Michael Hooper, Rob Simmons and the fault-line in rugby thinking

In 2004, Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book sent a huge shockwave through Major League Baseball circles by questioning received wisdom about the game (which occurred via a closed-shop scouting system) with the use of data-performance analysis.

The central characters in the drama (later to be portrayed by Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill in the eponymous 2011 movie) were the Oakland Athletics’ general manager, Billy Beane, and ‘Paul Brand’ – a fictional representation of his assistant, sabermetrician Paul DePodesta.

DePodesta was an economics graduate from Harvard, who later became the youngest GM in baseball, with the Los Angeles Dodgers, at the tender age of 31.

‘Sabermetrics’ was a term coined by one of the forefathers of baseball analytics, Bill James, for the advanced study of statistics in the game.

James believed baseball was frequently misunderstood by those who both coached and watched it, because the existing tools for its evaluation were flawed.

Michael Lewis summarised those misunderstandings as:

A) The tendency to generalise wildly from [their] own experience. People always thought their own [baseball] experience was typical when it wasn’t…
B) To be overly influenced by a guy’s most recent performance.
C) A bias toward what people saw with their own eyes, or thought they had seen.

As a result, aspects like foot speed, fielding ability and raw power were dramatically overvalued, and players (particularly hitters) were described mainly by their size and obvious physical tools. Scouts spoke of the ‘good body’ or ‘good face’ to portray a player’s aptitude for professional baseball. A ‘bad’ or ‘soft body’ meant just the opposite.

Performance scouting had the effect of elevating a more meaningful range of statistics above the level of subjective impressions. Nowhere was this more obvious than in a new description of a batter’s expertise. A hitter had always previously been valued by his batting average (BA) – a straightforward division of his number of base-hits by the number of appearances at the plate.

In Sabermetrics, this was replaced by on-base percentage (OBP), which gave a more accurate representation of a hitter’s control of the strike zone. OBP also took ‘walks’ into account – where a hitter was able to attract a free walk to first base by forcing the pitcher to deliver more ‘balls’ (illegal pitches outside the strike zone) than ‘strikes’.

The most interesting aspect of this development was that it opened up the game to a much bigger variety of physical types than the ‘good body’ model. As Lewis summarises:

The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you’ve never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It’s a luxury. What begins as a failure of imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simple by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.

A classic example is Kevin Youkilis (memorably described as “the Greek god of walks” by the Jonah Hill character in the movie). As a college kid, Youkilis was, in Lewis’ words, “a fat third baseman who couldn’t run, throw or field”.

A writer for the Boston Globe described him as “not an MVP candidate; more a refrigerator repairman, a butcher, the man selling hammers behind the counter at the True Value hardware store.” Even his coach at the University of Cincinnati, Brian Cleary, admitted he “looked chubby in uniform… I think the body did scare some people away”.

On top of that, he would set up at plate in a very low crouch with an unorthodox swinging style:

Despite his physical disadvantages and unorthodoxies, Youkilis went on to become a three-time MLB All Star, a two-time World Series winner with the Boston Red Sox, and winner of the 2008 Hank Aaron Award as the top hitter in his league. His OBP was second behind the legendary Barry Bonds.

Youkilis was never a great home-run hitter, but he connected consistently with the ball, could drive it accurately into gaps, seldom struck out, and drew more walks than anyone else. He out-thought the pitcher, and as Cleary recalled: “He coached himself… Anytime we said anything to him, he was already a step ahead… I just think he’s a really smart guy who had a great feel for what he had to do.”

Theo Epstein, the sabermetrician GM who turned the Boston Red Sox around in the early 2000s, called Youkilis “the heart and soul of our team” – no finer compliment could be paid to someone apparently without the right physical tools to do his job.

On Saturday night, at the Sydney Cricket Ground, the Waratahs’ back five forwards were made to look like a group of under-developed college kids by the massive ‘good bodies’ of the Queensland Reds. According to the raw stats, they were giving away more than three inches and 25 lbs per man to their opponents.

In professional rugby, that is a massive difference.

They also contained two Wallabies who attract a great deal of criticism for the impression they make on-watchers of the game. The contract of second row Rob Simmons was not renewed by the Reds at the end of 2017, because of the presence of huge youngsters like Izack Rodda and Lukhan Tui, as well as experienced international Kane Douglas.

Simmons is often perceived as a ‘soft body’ who lacks the necessary physicality for his position.

Rob Simmons (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Current Wallabies captain Michael Hooper is likewise bagged for being undersized, playing too ‘fast and loose’, and excessive preoccupation with the appearance of his hair.

On Saturday evening, both Simmons and Hooper shoved those criticisms firmly back to the dark place where they belong, and demonstrated that they are (like Youkilis) “really smart guys with a great feel for what they have to do”.

The Tahs’ back five as a whole comfortably out-thought and out-played their counterparts in control of the ‘strike zone’ and the physical aspects of the game that really mattered.

The introduction of Simmons has turned the dysfunctional Waratah lineout around and made it more productive than for many seasons. Going into the game against the Reds, the Tahs’ led the competition in both steals on opposition throw, and with a 90 per cent ball-retention on their own feed. During the game itself, they won their first six throws with some comfort. In lineout defence, they squeezed five errors out of 13 Queensland lineouts, four of which led directly to turnovers.

Simmons set the tone with a strong aerial challenge on Rodda in the 16th minute:

The ball sailed over the top of Rodda and was picked up by the men in blue.

In attack, Simmons also drew two early penalties from the Reds when they interfered with presentation of the ball, but it was defence where his influence was felt most strongly.

Simmons has always been an outstanding tight-forward defender – one of the few mobile enough to get around the corner of the first midfield ruck from setpiece, and this is his role (along with Sekope Kepu) in NSW:

Second phase from lineout, and Simmons is already in place as the tight forward closest to the ball as Jono Lance takes the ball up.

It was not the only time during the game where Simmons was to be found defending productively in conjunction with Hooper:

Filipo Daugunu has broken into an open field, but the first two Cambridge blue shirts to confront him with forward numbers on their back are those belonging to Simmons and Hooper.

Simmons also did his job in the tight exchanges against the Reds’ version of ‘heavy metal’:

A little earlier in the half, Simmons had hit the Reds’ ball-carrier even further behind the advantage line:

This powerful tackle was preceded by an effective high ‘propping’ tackle by Hooper on the previous phase, delaying the release of the ball and buying time for the defence to regroup:

On a weekend where David Pocock won three conventional turnovers on the ground in a losing cause for the Brumbies against the Highlanders, Hooper was even more effective, reinventing himself as a high choke-type specialist instead of a low-cut tackler:

Despite the presence of a good jackal alongside him (Will Miller, who himself won two turnovers despite being ‘undersized’), Hooper opted for the hold-up tackle on James Slipper, and seems to be a rapidly-developing feature of his play.

The Australian captain generated two hold-up turnovers in addition to his three steals on the ground:

In the first example, Hooper robs Ruan Smith with the ball still above ground, in the second, he is able to jam in underneath Rodda’s left shoulder and prevent him reaching the sanctuary of the turf.

A more conventional turnover occurred in the wide channel, off the Reds’ number eight, Caleb Timu:

The sense that coach Daryl Gibson is taking increasing positive control – which first came to my attention with his use of the kicking game against the Rebels – was also confirmed against the Reds.

He has largely abandoned the Nathan Grey experimental formation from lineout:

Everybody is in their natural place, with Bernard Foley at 10, Kurtley Beale at 12 and Hooper inside them at 7! Maybe that ‘innovation’ too, will help with the perception of Michael Hooper as a true No.7 in due course.

Summary
The perception of Simmons as a ‘soft body’ in the physical exchanges was hardly borne out at the Sydney Cricket Ground – even though he was accompanied by four loose forwards in the Waratahs’ back five, and confronted by the three players preferred to him on the Reds’ roster in Douglas, Tui and Rodda.

In terms of productivity, Rob Simmons was the outstanding second row on view – ruling the lineout, drawing penalties when he carried, hitting close-in attackers behind the gain-line on defence and covering the open spaces with equal facility.

Likewise, Hooper confounded all the generalisations about being undersized and peripheral to the scene of the real action. He looks to have moved his game on under the new breakdown laws. He has learnt how to employ the hold-up tackle and he used his new toy effectively against the Reds’ big ball-carriers. Three turnovers on the ground and two more above it was an outstanding return against some powerful men.

With Jack Dempsey returning from injury, the likelihood of a Pocock-Hooper-Dempsey back-row is in the ascendant for the Wallabies in June.

There is also every sign that Daryl Gibson has released the ‘hold’ of the Wallaby coaching team and is organising his defence along more orthodox lines too. This seems to be having a liberating effect on his charges.

But perhaps the most important lesson of all was that there is no one ‘ideal size’ or temperament for a position. The Reds were physically imposing on paper, compared to opponents from a different weight class, but they did not impose themselves in practice.

Looking good is not the same as playing good, and being big is not the same as being smart and productive – as ‘the Greek god of walks’ once proved in Major League Baseball, and Michael Hooper is now proving in rugby union.