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Reading the comments on The Roar and on Twitter over the past few days I get the impression that people think Will Genia is in terrible form.
They say you’re only as good as your last match so I thought I’d take a detailed look at Genia’s performance against the Cheetahs last Friday to rate his performance in that match.
Passing
Let’s start with passing – the most important element of a halfback’s game. In the match against the Cheetahs Genia made 65 passes, 64 of which were caught by the player he passed to (98 per cent).
Of his passes I rated 59, or 91 per cent, as excellent – that is, the pass arrived at the player at the right height and in front of them so there was no need for the player to slow their momentum to catch the ball.
I rated four passes as average – two were a little high, one was at the player so he had to check slightly to catch it, and one was slightly in front of the player, although there is an argument that if the receiver had run directly forward it would have been a perfect pass.
That left only two poor passes in the entire match.
The first was the pass from the scrum at 9:14 to Quade Cooper which led to the intercept try for the Cheetahs.
The pass was above Cooper’s head and the time he took to pull it down allowed the support players to get a little too flat, reducing the time and space that would have helped Cooper throw the pass backwards and avoid the intercept.
Genia was not responsible for the try – it was Cooper who threw the final pass – but he contributed with his original poor pass.
The second came at 59:56 when Genia cleaned up one of the Cheetah’s chip kicks and, under pressure, threw a long ball to Cooper.
The pass bounced but went straight on to Cooper. Many will say there’s nothing wrong with a bounce pass if it finds the mark eventually, but that’s not how I see it.
Overall, Genia’s passing game was outstanding in this match, particularly when you consider the speed the Reds were playing at.
Speed of delivery from ruck
The Reds’ game plan was based on playing as fast as they possibly could. Richard Graham and several players have talked about a plan to take quick taps, move the ball away from the ruck as quickly as possible and maintain a fast tempo.
They certainly did that and it was one of the fastest matches I can remember seeing for some time – faster than the match between the Reds and the British and Irish Lions last year.
Genia went to 49 rucks in the match and his delivery from 45 of those was fast (less than one second), two were normal (less than three seconds) and two were slow but still less than five seconds.
The two slow rucks were at 0:15 when Genia waited for Cooper to get set to make the clearing kick from the kickoff at the start of the match, and at 30:57 when he took four seconds as he looked right, found no forwards available and changed his position to pass left instead.
That’s it. There was not a single ruck in the match where Genia stood over the ball at a ruck and slowed the play down, and the referee didn’t call ‘use it’ at a single ruck.
With 92 per cent of all deliveries less than one second, his speed around the field to get to rucks and then deliver the pass was exceptional in this match.
Kicking
Genia kicked the ball six times and I rated five of those poor (83 percent), so in my opinion he had a poor kicking match.
His first kick was charged down by Willie le Roux and led to the Cheetahs’ first try. You don’t want kicks charged down at any time but it’s hard to get the ball over a player coming from an offside position like le Roux did.
His second kick at 22:09 was long but straight to a Cheetahs player.
His third kick at 29:53 came immediately after the Reds got the ball from a turnover. Genia had four players well positioned to counter attack about 45 metres out from the Cheetahs try line and a fifth on that side of the field who could have joined in.
Instead, he kicked the ball and it was caught by the Cheetahs inside their 22.
Yes, if the ball had bounced Chris Feauai-Sautia may have got there and been in position to score, but I think running the ball had a higher chance of success.
His fourth kick at 36:16 directly from a restart was his one good kick of the match. His fifth kick at 54:45, again from a restart, was long but it needed to go out and didn’t.
His final kick of the match at 55:44 was probably his worst.
Again, it came immediately after a turnover and while there was no obvious opportunity that demanded the Reds run the ball, Genia kicked the ball across-field where the Cheetahs caught it with the nearest chaser 25 metres away.
There was no pressure created and it just gave easy ball to the Cheetahs.
Running the ball
The statistics tell us that Genia didn’t run the ball once. There were in fact five occasions where Genia ran some distance from the ruck with ball in hand.
On each of those occasions the Cheetahs ruck defence was good and had him covered so he ran across the face of the defence, attracted a defender and passed to a runner in space.
Given the speed that the Reds were playing at it was superb defensive organisation from the Cheetahs to deny Genia any real opportunity in 48 of the 49 rucks he went to in the match.
The first four occasions where Genia did run are shown in the following images.
The video at the end of this article shows shows the times Genia did run and the one opportunity which he didn’t take. I’ve frozen the footage as Genia picks the ball up in each example.
It is his fifth run and the opportunity that arose on the phase after it that I want to examine in more detail.
Looking at the following frame as Genia picks up the ball, it may appear from what we could see on television that this was a clear-cut opportunity for Genia to run.
It came immediately after a line break by Rob Simmons and there is certainly a hole beside the ruck.
What we can’t see on a tight shot like this is that Elgar Watts is just out of frame and running in to fill that hole. Of course, Genia can see this and knows that the opportunity out wider with Cooper and Dom Shipperley is much better.
He runs the ball at Watts to commit him and then passes to Cooper who passes on to Shipperley who makes good ground down the left touchline. Genia made exactly the right decision not to try and run himself on this occasion.
When Shipperley is tackled, the Cheetahs defence is disorganised from a ruck for the only time in the match.
Cooper has called for the ball but as Genia picks it up there is a hole in front of him and as he goes to pass that hole becomes more obvious.
Would we normally expect Genia to take that hole? Yes, and if I was coaching a player in that instance I’d say I would have liked to see them run the ball there.
However, I don’t think anyone can say that hole would definitely have stayed open had Genia decided to run, and I wouldn’t say it’s a clear error.
If I were coaching Genia and reviewing this match with him, I’d say, “You played very well – your passing and speed of delivery were outstanding – the one area I want you to work on is your decision-making around kicking, which will help you improve your execution.”
Does that mean Genia is in great form? No, but based on any objective view of his last match he’s in pretty good form with a couple of tweaks required.