- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Wallabies are tired. They are playing a game of high-intensity collisions after being in too many collisions this year, against high-intensity tacklers.
If they keep running into Englishman at medium speed and with tired bones, they will not score enough tries to win the third Test, even if they have 80 per cent of the possession.
Eight of the top ten Super Rugby ball carriers (by number of carry) are Australian. Carrying the ball a hundred times or more in Super Rugby involves sustaining considerable G-forces.
Five of those are Wallabies who just tried to dent the fortified English line for two futile Tests, including 121-carry Sean McMahon, who is tasked with ramming through Chris Robshaw and Billy Vunipola at close range. Also, Tevita Kuridrani (112 Super Rugby carries) will attempt to run over Mike Brown and the English wingers.
Coach Michael Cheika is using the Pink Floyd attack game plan: ‘Run’. Or maybe it is the ‘Runny Nose’ attack.
Running is fun. But it usually ends in a tackle, and if the carrier is tired or sore, often that tackle ends in a turnover or stagnation. Building phases from 50-60 metres out is exhausting.
The problem with this plan is Cheika’s runners are tired, their bodies are sore, and players like Michael Hooper have played 960 minutes of Super Rugby this season. (That means Hooper has played every minute of every Waratah game).
Scott Fardy is running with the ball as if it outweighs him; he is barely galloping for five metres before falling meekly to the turf, the ball lost. But he has played 922 hard minutes for the Brumbies.
Dean Mumm’s carries make Fardy’s look impressive. ‘Paper’ and ‘bag’ come to mind. But Mumm has played more than 900 minutes of Super Rugby, too.
The average Super Rugby loose forward runs 5,000 metres a match, in distances that are typically 14 metres, 15 metres, or maybe 18-20 metres. At the end of each of those runs is usually a tackle, a clean, a carry, or a breakdown. These impacts have G-forces, and when they are not running (at a scrum or lineout or restart), they are pushing or lifting or trying to catch and landing from a height.
We know this is tiring, from common sense. But we can look at the running patterns of first and second half in Super Rugby and note the drop off. The average forward in Super Rugby runs 2,539 metres in the first half, but ‘only’ 2,251 metres in the second half. (Loose forwards run more, but the drop off is the same).
The average full sprint for a forward in the first half is 20 metres – the average full sprint in the second half is closer to 16 metres. (The duration in time of a full sprint falls by 0.3 seconds; minimal but meaningful).
Backs are able to maintain speed in the second half better, but they still tire as the season wears on, and they go into a dead sprint 11 times a game on average, with the majority of their high G-force impacts being in the first half. It seems that backs are able to avoid high impact collisions more as the game wears on.
Israel Folau and Dane Haylett-Perry ran more than almost anyone in Super Rugby (142 and 143 time, respectively). Yes, Folau is seldom hit hard in the tackle because he has great body control and elusive movement, but getting hit well over a hundred times in a few months by the likes of Eben Etzebeth and Brodie Retallick.
Forwards average ten ‘impacts’ per minute; backs have seven per minute.
Cheika is asking the players with the highest number of carries, the highest number of minutes, the highest degree of wear and tear, to run into a white wall of tacklers.
Small wonder that it has not worked well, yet.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.