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Round 3 of TRC saw a thrilling comeback win for Australia against Argentina and a nightmarish shot a history by South Africa fall completely flat against New Zealand. Is there anything deeper going on, behind the narratives? Let’s deep dive the stats…
Narawa (1'), Jordan (16'), Tupaea (66')
Tries
Marx (61'), Reinach (73')
Barrett (2'), McKenzie (17', 67')
Conversions
Feinberg-Mngomezulu (62', 74')
McKenzie (50')
Penalties
Pollard (22')
Round 3 of TRC saw a thrilling comeback win for Australia against Argentina and a nightmarish shot a history by South Africa fall completely flat against New Zealand. Is there anything deeper going on, behind the narratives? Let’s deep dive the stats…
After round 2, all of the discussion amongst fans was about the All Blacks’ hopeless backline. However, in this game, it was the Springboks who completely failed to get any attacking continuity going.
They had 13 22m entries and had 70% of their possession in New Zeland’s half, but scored just 2 tries - one of which was from an immense scrum, not a manufactured attack - and 2 line breaks. Meanwhile, they lost 15 turnovers and surrendered 3 tries to the All Blacks meagre 5 22m entries.
One cannot discuss the Springbok attack without discussing the number 10. Rassie has employed a unique rotation policy of 3 different fly-halves constantly revolving through the jersey over the last couple of years. It is something no other nation does and perhaps in this game we saw why.
When Manie Libbok has played badly for the ‘Boks, we have seen him subbed at the half hour mark. Handre Pollard was spared that treatment this week, but it cannot be denied that he had a poor game.
Not only did he miss an optimistic penalty attempt but he missed 4 out of 7 tackles and lost 2 turnovers. He beat 0 defenders and made 0 line breaks. he also kicked the ball as many times as he passed it. Contrast to Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu who was on the field for both of South Africa’s tries, made a line break and only kicked the ball once.
New Zealand under Scott Robertson have come under a lot of criticism for overplaying. In this game, with history on the line, there was no chance of that. As soon as they went 14-0 up, they knew what they had to do.
The All Blacks kicked the ball more than their opponents, made just 125 passes and had just 75 rucks - remarkably low compared to what we saw in the tests against France earlier this year. Of those rucks just 30% were faster than 3 seconds as they managed the tempo of the game expertly.
In the first half against Australia, Argentina scored 21 points without having a single ruck in the opposition 22m. All of their points came from either long range shots at goal or line breaks emanating from 40+ metres out. Just 11% of their possession was in the Wallabies 22m.
Ironically, when they got more rucks going in the 2nd half, they found scoring tries became impossible. Still, Los Pumas only registered 65 rucks in the whole game; 1 in 10 of their 102 carries ended in an offload, not a ruck.
White (22'), Suaalii (46', 62'), Bell (85')
Tries
Delguy (28'), Carreras (32')
Lynagh (23', 47'), O'Connor (63', 86')
Conversions
Carreras (32')
Penalties
Carreras (4', 11', 35'), Mallia (78')
Australia, on the other hand, are starting to look more and more like Joe Schmidt’s Ireland. They had nearly twice as many rucks as Argentina with 117 but just 9 offloads from 145 carries. Their post contact metres were way down at 115, but they drew nearly 200 tackles from their opponents, something Shaun Edwards has previously said was a defining feature of playing against Ireland.
