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The stats that matter: It's tough being Duane Vermeulen

28th July, 2014
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There are workhorses, and then there is South Africa's Duane Vermeulen. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
Expert
28th July, 2014
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Duane Vermeulen played 1221 minutes of Super Rugby this year, or 76.3 minutes a match. He may play 14 Tests for the Boks this year and will play all 80:00 due to Willem Alberts’ propensity to run out of petrol.

If he averages the same workload for the Springboks as he does for the Stormers, he’ll play 2289 minute of elite rugby.

Vermeulen averaged 7.375 tackles per game, so he’ll make over 220 tackles this season if he stays healthy. He’ll carry the ball 270 times or so, and almost all of those will end in a tackle or gang tackle.

He seldom protects his body in those hits. He tries to deliver a more jarring blow as carrier than the tackler does to him. He almost always succeeds.

For both club and country, Vermeulen often fields box kicks or line kicks. In Super Rugby, he caught a punt 2.43 times a game. That translates to about 70 a season.

When he returns those kicks, he almost never punts.

Almost always he roars into contact like a clattering Viking who is seeking Valhalla as a reward. His tacklers are usually at full speed when they meet him.

Vermeulen is an underrated jumper at the tail of the lineout. He stole nine opposition throw-ins in Super Rugby and is active in almost all 30 or so lineouts that occur in the modern game, whether as a lifter or a decoy jumper.

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When a hooker overthrows his target, the loose ball results in huge collisions which usually involve Vermeulen.

When mauls form, Vermeulen is often the carrier. He steers the scrum in the 15-20 scrums that form, a game.

There are 190-210 phase transitions (set pieces and rucks and breakdowns) in a game, or 5,700 in a Vermeulen season. He can choose how many rucks to join, of course, but he won 13 breakdown turnovers in Super Rugby, and had to endure many cleaners (about 6:1 ratio of success).

He carried the ball 120 times in Super Rugby; but his workload as a Bok is even higher. He often makes 9-10 runs. He will run between 7-8 kilometres a game, which amounts to 240 kilometres a year.

Sure, much of that is at a canter, and the ball is in play only 44 per cent of the time.

But Vermeulen will put his 110-kilogram body at a dead sprint for 9,390 metres a year, at a 95 per cent high speed sprint for 10,260 metres a year. These will often terminate in severe impacts.

Vermeulen will experience a staggering 1274 impacts a game, or almost 40,000 a year. Now, many of these will be very light, as in being at the tail of the lineout and being shoved by his opposite number, or pushing in a balanced scrum.

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But about 390 of them will be severe and 1,680 will be very heavy. Being Duane Vermeulen ain’t no picnic.

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