Our resident analyst takes a look at where the Lions attack has been coming up short in the opening matches on tour.
The opening two matches of the Lions tour against the Provincial Barbarians and the Blues don’t matter.
If the All Blacks sweep the series, then the fact that the Lions stumbled to an unconvincing opening victory and a spluttering loss won’t matter.
Equally, if the Lions win it all, then nobody will remember the games that preceded the three Tests. So, having agreed that it doesn’t really matter, let’s devote this column towards those two games…
Before we look at it in more depth, we’ll summarise the first game. There’s no getting away from it, it was a performance delivered by a team who had just arrived in the country on a long haul flight, and had spent the early days of the tour doing community outreach projects. Some individual performances were strong, more of that later, but as a team it was disjointed.
However, Andy Farrell will be a happy man. His defence had a 92 percent tackle success rate with 162 total tackle opportunities. There was only one missed tackle in 37 total opportunities for the starting back row, and despite the other issues that Johnny Sexton had, he didn’t miss a tackle during his playing time.
The other reasons to be happy are that the Lions kept hold of 99 percent of their rucks. Many teams secure at least 90 percent of their own ruck ball, but I’ve certainly never seen a figure this high.
Despite having a number of chances held up over the line, the attack was the biggest source of frustration. They ran for 420m in total, but nobody ran for more than 100m, Te’o setting the standard with 84m.
If the English centre had been shut down more effectively, as you could imagine happening against better teams, it’s hard to see where the yardage would come from. At points, the worst thing you could say about the Lion’s attack was that it had the fingerprints of Rob Howley all over it.
Against the Blues, the stats were similar; the tackle success dropped to 87 percent, from fewer tackle opportunities, and the ruck success also dropped a percentage point to 98 percent. The biggest concern was the metres made, a miserly 330m, 154m fewer than the Blues. Nobody ran for more than 100m, Halfpenny was the only person to run for more than 50m.
Nobody had more than one clean break and Halfpenny and Daly were the only people to beat more than one defender. It was another limp attacking performance from a team who continue to find it hard to take advantage of the possession they have and are averaging one try per game.
The above example comes from turnover ball, claimed by Rory Best. The end result is that Alun Wyn Jones bursts through the red circle, where the green circled defenders should be, and gains some additional yardage.
This is obviously a positive outcome, but this was the only option because the attacking line is so flat that they couldn’t afford to ship the ball along. Also, turnover ball will always create good attacking opportunities, as above, we’ll see the real attacking structure as the Lions build phases below.
This above example comes from the same period of play, after the Lions have stretched to the other side of the pitch. This triangle of players should be familiar to anybody who has watched Wales play over the past few years. They’re very tightly bunched, too tight to stretch the defence and it’s very easy for the defenders to clue in on the middle man and hit him hard.
More dynamic attacking teams, like Scotland, will look similar but they will often have somebody in the orange circle behind. They won’t always use them, but with a slight gap out wide, a Sexton or Te’o coming around the corner and running into space would cause far more issues, even if he wasn’t used.
The Lions did bring some option running into their game. The above example shows that Sexton can either go flat to Marler or in behind to Te’o, but it’s still all too bunched up. Te’o, or whichever back is in this situation, needs to run a wider line to draw attention away from his forwards and make it easier for them to gain additional yardage.
There’s some positive stuff from the Barbarians game to come, honestly, but just have a look at how narrow this attack was towards the end of the first half.
There is barely five yards between Laidlaw and Best and any success of the play comes purely from individual power. Taulupe Faletau, Kyle Sinckler, and Ross Moriarty had success but that’s likely to be limited when the Provincial Barbarians are replaced by a Super Rugby side or, eventually, the All Blacks.
Yet more short runners, but in this above example, Stuart Hogg is able to sneak around the back and overload the open side. Owen Farrell did this as well for the only try, as we’ll see. The principle is simple, whilst the arm wrestle is going on in the middle of the pitch, sneak an extra back over and when the ball does come out you will have a player who is unaccounted for.
As mentioned, the Lions try comes because Farrell follows the play around the corner and the Barbarians don’t react in time.
Whereas Hogg put a stop to the move with a terrible pass, Farrell hits Ross Moriarty with a beautiful flat, rugby league style push pass, and on the very next phase he does the same thing with Anthony Watson. The try is a simple case of the defence running out of players before the attack do, but this won’t be so easy against better opposition.
Meanwhile in the opening stages of the game against the Blues the attacking formations were similar, but in this example Itoje pops the ball out to Tipuric to subtlety change the angle of attack and gain yardage, but he can also pull the ball back to Biggar who is running around the corner. It’s immediately looking more positive.
There were positives, of which we’ll come to, but too much of the Lions’ attack was lateral. In the above example, Jack Nowell takes the ball on the angle but doesn’t straighten up and uses up all the space that could be utilised by his team mates on the outside.
This was replicated again later in the game when the Lions again ventured wide. If Elliot Daly loops around and straightens up there’s a two-on-one and a definite opportunity to score a try. Unfortunately, it’s a poor pass from Sexton which goes to Daly’s outside hand and pulls him wide, therefore cutting down the space and ending the momentum. The more that the Lions go wide and it fails, the more likely they are to give him and revert to the maul and one out runners.
As promised, there were positives, Maro Itoje gain yardage late in the second half in the example above. This is a great play. The second-row runs an angle where he drifts away from Sexton and into the hole between the defenders. As discussed before, the outside backs are options in behind and they pull the defence apart and make it much easier for Itoje to gain the yardage.
There’s not much too this final example above – it is what Wales have been doing for years. It’s a crash-ball to the 12 from the scrum-half off a lineout, and allows the Lions to recycle the ball quickly and attack around the corner.
Jamie Roberts was the biggest proponent of this and although he is no longer considered a ‘sexy’ player there’s a lot to be said for simply crashing up in the midfield. With Te’o looking on top form, expect to see the Lions trying to get the ball in his hands as much as possible.
Conclusion
The opening games don’t matter, yet still, nobody would have expected the Lions to have only managed two tries in their games against the Blues and the Provincial Barbarians. That’s a pretty poor return when you consider that Gatland has the most exciting attacking British and Irish talent available to him.
The kind of attack the Lions are currently using, which relies on one-out runners, might work against lesser teams but it is too easy to defend, because you only need to focus on one player. The All Blacks will lap this up if it’s all they need to face and they will win the series.
Rob Howley needs to sit down and work out how he can throw more attacking options into each play, to unsettle the defence and make life easier for each attacking option. There was some evidence of this during the game against the Blues, but not enough to claim any kind of success.
An unintended, but very desirable consequence of this, might be that the Welsh attack improves as well in the upcoming season.
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