I do think that they have been attempting to play a running game this year, but they just don’t have the naturalul instincts to be able to do so, so once they are faced with being unable to penetrate the defensive line, they go back to old habits and kick the ball away (often straight in to the arms of the waiting oppositoins back 3).
I would be happy if the Waratahs continued to kick as much as they have so far this season, but let’s see some tactical kicking. Kick for touch in the oppositions 22, pressure the lineout and use that as a platform to unleash their potent backline.
reds fan said | March 25th 2010 @ 8:32am | Report comment
I think Rupert failed to also acknowledge that last week there was not one line break made by the Waratahs against a team who had 6 tries scored against them the week before. Holding the ball is only good if you are constructive with it. Same with kicking, you need to be constructive. Its not how many times the Tahs do certain things that upset people, its what they dont do that does.
Dave said | March 25th 2010 @ 12:41pm | Report comment
This is exactly the problem with the trend of using stats to over analyse things. The stats say the Tahs are playing well, blind Freddy can see that they’re not.
Rickety Knees said | March 25th 2010 @ 8:34am | Report comment
Agree – and Waugh’s comments “we should have kicked earlier” in his post match comments against the Force gives some insight into where this strategy is coming from. It would seem that kicking for kicking sake/ugly Rugby is endemic to the Tahs culture. Nothing is going to change until this is purged ie Hickey, Weismantel and Waugh move on. I am dismayed that Cheika has been snapped up by Stade Francais.
Dan said | March 25th 2010 @ 8:59am | Report comment
Spiro,
May I draw your attention to this paragraph:
“The essential point in all of this is that rugby teams must kick the ball. The game started as RUGBY FOOTBALL after all. But it is what you do with your kicking that is the crucial thing.”
Not that I want to go off on a tangent, but it’s worth pointing out that the word “FOOTBALL” has absolutely nothing to do with how much a player “kicks” the ball in any given name. My guess is you’ve fallen pray to the popular (but false) perceptions of Australia’s more aggressive ‘soccer’ fans who think that their game deserves to be known as ‘football’ ahead of all others because it has the most contact with foot and ball. But this is in fact misleading. “Football” is an English word dating back to around the 14th century, and it was used to refer to a variety of field games played by the peasants “on foot” with a ball. This was to distinguish it from the more “respectable” games of the nobles, which were played on horse back.
So yes, Rugby did start out as “Rugby Football”, with the only means of scoring through goal kicking, but that actually has actually nothing to do with the word “football”.
scottmit said | March 25th 2010 @ 9:25am | Report comment
I’ve always wondered where those medieval intervillage games that you occasionally see prints of – looking like massive rugby mauls – morphed into the structured modern games. It seemed to me to be more natural for these no-rule games to carry the ball rather than have to kick it. This origin of the word “football” makes so much sense – thanks!
Bay35Pablo said | March 25th 2010 @ 9:55am | Report comment
Hiickey: “statistics show we kick less than people think”
Generic tahs fan: “Yeah, but it’s crap kicking. good thing you don’t kick more, or it would just be more crap kicking.”
Hickey: (silence)
Generic tahs fan: “Because the structure in the tahs backline is so good, we can’t get a line break against a team that leaked 6 tries the week before.”
(tumbleweeds blow past)
Even looser said | March 25th 2010 @ 11:33am | Report comment
Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.
CK said | March 25th 2010 @ 11:16am | Report comment
Mindless kicking is the big difference here. We’ve all stood and cheered kicks that have cleared teams from trouble and bounced into touch a metre from the try line; knowing what comes next could be reward. But the incessant mindless mid-field bombs with no chasers (in particualr) are a waste of time… of course, they do allow you to duck to the bar or the mens room, knowing you’re not missing anything.
Kicks are a necessity of the game, be it for field position (dare I say those words), to turn a defence around and create time and space, or for an attacking play which is going to be chased -cross-field kicks for points and grubber kicks for instance; these all have their place in the game.
Unfortunately it seems that plenty of other teams out there haven’t been told where that place is!
Jameswm said | March 25th 2010 @ 11:28am | Report comment
Yes I hate those bombs – they go 15m and give possession to the opposition. If you’re going to bomb or chip, FFS get the ball back. Fullbacks are better off returning the kick to near a few forwards so they have possession, then get some thrust, set for a move, cross field kick once the right angles are created etc. Barnes is pretty good at those, Hangers too.
The only time you let them get it is when you go long – very long, and into the corner, so you end up with a net gain when they kick back.
The Aussie teams’ lack of counter-attack is created by our single biggest problem/deficiency – lack of support/backing up. We run, and there’s barely anyone with us. Watch the good Kiwi teams by comparison.