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The Reds must focus on defence

Roar Guru
7th May, 2017
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Karmichael Hunt was born in New Zealand and now can play for the Wallabies. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Roar Guru
7th May, 2017
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1217 Reads

Eleven rounds into the Super Rugby season with only two wins on the board after a 46-17 loss to the Chiefs, the Reds could use a season-wide stocktake, fun though it may not be.

That said, the Reds are only seven points shy of Australian conference leaders the Brumbies, plus they have done all their tough travel and don’t have to play any of the top tournament teams. Therefore it is worth considering what they might need to do to improve from here.

First it is important to consider what the Reds are doing well, and the stats indicate what we see on our screens – they have a very credible attack. They have scored 29 tries in their ten games (2.9 per game), which nothing to be ashamed of, and have scored 25 in the seven games Quade Cooper has been steering (3.57 per game), so there is clear evidence that if he plays, the Reds play considerably better.

The Reds are also fortunate to have a backline full of strike weapons for Cooper to feed, with Duncan Paia’aua, Samu Kerevi, Izaia Perese, Etonia Nabuli, Karmichael Hunt and Campbell Magnay all able to damage the opposition. That’s without mentioning some very handy forward runners in Scott Higginbotham, Hendrik and Lukhan Tui and George Smith.

Of particular note is that the Reds lead the Australian conference in the number of offloads this season, with 140 being the fourth highest in the competition. They also lead the Aussie conference when it comes to own ruck success, which sits at 95 per cent as another facilitator for them to succeed at ‘running rugby’. Hopefully the Reds will keep this up and build on it.

But despite the ability to damage the opposition, the Reds are coming up short when it comes to the most important statistic: wins on the board.

The reasons for this include scrums and lineouts, which have been fair to poor. The former is perhaps more understandable given the loss of the Red’s best propping stocks overseas and to injury, but given the experience of players such as Stephen Moore, Rob Simmons and Higgenbotham in the lineout, they should do better than eleventh in the competition at winning their own – though in fairness to Higgers, he has stolen five lineouts this season, a tremendous contribution.

But the statistics that really stick out relate to discipline and defence. Topping the competition with nine yellow cards and a red is not good enough, though aside from Smith’s yellow card against the Chiefs it was good to see a game where the Reds were only penalised five times. I had the impression that they were being more careful in that regard.

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Defence, however, was poor and has been all season, particularly in the backline. Some players, like Kerevi and Nabuli, have dropped their tackle completion rates by ten per cent or more this season – in fact not a single one of the regular starting backs has a tackle completion rate of 80 per cent or higher.

One thing that caught my eye on Saturday night was that Campbell Magnay, in only his second game of the season, was outstanding in defence, making nine from ten tackles.

As per last year when he first played Super Rugby, Magnay frenetically stalked the backline with those long legs from 13, looking for defensive work and hitting hard when he found it. His tackles were the difference that blunted the Chief’s attack on a couple of occasions.

Magnay is not scared of hitting a breakdown either – sometimes to the detriment of his own attacking opportunities, because he tends to look for contact when a 13 should be looking for space – but nobody can doubt his spirit or power, and, to an extent, getting him the ball in space is the responsibility of the players inside him.

When he is given the ball in space by the playmakers, Magnay is as dangerous as any of his teammates, and he can break the line and when he does he is fast enough to accelerate away from most defenders.

I wonder whether Nick Stiles needs to start Magnay more often this season. He can play wing or outside centre and could be rotated off the wing to cover the centres in defence.

Not only would this stiffen the Reds defence without compromising the attack, it would also send a message to the likes of Kerevi, Perese and Nabuli that irrespective of how good they are with the ball in hand they are expected to succeed in defence if they want to keep their starting spots.

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