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The 19th Century Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once said that experience is the one thing you cannot get for nothing. It is also the most valuable commodity on the professional rugby market, especially when the big tournaments swing around.
The World Cup. The Rugby Championship – that’s when experience really counts.
Experience is far, far more than just having played a lot of games. It represents a sustained ability to sacrifice minor goals for major ones and pay the price for success.
As the great American football coach Vince Lombardi said, “You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.”
The players who ‘stay there’ and pay the price for the longest time are rightly revered and celebrated in all sporting cultures. In rugby union, that means the hundred-cap club: All Blacks like Conrad Smith, Dan Carter and Richie McCaw, Wallabies like Matt Giteau, Stephen Moore and Adam Ashley-Cooper.
In the cases of Giteau and Ashley-Cooper, both have had to sacrifice a part of their club salaries in France to come back and honour their desire to play for the Wallabies in the forthcoming Rugby Championship. It’s not just the playing, it’s also their mentoring and sharing of experience with the players newer to the environment in camp and at practice, their ‘invisible’ irrigation of the Australian rugby landscape.
It is hard to argue with the correlation between success and a certain critical mass of experience:
The Wallabies were at their peak in 2015, when all hundred-cap players started the game, as they did during all the critical World Cup matches and in the win over New Zealand in the 2015 Rugby Championship.
They came closest to beating England when they upped their cap total for the third Test in June.
Overall, since the World Cup the cap totals have dwindled, and nowhere more so than in the pivotal positions in the team – at scrum-half, outside-half and inside centre.
One important part of this ebbing of experience is the difficulty in securing release of the European-based players for the entire 18-week duration of a Test match season. Both Giteau (102 caps) and Will Genia (66 caps) were absent from the 9-10-12 axis in the June series against England, and the negative impacts on decision-making capacity and the kicking game were there for all to see.
I fully expect both Genia and Giteau to be in the run-on side against the All Blacks this Saturday by virtue of experience, starting on either side of Bernard Foley.
One simple method of quantifying the impact of experience is to compare the effectiveness of Australia’s exit strategy against England, firstly during the 2015 World Cup and secondly in the third Test against the same opponents in June.
Let’s take a look at Australia’s exits in the World Cup group game:
This clip reel is derived from wide-angle camera shots, but without TV commentary or game timings.
According to my analysis, seven out of eight Australian exits during the game had positive outcomes.
10 and 12 in combination exits
(1) At the opening kick-off, Giteau sets a bold and positive tone by calling for the ball from the Scott Fardy forward pod and making the second pass to Foley under the shadow of his own posts. Although Foley is tackled, Giteau is still able to clear upfield to halfway from his own goal-line.
(2) The second exit from a centre-field scrum gives Australia the chance to split their left boot (Giteau on the far left) and right boot (Foley) to either side. Fullback Mike Brown cannot mark both the potential target spaces in the backfield and ends up conceding a 5-metre lineout with Wallaby throw.
(3) The combination system with Giteau left/Foley right (0:56, or Foley/Kurtley Beale at 1:03) dilutes the effectiveness of the England defensive chase because of uncertainty – it cannot attack both Foley and Giteau on both sides of the breakdown. This buys Foley precious seconds to compose himself for the kick to the right at 0:57, and the step-and-exit to the left, turning Brown around completely at 1:10.
Hitting the backfield targets
(1) One of the ideas behind the exit at 0:16 (reel time) is to shift the ball away from the side of the field guarded by Brown, England’s premier kick-returner. Instead, Owen Farrell receives the ball and is hit conclusively by Michael Hooper on the chase.
(2) When Australia do kick to Brown’s side, they make sure the kick is not returnable, with Giteau finding a decent touch at 0:40.
Kicking game off 9
With Genia starting instead of Nick Phipps, the Wallabies had more flexibility in their kicking game. At 0:43 they are able to exit effectively off 9, with Genia showing good technique to kick through the top of the ball and impart some run-on ‘top-spin’ towards the England goal-line when it hits grass. Australia finished this sequence with own lineout throw on the England 40, after the return by Jonny May.
Pressure on Foley (part 1)
One the key issues on Australian exits in the June 2016 Test series – undiluted chase pressure on Foley – only occurred once in the World Cup game, at 1:20 in the reel. For the only time in the match, the England receiver (George Ford) was able to link meaningfully with #15 Brown and set up a tackle-breaking kick return:
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Matters were different in June 2016, with the support of Giteau and Genia lacking and the exit strategy almost totally dependent on Foley. Only one exit out of six was successful as the England kick return game ran riot.
Pressure on Foley (part 2)
At 8:47, #12 Matt Toomua is not an exit option, as a right-foot kicker positioned underneath his own posts. This frees the England #14 Anthony Watson to fly up in Foley’s face, forcing a lineout only 15 metres out from the Wallaby goal-line. England duly scored a try from this position.
Kicking accuracy off 9 and 12
Even with the benefit of strong prep runs by Sean McMahon (22:19), Tevita Kuridrani (22:28) and Rob Simmons (22:37) taking play well outside the Wallaby 22, the box-kick by Phipps is not precise enough to prevent Brown setting up a counter on the next phase. Brown evades the first follow-up tackle by Rob Horne and gets a nice long placement despite the pressure from Hooper:
With the Wallabies over-committed at the breakdown, Ford is able to make progress and set Chris Robshaw free on the left:
Weakness on right foot to left sideline exits
The absence of Giteau and the presence of Toomua at #12 created a problem with clearances with the right foot to the left side touchline (59:30 and 65:13). In both cases, the ball lobs up in the air and is either caught by Brown, or by Jack Nowell with Brown in close attendance. England were able to keep the ball long enough on their kick return to squeeze a (goaled) penalty out of the first situation, then force more backfield/exit confusion in Wallaby ranks at the second:
Brown re-gathered the fumble and the sequence ended with a fourth England try by replacement hooker Jamie George.
Summary
In the third Test against England in June, the decisive factor was the impact of the England kick-return game against the Australian exit strategy. Off four kick-returns, England harvested 17 points and one other line-break that could have led to a try.
The Wallaby kicking game from their own end was unable to avoid England’s main return man, Brown, and neither Phipps at 9 nor Toomua at 12 were effective support kickers to Foley. The problem of exiting towards the left sideline, in particular, was never solved.
The exit strategy at the World Cup was altogether tighter and more productive. The veteran presence of Genia at #9 and Giteau at #12 was able both to reduce the pressure on Foley and expertly navigate around the threat of Brown and the England return game. Giteau’s ability to shoulder responsibility in this area especially was a big bonus.
Experience is nearly always undervalued, by everyone but the coaching group and players within the team environment. But without it, young players cannot evolve as quickly towards their potential, and fewer of those critical moments on the field are resolved in your favour because there are not enough players present who have experienced those moments before and understand, instinctively, the nature of the correct response.
Ultimately, coaches trust those who have not only created the conditions for success in their playing careers, but who have sustained that effort over a prolonged period of time and ‘stay there’.