Was the Brumbies vs Hurricanes final a sneak peek of the Bledisloe Cup opener?

19 August. The date will be etched in Michael Cheika’s memory already, because it is the day Australia play New Zealand in the first round of the Rugby Championship in Sydney.

Any lingering Kiwi complacency from the 26-0 demolition of the Australian franchises during the Super Rugby season will have been erased by the result of the recent series against the British and Irish Lions. The All Blacks may not have been pushed off the bike by the kid from the North, but they were forced to put a foot on the floor, stop briefly and take stock of how they are riding.

I suspect that process will have been both intense and exhaustive by the time they arrive in Sydney, and the New Zealand coaches and players will feel they have a point to prove against the Wallabies.

It will be fascinating to see what direction New Zealand rugby takes from this moment on. Much of its recent international success has depended on the familiarity of their top coaches (Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen) with the Northern Hemisphere. That elite coaching echelon has had a foot in both camps so to speak, and it has benefited New Zealand rugby as a whole.

The Kiwi coach with (currently) the most dynamic combination of sharp rugby intellect and ‘live’ international experience in the Northern Hemisphere is Joe Schmidt of Ireland. Schmidt’s Ireland offered the sternest test of All Black mettle in 2016, beating them in Chicago and pushing New Zealand to the limit in the return fixture in Dublin.

As it turns out, there were a number of similarities in key stats from the recent Lions series and Ireland’s performance against top-tier opposition last season:

The trend is unmistakeable. All three teams (Ireland, New Zealand and the Hurricanes in their last game against the Brumbies) tended to kick more than their opponents, and yet they dominated possession by creating more breakdowns – around 58-59 per cent of the total rucks in the game.

All three of the new 2017 trial amendments to the breakdown favour the side in possession, which means that the trend will not only continue, it will very probably grow to another level again; a ruck can now be formed with only one player on his feet above the ball and no opponent in contact.

This gets rid of the ‘Italy loophole’ (as in the infamous England-Italy Six Nations match); the tackler must now get up and play the ball from his own side of the breakdown, and defensive players can no longer kick the ball out of a ruck as it forms.

The efficiency of the opponent against the possession offence has largely been measured by their ability to defend well (neither Wales in the Six Nations nor New Zealand in Dublin conceded a try against Ireland) and capitalise on opportunities from early set-pieces, or from ball turned over or kicked away.

The following two highlight reels give a good idea how combating a possession-based/high percentage kicking team can work out in practice:

Five of the six tries in these two matches came off either early set-piece attacks (three) or kick/turnover returns (two).

That brings us to Michael Cheika and Australia. We know Cheika’s Wallabies do not like to kick the ball and that they tend not to do it very well as a result. This means they stand to spend an awful lot of time in their own end unless they can exploit those chances from early set-piece and kick/turnover returns.

That is exactly what happened in the second half of the Brumbies-Hurricanes semi-final, with the home team giving up 69 per cent of possession and a massive 81 per cent of territory to the men from Wellington after a promising first half.

The drop in the Brumbies’ ability to compete effectively can be measured by the change in their approach to kick returns during the course of the match.

At the beginning of the first half, they were full of positive intent.

This opportunity arose from a TJ Perenara box-kick and a pass infield from James Dargaville to full-back Tom Banks. In the first frame, Dargaville’s pass has given Banks precisely the kind of opportunity teams are looking for from a kick or turnover return – the chance to run at a forward, or the ‘transition zone’ between a forward and a back.

Here Banks targets the gap between the last forward, number eight Brad Shields, and the first back, number 13 Jordie Barrett. With Barrett already turning out towards the far touchline, Shields’ exposure has been maximised.

In the second frame, the momentum of the attack is developing nicely. Banks has been checked but turns to offload to Andrew Smith, with two other Brumbies’ backs (Henry Speight and Dargaville) in close attendance.

When Smith receives the ball, however, things start to go awry. In the third frame, the angle of Smith’s run means that both Speight and Dargaville are now on the same side (to Smith’s right) so the options are now more limited and the concentric circle of support has been lost.

Even more importantly, Smith shows little or no awareness of where his support is or how to stay connected with it. He is looking straight ahead and the final screenshot illustrates the outcome of that lack of awareness – by 13:14 Ben May is blocking the offload path to Smith’s left, and TJ Perenara is smothering the outlet to the right.

It is hard to over-emphasise just how critical it is in these situations to sustain momentum through offloads, not allowing the defence to reset via a breakdown:

In this second example from midway through the first half, Dargaville has detected another big gap between two Canes’ frontrowers on the return, but again the crucial offload pathways are blocked by Sam Lousi to his left and Ardie Savea to his right, and Dargaville has to die in contact instead.

As the game wore on, the Brumbies progressively lost the desire and enthusiasm they had demonstrated to return kicks early on.

After a kick upfield by Nehe Milner-Skudder, there is an excellent opportunity for the Brumbies to return with ball in hand. The Brumbies’ number nine, Joe Powell, has the ball with Henry Speight available outside him and Tevita Kuridrani and Chris Alcock reloading quickly to join the counter-attack.

It is a group of four of the Brumbies’ top five ball-runners, and from the shot behind the posts, we can see that they are opposed by the Canes’ hooker Ricky Riccitelli and Julian Savea.

It is a very promising scenario, but Powell chooses to kick instead. That’s what a possession offence – and playing for long periods without the ball – can do to you. The pressure forces you to seek temporary relief rather than stick to your principles.

In this situation, there are six Brumbies’ forwards plus Henry Speight out to the right, opposed by four Hurricanes’ forwards and Julian Savea. The most positive play would be to get the ball into Speight’s hands pronto and allow him to pick out either a forward or the gap between Coles and Savea.

With so many Brumbies forwards in close attendance, there is little chance of Speight losing the ball in contact even if he is tackled. Instead, Joe Powell spun the ball out to the other side, and the Canes’ defence reset.

The recent series between the Lions and All Blacks illustrated the need to sustain the will to counter from kicks and turnovers throughout the whole game, and then keep the right connection between the ball-carrier and support players once the breach is made:

Take the above clip of the first All Blacks versus Lions Test, at 35:09-35:28 and 42:58-43:13. Look how the Lions’ runners straighten their lines of attack in order to preserve space for, and the connection with, their support players in the build-up to that first try.

Summary
The law trials to be undertaken at the breakdown in 2017 all favour the attacking side, and they look likely to accelerate the trend towards a ball-possession offence supported by the kicking game.

New Zealand sides appear to be widening and developing the trail carved out by Ireland’s Joe Schmidt in this respect, and it places teams without strong kicking games (like Australia) in special jeopardy.

The Wallabies, like the British and Irish Lions in June, will have to make use of every ounce of set-piece and return ball they get in order to make their mark on the game.

They have the personnel, in the form of Israel Folau, Dane Haylett-Petty, and Kurtley Beale (or Karmichael Hunt when he returns from injury), potentially to do just that. But they will have to be more organised and more alert than the Brumbies were against the Hurricanes in order to pursue that objective for an entire game against the All Blacks.

It will require a Herculean effort – but if the Lions can manage it, then why not the Wallabies?