VIDEO ANALYSIS: Why the Highlanders have the Indian Sign over the Waratahs

So the Highlanders have now beaten the Waratahs three times in a row, on the last two occasions on the Tahs’ home patch while racking up 30 points or more in the process.

It doesn’t look like a talent mismatch. In their 2015 Super Rugby semi-final, the Waratahs were able to field 11 Wallabies and one Springbok against five All Blacks for the Highlanders. This weekend, it was 11 Wallabies and one All Black versus only four All Blacks.

The Highlanders’ coaching staff has come up with a specific gameplan to beat their New South Wales opponents, and that plan remains of major interest not only to other Super Rugby coaches, but also to international Test match coaches around the world.

With Michael Cheika, Nathan Grey and Mario Ledesma all directly involved in the Waratahs’ coaching set-up in 2015, there was and is every chance that the Highlanders’ formula for beating the Tahs may become someone else’s formula for beating the Wallabies.

What are the basics of the plan? There are three main themes:

• Kicks for position to keep the Waratahs in their ‘exit strategy’
• High kicking game in midfield to pressure the Tahs’ backfield
• Pressure on the Tahs’ lineout throw

In the 2015 semi-final, the Highlanders dominated two-thirds of the territory battle, and their kicking stats were pretty spectacular:

More than half of the Highlanders’ kicks occurred outside their exit zone, and one in five were launched from the Tahs’ own half of the field! Almost 30 per cent were high, contestable kicks attacking the Tahs’ two-man backfield, typically composed of Israel Folau (15) and Bernard Foley (10).

The Highlanders scored heavily against Foley in particular, winning six pieces of possession over the top of the Tahs No.10 while achieving no positive results in three attempts against Folau’s side of the backfield zone.

The following clip package shows how the Highlanders were able to combine a superior positional kicking game with high ball attacks on Foley:

In the first example (6:13-6:48), the Tahs No.10 drops the high ball under pressure, the Highlanders reclaim it and Ben Smith immediately makes a diagonal kick beyond Israel Folau from inside the Waratahs’ half.

Even though Folau collects and clears the ball successfully, Ben Smith still wins the kicking duel with a superb punt deep into the opposition 22-metre zone.

The Highlanders’ coaching staff clearly identified weaknesses in both Foley’s reception of the high ball and the ability of the Tahs backfield to make dominant exits from their own end.

In the second example (41:00-41:48), although the Tahs recover the dropped ball, they can’t relieve the pressure with a convincing exit. Foley makes another mistake at 41:18 to compound the high ball drop, and Folau can’t make much meaningful distance on the clearing kick at the end of the sequence.

Even when they couldn’t win the ball over Foley, the Highlanders made him pay physically with a hard three-man counter-ruck. In the sequence from 24:59-25:22…

…Foley has to move from the bottom of a ruck to being the exit kicker inside two phases. It is mentally-exhausting dog work for the man who is supposed to be the Waratahs’ key playmaker. The process is repeated when Ben Smith puts another kick through at 26:03.

When Rob Horne falls on the ball at 26:08, only Folau and Foley can help him out. Again four Highlanders swiftly arrive to contest the tackle ball and they must have come very close to scoring at 26:13.

The Highlanders also identified Foley’s (left) half of the backfield zone for attacking diagonal kicks intended for their electric right wing Waisake Naholo. No sooner had Naholo kicked past Foley to score one try…

than Aaron Smith had put through another diagonal kick for Naholo to chase in the very next attacking sequence – the covering defender is, inevitably, poor Bernard Foley!

The territorial pressure was reinforced by the Highlanders’ domination on the Tahs’ lineout throw.

The Tahs lost 50 per cent of their own throw, and most of their throws occurred in their own end. I only counted six Waratah attacking platforms beginning in the opposition half over the entire course of the game.

How much had changed during the off-season, with the Highlanders looming early on the NSW playing schedule?

The Highlanders certainly came out featuring a very similar kicking game to the 2015 semi-final:

They launched 39 kicks in the game, with the same number of upfield kicks as the year before, and a slight increase in the proportion of the high contestable version (from ten to 14).

With no Foley in the backfield, this was a big area of improvement for the Tahs. They reduced the Highlanders’ reclaim percentage from 70 per cent to 29 per cent, with Kurtley Beale near-perfect on his four receipts and Folau his usual commanding self on the other side of the backfield.

Nonetheless, they still conceded one try direct from a high kick after a poor exit by Beale allowed Ben Smith to run the ball back deep into midfield. On the next phase, an inch-perfect high ball from Lima Sopoaga enabled Elliot Dixon to reclaim the kick over Zac Guildford and take the ball all the way in for a try at 46:00…

As the rest of this clip package illustrates, many tactical trends remained the same from the 2015 semi-final.

Smith is still the dominant positional kicker on the field, the Tahs’ exits are still poorly executed and their lineout is still under pressure – although they managed to win ten of 13 for a slightly more respectable 77 per cent win percentage this time around.

This modest improvement on their own throw enabled the Tahs to create eight attacking platforms in the Highlanders’ half, compared to the six from 2015.

Although the Waratahs largely corrected the high ball weakness from 2015 with Beale sitting deep in the second full-back role, they failed to address the weakness on the left side of their backfield in other scenarios.

After a fumble by Michael Hooper when the Tahs (again) tried to run back from the wrong side of midfield, Smith pops a diagonal kick over the top which turns Guildford into a defensive weakness on the first of two occasions in the match. Matt Faddes toes it through for Dixon to score his first try:

This weakness on the left side of the backfield was a constant over the two games. At 44:09 in the second period, Sopoaga regathers his own midfield chip and puts Ryan Tongia away on a long line-break.

When Tongia is finally halted at 44:23, the ball is swung out to the right where Faddes comes within a blade of grass of putting Smith in for the score with another kick through the Tahs’ left backfield corner.

Conclusions
Despite the Waratahs’ major improvement in defending the high ball and their more modest improvement on their own lineout throw, they cannot be said to have solved the riddle of the Highlanders’ territorial pressure/ kicking game variations. That pressure and those variations accounted for three of the Highlanders’ tries last weekend, and one other near-miss.

The Highlanders’ gameplan is impressive, and it may have longer term repercussions for both the Waratahs and the Wallabies employing the same systems. Players like Bernard Foley, who is rightly regarded as Australia’s first-choice outside-half, may well have to be protected from a kicking/pressure strategy which may well arrive on the Wallabies’ doorstep as early as the England tour in June.

In the meantime, it will be up to the Waratahs and Daryl Gibson’s coaching group to resolve the issues raised by the Highlanders’ approach and come up with a more convincing solution.