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What do the numbers four and six have in common?
Yes, they are both even numbers. They also represent the number of phases of play allowed before you have to prove you have achieved something concrete on attack in the two other great collision sports on the planet – rugby league and American Football.
In league, you get a set of six tackles to score before possession is automatically turned over to the opponent. In gridiron, the demand is to make ten yards in four downs.
By way of contrast, in rugby union there is no legal limitation on the number of offensive phases you can run. The only boundaries are set by your physical conditioning and creative spirit with ball in hand. With the recent trial changes at the tackle area, the balance of the game has shifted in favour of the attacking side, and possession has once again become nine-tenths of rugby law.
Defence coaches around the world are already formulating their counter-measures. Most involve the use of more ‘stand-up’ techniques in contact to fill the line with more bodies, and ever-increasing speed off it to hustle attackers into error.
The days of simply numbering up on the defensive front line and drifting out to pin the attackers against a touch-line now seem like a very distant memory. Now it is all about cutting off the wide play, and with or without numbers you attack, attack, attack. Preventing line-breaks is no longer the be-all and end-all because of the greater strength of the scramble in the secondary layer of defence.
The basis of that layer still lies in the concerted work of your players on the two wings and at fullback. Other defenders like the two halves will also be involved in specific circumstances, but in the professional era, the back three have tended to operate as a pendulum.
When the attack goes towards one particular side, the winger on that side swings up into line, the fullback shifts across to fill the space he’s vacated, and the blindside winger is drawn into fullback. This happens constantly as the offence probes first one side of the field, then the other, and it is why wingers with fullback experience have become such a valuable commodity in the modern game.
The Wallaby defensive system designed by Nathan Grey takes a more extreme view of the function of the back three. With Henry Speight, and more latterly Marika Koroibete, on one wing, Australia decided that a straightforward pendulum would not work.
(Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
Koroibete, in particular, has very little high-level rugby experience (he has only played 13 games for the Rebels and eight for the Wallabies), so Grey keeps him in the front line at all times. Koroibete defends on the openside wing from lineout whether the set-piece occurs on the right or left side of the field.
He never drops into the backfield or plays at fullback where he might have to catch or kick the ball or make decisions. Those who followed the Melbourne Rebels closely last season will know that those are situations fraught with danger for the defensive team!
That, in turn, restricts the wider movement of the pendulum. The fullback (Israel Folau or Kurtley Beale on the end-of-year tour) is not as free to track away from Koroibete’s side, and a different arrangement has to be found on the other wing, which the Wallabies addressed via a mixture of Bernard Foley, Reece Hodge and Will Genia on tour.
Let’s take a look the positives first, using the Scotland tour match as our template. The positives occurred mostly when plays came directly towards Koroibete’s side. Although Scotland created several attacking opportunities and even broke the line, all were smothered by the second layer of defence and Australia even scored a turnover try from a partial Scottish break in the second half.
In the first instance, Scotland have rumbled more than 20 metres upfield from a driving lineout:
Michael Hooper, Samu Kerevi, Tevita Kuridrani and Koroibete are all defending in a compact line with Koroibete at midfield. Scotland, meanwhile, have preserved their width with the last attacker standing out near the left-hand touchline.
Although the situation nominally favours the attack, this is no longer as big a red flag for a modern professional defence as it once might have been:
Despite being short of numbers and unable to cover the outside men, the Wallaby line rushes anyway – ‘and Devil take the hindmost’. Huw Jones picks a nice line inside Koroibete, but finds himself up a blind alley in the second tier of defence. Hooper folds in behind to make the tackle on Jones and Genia and Foley have covered across so there will be no way through for Scotland #9 Ali Price, even if he does take the pass.
At the beginning of the second quarter, Koroibete was to be seen defending at left winger from a lineout won clean off the top by Scotland:
The whole sequence is instructive in terms of the modern philosophy of aggressive defence at all costs:
Again, Scotland seem to have nice width and the overlap is available, but Koroibete makes a good read to break off his rush and close quickly on the ball-carrier. As he makes the tackle on his opposite number, the situation is a comfortable one for Australia:
This was a theme throughout the first half – Australia rushed upfield and, even when Koroibete was beaten, trusted the second layer of scrambling defenders to do their job:
In this case, it is Koroibete himself who gets back to finish the job, although there is plenty of help in attendance, with five other Australian defenders converging from different angles:
Grey’s policy had its ultimate pay-off towards the end of the first half. At first, it appears Scotland have a very promising attack shaping up down the short-side, with a six-to-three advantage in numbers:
The rest of the sequence showed how the modern bait-and-switch works, with an attacker first becoming isolated in the space he wanted to occupy, then (fatally) losing control of the ball (go to 1:04 on the reel below):
The real issue that Marika Koroibete’s selection in particular, and that Grey’s backfield system in general, raises, only becomes evident (paradoxically) on the other side of the field!
Scotland made five clean breaks down that side in the first hour of the game:
Here Bernard Foley and Samu Kerevi are the last two defenders over on the Australian right, with Kurtley Beale still protecting Koroibete on the other side and Reece Hodge planted in the backfield.
The scoring opportunities Scotland created on the flank away from Koroibete tended to be significantly more clear-cut:
If the final pass is more accurate, there is little likelihood of either Beale or Hodge being able to prevent a score in the corner. The awkwardness of having a ten and a nine as your last two defenders on the line is full pointed. That awkwardness was a feature of the game:
Hodge is inside, Foley is outside with Genia in behind – again not the ideal arrangement in this part of the field.
Australia conceded a try down this side in the simplest (and most embarrassing) of circumstances from a tapped penalty in the second half. In the highlight reel at 4:15, Huw Jones is able to beat Kerevi with an outside move one-on-one. Reece Hodge is caught between staying out on the final man and coming in to take Jones, and he is a non-factor in the play.
The constant juggling of roles on the wing opposite Koroibete – with Genia, Foley, Kerevi and Hodge all appearing as the final defender at various times – and with Hodge having spent most of the Rugby Championship in 2017 defending at 12, begs the question whether anyone is being given the necessary time and space to learn nuances of the role in any depth.
It is a question for both Nathan Grey to answer in his position as the Wallabies’ defensive coach, and for Reece Hodge to answer in the context of his playing career.
Summary
Modern defence at the elite level is becoming increasingly aggressive, as more passive systems go out of fashion and the older requirement to number up seems more and more purely reactive.
Nowadays the more progressive coaches don’t worry about numbers or apparent space so much, and their defences frequently aren’t tidy in that respect. They will even give up yardage or short line-breaks if they feel it offers turnover possibilities further downfield, or with the aggression working to their advantage the next time around.
Without a four or six-play end in sight, and a higher proportion of uncontested rucks under the new tackle laws, there is more responsibility than ever on defensive coaches to create pressure and force turnovers without waiting in the wings. The devil really does take the hindmost in the modern game.
Australia are trying to incorporate this aggressive stance by playing Marika Koroibete on the line constantly, in the hope that his tremendous closing speed on the ball-carrier will reap more dividends than deficits. And it works for the most part, at least on his side of the field.
On the side opposite Koroibete, Australia frequently look ragged and disjointed on the line, with their backfield cover thinner and less consistent behind it. You can only imagine the confusion of poor Reece Hodge, desperately trying to remember the details of his newest assignment in the Australian backline! He must be allowed to settle somewhere and learn one position in depth.
If there is any lesson for Nathan Grey – and indeed Australian rugby in general – to take on at the beginning of a new season, it must be this: let the dust settle, and let clarity emerge from turmoil.