- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Things are on the move in Rugby, both north and south of the equator. The game is shedding clubs in the Gallagher Premiership, with the Worcester Warriors entering administration and Wasps in financial trouble, only one year after the ring-fencing of the league relieved the threat of relegation.
The game in both hemispheres is looking to get faster, reduce ‘dead’ time on the pitch and provide a more entertaining spectacle for the paying public. Last week, The Roar’s Brett McKay unveiled Queensland’s plans to implement a raft of new innovations and law variations.
The Reds will be tracked down the same path by the other four Australian Super Rugby Pacific franchises in short order. Everything from limiting the time spent on goal-kicks, restarts, reset scrums and penalty advantage will be part of the experiment. Finally, the ‘Use it!’ command may actually need to be respected, rather than used as a basis for further negotiation.
As the coach of the Brumbies, Stephen Larkham explained: “All of the Super Rugby coaches, CEOs, and general managers met at the Shape-of-the-Game conference in Auckland, along with World Rugby Director of Rugby Phil Davies, and New Zealand Rugby and Rugby Australia representatives.
“We discussed all aspects of the game, and knowing that we’re in this competitive environment, tried to work out exactly what we can do to make a game a bit more enjoyable and bring some more fans into games.
“The big one around the Laws was trying to get more ball-in-play time. Some of the Super Rugby games were [only] 25, 26 minutes of ball in play out of the 80 minutes, and the actual game time is not 80 minutes, it’s more like 90 to 100 minutes. So, you’re talking about less than 30 minutes ball in play and that’s a fair amount of dead time.”
So far, so good – or so you would think. The elephant in the room is that for the first time in professional rugby history, ball-in-play time in the northern hemisphere has surged past the south, along with most of its associated stats.
That improvement is being accomplished within the existing law-book. If you take a quick peek at the recently-concluded Rugby Championship, the average ball-in-play time was 33.1 minutes, compared to 37.5 minutes in the 2022 Six Nations at the beginning of the year.
It is the same story at the level below international football. Take a look at the following figures for ball-in-play time, comparing the 18 regular rounds of Super Rugby Pacific with the first four rounds of the current English Gallagher Premiership:
| Competition/Team | Ball-in-play time [average minutes] |
| Super Rugby Pacific | 34.0’ |
| Gallagher Premiership | 36.8’ |
| Crusaders [NZ highest] | 36.9’ |
| Force [Australian highest] | 33.8’ |
| Exeter Chiefs [English highest] | 40.1’ |
The English competition averages almost three minutes more of ball-in-play time than Super Rugby Pacific. The Australian franchises all rank below the mean, ranging from the Melbourne Rebels (lowest at 32.6’ per game) to the Western Force – highest with 33.8 minutes.
To give those figures context, the Force’s 2022 stats would rank them lowest in the English league, behind even the current cellar-dwellers Bath with their 34.2 minutes of ball-in-play time.
Plenty of related stats fall into line behind that fundamental reality:
| Category | Super Rugby Pacific | English Premiership |
| Average # points per game | 57 | 60 |
| Average # tries per game | 7.4 | 8.0 |
| Average # penalties awarded per game | 23.2 | 22.7 |
| Percentage turnover tries per game | 30% | 31% |
For the first time in living memory, the English domestic league is producing more ball movement, more tries, more points and fewer penalties than its equivalent down under. It provides greater entertainment value than ever before.
If you had made the same claim 10 years ago, any rugby observer worth their salt would have laughed in your face. The idea would be preposterous, because the Southern Hemisphere always held the trump cards in skill-sets and aerobic ability. When rugby became about running and handling and dynamic power outside the set-piece, the south were always sure-fire winners.
That is also why the changes within Australia should begin with the framework of refereeing within the existing laws. At the tackle, referees in the English Premiership demand immediate release of the ball-carrier, and east-west clearance of the tackle zone. No pilfering activity by the second man is rewarded unless that happens. Moreover, the pilferer has to get straight on to the ball, and maintain his bodyweight and balance throughout the steal.
The change in interpretation benefits Australians playing in the English league, especially those who still harbour ambitions of slipping on the green-and-gold jersey again. Nic White’s experience at Exeter Chiefs was the springboard which helped catapult him back into international contention.
The same may well hold true for Lukhan Salakaia-Loto at the Northampton Saints, who, like Exeter, enjoy playing constructive rugby with ball firmly in the hands. Salakaia-Loto was frozen out at the Reds after the Saints deal was announced, and he always had more to offer than Australian domestic rugby was capable of extracting.
He has already played more minutes in four Premiership rounds than he did in the whole of 2022 Super Rugby Pacific. While his output on defence and in the lineout remains roughly the same, his productivity on attack has gone through the roof at Franklins Gardens:
| Team | Minutes played | Ball carries | Interval between carries’ | Ruck attendance (first three) | Interval between cleanouts’ | Offloads |
| Saints | 301 | 40-174m | 7.5’ | 67 | 4.5’ | 7 |
| Reds | 279 | 21-86m | 13.3’ | 54 | 5.2’ | 3 |
LSL is carrying about twice as often for Northampton as he did for Queensland, he makes more cleanouts and he has doubled the number of offloads. He sits in first place in that category, on top of a very impressive pile of contenders in England.
The recent game between Northampton and Harlequins was an example of how Salakaia-Loto’s work rate has improved. He topped the charts with 15 ball-carries and his impact in the last quarter was colossal. Over the last 23 minutes of the game, he made three receipts in the air, contributed 10 of those 15 carries, authored 12 cleanouts and made one offload.
Firstly, let’s give a snapshot of how Northampton like to play the game:
It’s a scrum on the Northampton 22, but that does not deter the men in white from running the ball out by hand. Even when the first ruck is formed over scrum-half Alex Mitchell, he is looking to offload off the deck to keep continuity.
A superb round-the-corner offload by Salakaia-Loto releases his second row partner Alex Coles, and the man waving for the ball on the wide left is none other than his mate in Queensland, Angus Scott-Young.
In that last quarter, Salakaia-Loto and hooker Sam Matavesi formed a very effective forward attacking alliance:
In the first instance, the big Queenslander uses another deft offload to set up Matavesi’s neat feet on the next carry; in the second, the hooker and second row combine with a couple of short, slipped passes from a lineout drive to take play deep into the Quins 22.
Salakaia-Loto routinely beat the first tackler (England prop Joe Marler in the following example) on his rampaging runs:
That in turn opened up the full range of possibilities for the attack on the next play. Sometimes Saints chose to kick:
It’s lightning-quick ball for George Furbank’s diagonal punt, and the chase pins the Quins backfield behind its own goal-line.
More often, Saints chose to keep ball in hand:
If you want the definition of a winning ruck, that is it. Salakaia-Loto takes out three Quins defenders on the carry and leaves them lying on the ground as the ball is played away. There are at least three metres between the head and hindmost foot, and the Saints own the key space. What wouldn’t Dave Rennie give for more rucks like that?
Six of Salakaia-Loto’s carries in the last quarter were dominant collision wins, but even when the outcome was less clearcut and he only left two Quins on the deck, Saints found useful ball from which to create breaks on the next phase:
By this stage, one of the second row’s most influential impacts had already occurred at cleanout time, for Northampton’s third score of the game:
Salakaia-Loto shovels two Quins defenders (Marler and second row Dino Lamb) away to the left with power, and that creates the picture Saints want on the next play, with the first Quins defender looking in at the half-back and a three-on-one overload outside him.
Summary
While Australia is busy creating new rules to increase ball-in-play time and improve the rugby spectacle for spectators, teams in the north are creating more of the same via a clear refereeing framework within the existing laws.
That is especially true in the English Premiership, for so long pigeon-holed as a miserable ‘kick and clap’ league, played out in wet weather on mid-winter mud-heaps. The pitches are now top-notch in quality and the referees are encouraging positive play, particularly at the breakdown – even if nothing much can be done about the weather.
The southern hemisphere in general, and Australia in particular, has fallen behind the times in terms of ball-in-play time and footballing content, and that has had a knock-on effect in the uneven performances of the national team. If players are not used to playing that extra three or four minutes of active possession time, they may not have the conditioning and skill values to cope with it.
That is one reason why travel broadens the mind. Going to New Zealand or Europe will generate necessary improvement for the likes of Scott-Young (who has represented both Bay of Plenty and Northampton over the past 12 months) and Salakaia-Loto. Sustaining effort for over 40 minutes of ball-in-play time, and attending 120 rucks per game for Exeter certainly helped push White’s game to new heights at scrum-half.
Northampton Saints’ emphasis on ball-carrying and offloading will likewise help reinvigorate Salakaia-Loto’s career as an international second row. He is already being asked to work harder, and to carry and clean out far more often than he did in Queensland.
With Rory Arnold and Darcy Swain probably out of contention for the end of year tour, a battle royale is shaping up between Matt Philip, Izack Rodda, Will Skelton, Nick Frost and LSL for second row spots. It should by rights be a position of strength for Australia, now it is up to the players to go out and prove it.