Road to The Rugby Championship 2021

SANZAAR recently announced the confirmation of The Rugby Championship 2021 with a 12-match format, including South Africa.

With four teams on the scene, the panorama is once again competitive and demanding for everyone and in several simultaneous aspects.

If we transfer what was seen in Super Rugby New Zealand and Super Rugby AU to the possible All Blacks-Wallabies clash in Rugby Championship 2021, we would see a faster game but with a greater number of penalties and turnovers conceded per game, due to the imprecision in speed.

The adoption of the attack scheme through two drivers aims to guarantee possession and control of the ball at a higher speed.

To reach this stage, Australia needs a better alternative based on the improvement of the contact and aerial game and the replacement and consolidation of young men in key positions such as back row or flyhalf.

South Africa, the last world champion, has not competed internationally since the 2019 World Cup.

With the incorporation of the South African teams to the former European PRO14 (currently Rainbow Cup), many players have returned to the activity which, beyond the drop in quality of the game, is important to keep a team aligned with its central objective: to compete.

Something similar happens with Argentina, with a year plagued by difficulties caused by COVID-19 and its team dismembered between the main European and Australian clubs.

Can they sustain and develop the competitive advantage based on the dominance of defence they achieved in The Rugby Championship 2020?

(Photo by David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)

It is the question that we all ask ourselves and the answer is rather general in scope and common to all participants: any improvement must necessarily be linked to the identity of the game and its cultural roots, while still approaching the precision and vertigo that characterise it today to Test rugby.

To carry out a comparative task between the capacities of the participants throughout the editions of the contest (2012-2020), I have developed a comparative attack indicator that contemplates and weighs in a compound way marked/received tries (efficiency indicator), clean breaks and defeated defenders (strength indicator) and lead line gain and positive tackles (relative strength indicator).

The attack variables (marked tries, clean breaks and defenders beaten) receive a weighting of 60 per cent, while the defence variables (positive tackles) or the negative faces of attack aspects (tries against) are weighted by 40 per cent.

Being an indicator that clearly ‘rewards’ attack situations, we see a predominance of New Zealand in the tries for:tries against (+123) ratio that moves the indicator upwards, followed far behind by Australia and South Africa (2020 without participation) and finally Argentina, who have notably improved their defensive organisation by subjecting both New Zealand and Australia to high stress situations.

Those who march behind New Zealand clearly know the list of tasks to check to deactivate the All Black machine:

1. Structure a strong defence
2. Obtain and develop possession
3. Optimise the attack from set pieces
4. Win breakdown and recycling quickly, or hinder it to slow down the opponent.

New Zealanders and Australians have some advantage over Argentina and South Africa, as their teams and players compete regularly and are better placed to coordinate roles and polish skills.

But it has been Argentina who have taken the initial steps and a notorious change based on defensive optimisation, showing a 13-2 structure (13 aligned and two in the background) that disarticulated New Zealand’s attack dynamics.

Whoever successfully executes the alternation and status changes between attack and defence will undoubtedly have the best chance of making history.