Shooting Stars – Saracens Defensive System
Last week as part of our article on the quarter final between Saracens and Clermont I mentioned the amount of plaudits the Saracens defence had received and i wanted to come back and have a quick look at why it’s been getting so much attention. Lots of focus has been placed on the ferociousness of individual hits and the “Wolfpack” mentality they have made a key component in their defence system. In the Clermont game...
Kicking the Habit – The need for tactical Kicking
After their demolition of ASM Clermont Auvergne a lot of the focus has been on Saracens defensive system. Understandably so, and we’ll focus on that later on this week, but something that was equally telling for me in predicting the outcome of the game was their ability to dominate the kicking game. We all know big games can turn on very little things, and one of those occurred about 4 minutes into the game. Saracens...
The Anatomy of a Try: Israel Folau Waratahs vs Reds March 2014
Below is a short analysis of the first Israel Folau try for the New South Wales Waratahs against the Queensland Reds in this years Super XV. On face value it’s a simple try, but it’s interesting for a number of reason. The first is that it’s clearly a pre-planned strike move from set piece ball – the holy grail. The second is that while it’s Beale who makes the line break and Folau who takes the plaudits...
Focus on: Englands Summer Tour
In July England head to the dark wet depths of New Zealand for a four game, three test, summer tour. Players running out in the Aviva final the week before means the first test will see a very different England team to the one that finished the Six Nations in quite some pomp. Never the less. England will head south with a large, confident and talented squad, but whilst they will talk of a belief that they can beat the worlds number...
Low Phase Scoring – Six Nations 2014
Above is a short video highlighting the scoring speed after gaining possession from the first round of the Six Nations. So how many phases does it take to score a try? There is no right or wrong answer, but a statistic I found really interesting from this year’s six nations was that from the 61 trys, scored in this year’s Six Nations only around 5 were scored using more than 5 phases. Now, I’m no mathematician but...
The Anatomy of a Try: Charles Piutau France vs New Zeland 2013
Early in the Second half of this fantastic game, a brave France put in a long kick with a poor chase and, as they are known to do from time to time, New Zealand counter attacked from their own 22. Four sets of hands and a kick chase later they break the game wide open with a fantastic length of the pitch try from Charles Piutau. New Zealand have long regarded kicked and turned over possession as prime attacking ball. A huge percentage...
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