Our resident analyst takes a look at how Exeter’s fluid attacking game has worked so well this season.
Exeter Chiefs have had a fantastic run in 2017. They’re yet to lose in the league and they’ve only failed to score fewer than 30 points once.
In fact, since March, Exeter have averaged 35 points per victory. During that time frame, they’ve also thrown an interception try in all six games. It’s this point that we’ll focus on in the article, the Chiefs brilliant attack has focused on hard running and distributing from the line.
They still have the lineout maul as an option, but they’ve become so much more than that and any team could learn something from their attack.
It’s important to say that the Chiefs have always been a good try scoring team recently, last year they were joint top with 71 and 70 the year before, although that was only the fourth best. However, this year’s 86 tries scored and 15 try bonus points are both high points for them as a team, the try bonus is a league high also.
There’s three basic tenants of attacking;
One-on-one skill – Where you match up a big man against a small man and look to run through the defense. Alternatively, you have a quick person run around a slow one, for example.
Isolation Attack – Where you isolate a defender and force him to make a decision, and then do the opposite of what he did. For example, have the fly half run a loop and make the defender decide whether to follow him around or tackle the centre who is the pivot of the loop.
Structural Attack – Where you attack an obvious weakness in the defence, for example; a large overlap or a neglected fringe of the ruck.
This doesn’t encompass everything, of course, kicks could be put into the isolation attack but possibly deserve their own section. Anyway, the reason I’ve highlighted this is because we will look at how the Chiefs utilise the top two examples to exploit the bottom one.
In the first example, Jack Yeandle creates a half break from the first phase of the game. It’s just a one out runner but the hooker uses a bit of dynamic footwork to beat the first man and create that opportunity.
Compare that to, for example, Wales, who tend to group three forwards together and use the one out runners as an opportunity to generate quick ball for the second phase, rather than an attacking option in itself.
Another one out runner and another half, maybe quarter, break. The fact that Exeter have three running options means that the tackle on Don Armand has to be one on one and this ultimately allows the offload. The men behind these three runners are anticipating the offload opportunity and it’s this dynamic forward movement which leads to the break.
Even when the one out runner looks much like the rest, the Chiefs make it appear more dynamic by slightly angling the run rather than just crashing straight into the line. This makes the tackle a little bit harder and prevents the defense from driving them back. The width in the attack also creates a plentiful blindside, which the Chiefs attack with the very next phase.
It’s another half break, caused by dynamic running where everybody is making the effort to run forwards. This is a bit like playing a game on a smartphone where you have to press the right colour circle as they come at you increasingly fast.
By having every potential ball carrier time their runs into the defense, you vastly increase the likelihood that someone will try and tackle the wrong person and a hole will open up.
All this dynamic running results in confused defenses, such as above where two Worcester front rows mistime the drift and leave a big hole for Gareth Steenson to run through. The pace of play and dynamism of the attack creates a lot of defensive mismatches which the Chiefs have been exploiting all season, especially in the most recent games.
We’ve been looking at the one-on-one mismatches for the forwards so far, but they also exist in broken play. The example above shows Steenson beating the first man with some great footwork and then isolating the outside defender, who is facing a two on one.
Another brilliant piece of Steenson footwork in the above example. If the fly-half doesn’t run at the line and step in, Michele Campagnaro might still get through this gap, but he will probably have to break the tackle of the Warriors player closest to the ruck.
By running at the line, and stepping back towards the ruck, he draws both tacklers towards him and makes the break much simpler for the centre. That bit of play leads directly on to the next example.
This is a case of exploiting a structural advantage. The Chiefs have a one-man overlap. They don’t need to run at the line now and risk getting caught with the ball, instead they can fling a pass out to the second best try scorer in the competition, James Short, to finish.
This, in essence is what rugby is all about, the flashy footwork and dynamic running helps to draw defenders in and provide overlaps later on.
Sometimes the benefit is immediate though, as in the above example where Ian Whitten just cuts through the over pursuing Gloucester defenders to score under the posts.
If, like so many switches, this is given to the centre when he’s static, he gets nowhere near this result. But again, dynamic running and attacking lines allow Exeter to get more from the sum of their parts.
One of the negatives of this approach is that it does bring the distributor very close to the defensive line, which is to blame for the recent string of interception tries that have been conceded. We’ll see two more examples of that in the final GIFs below.
Conclusion
Few, aside from those in north London or a certain corner of the Midlands would begrudge a Wasps vs Exeter Premiership final, a final which combines the two top scoring teams in the league would be a delicious prospect.
However, before that happens, the team from Devon has to negotiate the semi-final against the Saracens. No team, since Saracens in 2012/13, have allowed fewer than 28 tries in a season, and only Wasps this year have scored more than the 86 tries Exeter have managed, in the same timeframe.
Especially since the start of the year, the Chiefs have completely baffled defenses with their dynamic running and constant change of angles. That alone would be enough for many teams, but Exeter supplement that with a league-best set-piece attack, fronted by the one and only Thomas Waldrom. It’s no longer hard to believe that 90 plus tries in a season is a distinct possibility next year.
Lion’s Implication
So, it’s clear that Exeter didn’t have the best of times with the Lion’s selectors, only Jack Nowell was chosen. However, that’s largely a result of a lack of representation in the England squad.
What is clear though, is that Gatland’s Lions need to imbibe some of the Exeter attacking spirit to overcome the All Blacks. One out static runners just won’t cut it and will be easily exploited by the home side. Whether Gatland can turn completely away from the static rugby he’s championed in Wales will be fascinating. We might be left wishing that Gregor Townsend had been chosen to tour.
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