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England's fly-half Jonny Wilkinson kicks the Gilbert Virtuo during their Rugby World Cup Pool B match against Argentina. (AAP Image,Martin Bureau
Jonny Wilkinson missing four successive kicks at goal, as he did for England against Argentina, is about as rare as four or more successive sunny, warm days in New Zealand in spring. Wilkinson just didn’t miss these shots. Several of his kicks ended up closer to the corner posts than the goal posts.
He explained his misses this way: ‘The ball wasn’t going where it was supposed to go.’
It wasn’t just Wilkinson who had the kicking blues. Dan Carter missed several relatively easy, for him at least, kicks at goal. The usual sharpshooters for Scotland and Ireland were also strangely off target.
James Hook, who kicked a goal that wasn’t given by Wayne Barnes and his assistant referees, had the gripping match between his Welsh side and the Springboks on his boot when, minutes from full-time and with Wales one point down, he kicked for goal from the sideline about 35m out.
This is the sort of kick most accomplished kicker like Hook would boot over in a clutch situation like this.
The kick was never going to go over. It started metres outside the near post and never looked like curving in across the bar.
It was not just a perception that the goal-kicking was generally poor in most matches in the opening matches. The statistics on the kicking are that of the 104 kicks at goal only 64 were successful. The success rate was 61.5 per cent. The usual success rate is about 75 per cent.
In my opinion, something is wrong. Either the kickers are in bad form or, and this is my belief, there is something about the Gilbert Virtuo ball that is disconcerting the goal-kickers.
The interesting aspect of all of this is that the same thing happened in Rugby World Cup 2007.
Kickers like Carter and Wilkinson missed relatively easy kicks at goal, just like they have this tournament. I wrote an article at the time documenting all the misses and suggesting that the balls were at fault. The article was run in the influential French newspaper L’Equipe.
The makers of the Gilbert ball were infuriated by the article.
They published all sort of statistics to suggest that I was wrong. Players like Carter were sort of in agreement. But it was clear they weren’t happy with the ball.
Now we move forward to this week. The statistics suggest that there is something wrong with the ball.
Gilbert, as they did in RWC 2007, have put out a statement saying that the reaction to the tournament ball has been ‘overwhelming positive.’
As an aside, I would note that Wilkinson’s comment about the contrariness of the ball does not seem to me to be overwhelmingly positive.
The Gilbert statement went on to point out that the Gilbert Virtuo ball, which weighs 460g, was used in the 2011 Six Nations tournament. But it seems a new type of bladder with a new valve ‘to improve the stability’ of the ball has been added. Apparently this new bladder retains the air in the ball more effectively than other bladders.
This may be the problem. I noticed at the New Zealand-Tonga match that there was wooden sound when the ball was kicked. It sounded more like a lump of wood being kicked that a rugby ball. The ball also often just died when it was kicked.
Sometimes, though, when it was kicked in the sweet spot, generally in a low rather than a high trajectory, it went great distances. And then there were all the misses with the kicks at goal…
As the tournament progresses it will be interesting to see how the kickers cope with a ball that seems to be harder than the usual ball.
In 2007, Percy Montgomery, the Springboks’ ace kicker, had no trouble knocking over his kicks at goal when the sharp-shooters in the other teams could hardly convert their kicks at goal.
It was Montgomery’s dead-eye goal kicking that was instrumental in South Africa winning the 2007 RWC tournament.
Here is the punchline. In the opening round of the 2011 RWC tournament there was one kicker who knocked over all his shots at goal.
Morne Steyn, the Springboks ace kicker, converted three out of three of his shots at goal. This dead-eye accuracy got the Springboks up in their 17-16 win over Wales.
Will Morne Steyn be the 2011 equivalent of Percy Montgomery for the Springboks?
