2011 Super Rugby Statistics After Round 4

This week we take a look at attacking statistics after four rounds.

When I’m looking at ways to improve a team’s performance I consider reduction of handling errors is an area that deserves a lot of attention. Better control of the ball improves the amount of possession you have and therefore increases attacking opportunities. The opposing view is that if you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably playing conservatively in attack; something I don’t advocate.

The obvious ideal scenario is to keep attacking while minimising errors. That means improving the basic skills of passing, catching and offloading, and that’s why even the best international teams spend a lot of time practising core skills. Sometimes players see this type of practice as boring or not useful, so it’s the coaches’ job to introduce enough variety into these sessions to keep players interested while still lifting the level of basic skills. Accordingly, most coaches use games to practise these skills, rather than just closed drills using cones. As a friend once said to me, “Do you know what you get good at by practising running around cones? Really good at running around cones!” Of course, these more open game drills need to be balanced with some closed drills to work on technique, progressing eventually to an open drill working against defenders.

One of the ways we can measure how adventurous a team has been in attack is the number of offloads they’re making. A team that is prepared to move the ball around and take some chances will usually have a higher number of offloads than a team that is playing a tight game. Here’s a comparison of the number of offloads teams are making, compared to the number of handing errors made.

For all of the tables, click on the headings for each column if you want to sort the data by that column.

It’s then interesting to compare those results to what each team has achieved in terms of metres gained running the ball and the number of line breaks made. It’s striking to see the Reds with the lowest average number of line breaks per game at this stage of the season.

Finally, we can look at the statistics for the number of tries scored and what percentage of points tries represent for each team.  The contrast between the percentage of points that tries represent for the Stormers at 9 per cent and the Waratahs at 77 per cent is amazing.