Author: Scott Allen

Watching the Rebels scrum performance against the Blues two weeks ago was painful.  The Rebels started with a front row of Nic Henderson, Adam Freier and Rodney Blake against Tony Woodcock, Keven Mealamu and Charlie Faumuina. From the first scrum the Rebels were under pressure and they were further disrupted with Freier being injured and replaced having packed only one scrum.  After just three scrums referee Bryce Lawrence had awarded one penalty against Blake for binding on the arm and a free kick against him for moving so that there was a head on head situation.  The Rebels coaching staff…

Recently I published my Involvement Rates for the Wallabies in 2011.  As you probably know this is a measure of how much work players are doing in key areas during a match and to improve the accuracy of the measure I’m now calculating the Involvement Rate based on the time the ball is in the possession of both teams in each match, rather than using the clock time as I have previously. This exercise has thrown up another interesting statistic – the percentage of time the ball is in possession compared to clock time. Before I detail those numbers I’ll…

This year in my analysis of games involving the Wallabies I’ve included a new way of measuring the level of work by players in the game – the “Involvement Rate”.    The Involvement Rate is calculated as follows: (Number Of Carries + Number Of Tackles Made + Number Of Breakdown Involvements) / Minutes Played I don’t measure the Involvement Rate as a way of determining who is the best player for the Wallabies or even who is the most effective. Any attempt to use statistics to show who was the “best” would include too many subjective decisions.  Statistics can’t be used…

The ARU has recently launched the previously announced National Rugby Academy which effectively replaces the state based academies that have been used by the Australian Super Rugby teams to secure and develop young talent. Whilst this move was announced some time ago there has been very little detail available as to how the National Academy will work.  In this weeks G&GR Podcast we spoke to Paul Carozza who’s one of the head coaches at the Academy who explained more of how things will work.  Listen for yourself here. Here are some of the key points we now know: There are…

The Wallabies were comprehensively outplayed by the All Blacks last weekend. Is there any joy in any of the statistics for Wallaby fans? Not really. The Wallabies won fourteen of their fifteen lineouts for a 93% success rate. In defence, the All Blacks also lost one lineout from their eleven for a 91% success rate. However, the numbers don’t really tell the full story. On attack the Wallabies’ lineout structures worked much better providing some space for the jumpers. The one they did lose was again a five-man lineout and gave Brad Thorn plenty of time to get up in…

We all knew that the semi final against the All Blacks was going to be a massive challenge for the Wallabies. Their performance in the quarter-final against the Springboks was heroic and produced a win I’ll remember for a long time, but let’s face it — they didn’t play well enough in that game to have the All Blacks worried in the lead-up to the semi-final. Since the first half of their pool game against Italy it’s been obvious there’s been something amiss with the Wallabies attack.  Sure, in the second half of that game they started to look like…

Lineouts are a bit like a magic trick — or better still, a magic show. A magic trick doesn’t work just because of what the magician does at the crucial moment; it relies on a much wider deception to get you watching one thing (or a number of things), so that while you’re distracted the magician can pull off his sleight of hand. The more people are watching, the harder it is to pull off a trick. Pulling off a quick magic trick for one or two people is one thing, but pulling off a magic show with a number…

I’m sure that like most of you I sat watching Sunday’s victory by the Wallabies against the Springboks in amazement that any team could win such a game with such little possession and field position.  OK, that’s not entirely correct — I was pacing the floor and jumping around for most of the last twenty minutes of the game, not sitting! The Wallabies’ scrambling defence was brilliant and that man, David Pocock, well I just don’t know how to describe how one player could have such an impact on such a big game. While that game’s over and we all…

What can statistics tell us about the Wallabies’ performance against Ireland on Saturday? You wouldn’t think much, would you?  We all know what was wrong, don’t we? Let’s make a quick list of the problems for the Wallabies in this game: Ireland; poor lineout throwing; poor scrums; softness in the forwards; poor decision-making; lack of patience with the ball in hand; wasted ball through chip-kicks; and missing three key players. Ireland were fantastic. They went out with a game plan and stuck to it. They completely outplayed the Wallabies and should be congratulated.  Having said that, come on Italy! I…

The Wallabies game against Italy last Sunday was a really solid start to the World Cup campaign. There was always the prospect that the Wallabies could start the tournament a little slowly with a drop in intensity after the Tri-Nations final and a week off. The heavy rain at the start of the game wouldn’t have helped but I was happy enough with the first half performance.  The Italians played well, the wet conditions suiting their game plan and with 15 penalties interrupting the flow of the game the Wallabies could have panicked with a 6 all score line.  However,…

We haven’t seen much of the Italians since the 2010 End Of Year Tour. No doubt the Wallabies have done their homework but I decided to have a look at the Italian’s performance against Scotland two weeks ago. Watch the video as part of your preparation for the Wallabies first game of the 2011 RWC. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrldVJUBqQk[/youtube]

Whilst in any discussion involving rugby there is usually some talk of the strengths or weaknesses of certain teams’ scrum any such discussion inevitably gets back to the issue of scrum collapses and the need to repeatedly re-set scrums. No matter which hemisphere someone hails from, no matter which team they support or which competition their team plays in you’ll struggle to find many people who are happy with the amount of game time taken up with scrums being re-set. The IRB know it’s a major issue for fans and since 2009 have been gathering data to ascertain whether there’s been…

Last year I gave you the History of the Wallaby Backline video series.  That project actually started out as an exercise to try and compare the structures of Wallaby backlines over time but that idea got overwhelmed by editing more than 100 hours of footage to a workable viewing length. Now I’ve found the time to return to the original idea.  Comparing the great Wallaby backlines of the past to that of today is obviously difficult.  There are so many differences in how the game is played, with the biggest changes coming with the advent of professional rugby in 1996. …

Since September 2010 I’ve been telling you that I think the final will be between the Wallabies and All Blacks. Yes, I’ve raised issues with the way the Wallabies played in 2010 and so far in 2011 but my opinion hasn’t changed. What do you think? Would you like to check your opinion by seeing what affect pool game results have on the finals and who might get through? To help you we’ve developed an online tool that gives you the opportunity to select winners of each of the pool games and then see which team ends up playing which in the finals.…

The final Tri Nations game of 2011 between the Wallabies and All Blacks on Saturday was one of the most enjoyable games I’ve seen for a while. Other recent games that spring to mind are the final Bledisloe Cup game in Hong Kong last year and the two games between the Reds and Crusaders in Super Rugby this year.  All four games I’ve mentioned were close affairs with fluctuations in fortunes as the teams battled to the very end. A common thread in all of those games is the closeness of the contest on the scoreboard but it was the contest on…

Benjamin Disraeli said ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics’. What about rugby statistics? As most of you will be aware I publish a set of statistics for games involving the Wallabies and most Tri Nations games. Recently I’ve received a number of queries asking why there are differences between statistics providers. The most recent example was in the Tri Nations game between the Springboks and Wallabies in Durban where people based criticism of the work rate of Scott Higginbotham on published statistics that suggested Higginbotham was pretty quiet in that game. Unfortunately I had a busy week…

After the Heineken Cup Final in 2009 Brian O’Driscoll said Rocky Elsom was the best player he’d ever played with.  During his time in Ireland playing for Leinster the Irish crowds chanted ‘Rocky, Rocky, Rocky’. Back home we looked forward to his return to the Wallabies and most people agreed he was one of the few Wallaby players that would be selected in a World XV. Two years later he’s just lost the captaincy of the Wallabies and opinions on whether he should be in the starting side are divided. Some argue that he hasn’t been the player he was…

Over the last three Tri Nations games I’ve looked at the breakdown to analyse the level of infringements occurring and what referees are missing or allowing to occur without penalising. To look for trends I’ve now analysed two games each for the All Blacks, Springboks and the Wallabies. Whilst that’s by no means a big enough sample size to determine exact trends, that’s as big as it’s going to get as the time involved in this analysis has already been significant. My analysis of the match between the Springboks and Wallabies in Durban found the following: In the 76 breakdowns…

What should we make of the Wallabies’ performance in last week’s game against the Springboks? Did they play well enough to have the All Blacks worried about their next encounter with the Wallabies? No! Did they play better than in their game against the All Blacks at Eden Park two weeks ago? Yes! How much of that improvement related to the standard of the opposition? I’d say a fair bit! There’s still a lot of improvement left in this Wallabies team. There were a number of positives from the performance: The Wallabies toughed it out against a Springbok side that…

The All Blacks were very good in the game against the Wallabies last weekend — in fact they were pretty close to perfect in that first half — but the Wallabies produced a performance that left lots of room for improvement. Some of the tactics were questionable but more important were the poor execution and a noticeable lack of awareness: [youtube width=”600″ height=”450″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGF8PgapORg[/youtube]