Grant Fox and Getting The Ball Wide

Rugby in recent years is increasingly typified by smothering defence. Watch a match from five years ago and the amount of space available for the back lines to operate in makes it look like the pitches are twice as wide. Go back ten years and it's a totally different game.

This years All Black team have managed to create space and unlock the notoriously robust defences of two of the world's best: South Africa and Argentina.

So how?

Michael Lynagh made two insightful comments that might reveal the trick. He mentioned without much explanation in post match commetns an "extra man mismatch" and an "extra pass" going wide, which puzzled me a bit when he said it, so I looked to see what is he talking about.

The first is that the ABs are getting in an "extra pass" that is used to flank the rush umbrella defence and get into the spaces created out wide. This is replacing both the low percentage "cross kick" or "kick pass" and the risky intercept prone long pass, or looped over-head pass to a wide ranging winger.

We are seeing a backrow/center combinator with a big man pushing out and forward laterally hitting the dog-leg created by the player rushing out of the line. The big man is designed to have the physical strength to hold up in the tackle and offload wide mismatched against the opposition centers. NZ are using Kieran Read, Messam and the two young locks out wide for this. The play is then always a short ball directly back or off the shoulder in side, to a player waiting to execute a flip pass to a duo of quick players in an outside slot. Invariably this is inside centre running on a loop, or the full back joining the line. So every time the ABs are putting two extra men onto one side of the defence and creating a mis-match in size. I looked back all the way to the third Ireland game and he is completely correct on this. It is almost metronomic. If you look at the last two Argentina and SA games it is so obviously a repeating pattern.

Enabling this is Aaron Smith who's bullet pass and no-step distribution is providing the tiny fraction of extra time required to allow the space and time to operate the extra pass and avoid the interception or the opposition back row getting to the carrying player.

It's widely known that Aaron Smith was a Grant Fox selection and pet project. There are many more "mercurial" 9's in NZ rugby but Fox seems to have convinced in an argument that pace, fitness and consistency are the vital components missing in prior NZ half backs. Looking back for contrast through Cowan, Kelleher, Marshall, Ellis, Weepu it's quite obvious to see the change in selection criteria.

Aiding that finally, The first twenty minutes of the RC games have featured NZ "starting slowly". In this period NZ have kicked relentlessly almost every possession away to the point of frustration and often conceded early tries to the opposition as a consequence. Often the kick execution hasn't been good and there is no convincing chase. The only reason for this, it is suggested is to imprint early the need to hold back an extra defender from the line. The other reason for it might be related to fitness. Maybe managing the first 20 minutes of the game with a simple kicking plan means that only 60 minutes of fitness is needed for the additional work for the men charged with doubling up on both sides of the ruck. Or maybe they trust the defence enough to let the opposition run at them for 20 minutes and use up some sting?

All I am left to say is how much credit does Grant Fox deserve for this? and has a selector's vision ever had such an apparent and lethal impact on a team? And how weird for a first five eighths who spent his career kicking the ball from deep in the pocket to introduce such a game changing trend!

Brilliant, now the rugby genius has been sussed we all know how to beat it... thanks

anotherworldofpain wrote: And how weird for a first five eighths who spent his career kicking the ball from deep in the pocket to introduce such a game changing trend!

Geez thats a huge misconception about Foxy.
Reason he was there that long and that successfully was because of distribution. Sure he could kick- he was the best there was. But without his distribution skills he wouldnt have had anywhere near the career he had. Auckland and the AB's in that time were there to score tries- a 15 man approach that had the wings flying in all over the place. Foxy had a gift for knowing what and when something was on and usually put the ball in exactly the right spot nearly every time. If not for that he would have been dropped, regardless of the goal kicking % or punt lengths/ accuracy- all icing on the cake for sure, but not the full deal. The Aucks backs (combined with the hugely successful pack full of legendary AB's) terrorised the country in the 80's- simple as that.

With Auckland his backline included B. Mcahill, Joe Stanley, Kirwan, Terry Wright, Lindsay Harris/ Greg Cooper and many other great backs. Foxy's miss passes were a cornerstone of the ABs and Aucks rugby of the 84-90 era.

Gosh taylorman, by bad! I stand corrected.

I only saw him play a couple of times an he must have had off games! I had him in the Andrew mehrtens/wilkinson mould.

anotherworldofpain wrote:Gosh taylorman, by bad! I stand corrected.

I only saw him play a couple of times an he must have had off games! I had him in the Andrew mehrtens/wilkinson mould.

Erm, AWOP, Mehrts had a great pass* and tended to stand flat. He used to make a fair few line breaks too. Granted he couldn't tackle for toffee (in his defence he usually at least tried to grab onto a ball runner, unlike Spencer who tended to dive out of the way).



*On several occasions he stood in at halfback for the Crusaders after Justin Marshall or Aaron Flynn had been sin binned, and the passing out of the ruck noticeably improved. Of course, since Marshall's pass was only slightly better than Mike Phillips' ...

AWOP the thing that Foxy is doing is selecting the players that can a number of different styles of attack play, Hansen and Mclean drill the players to competently execute those styles of play.

On the extra pass thing, that is more forward related, in two ways, firstly as you yourself have mentioned with the likes of Read playing like a league second rower in the centres, but secondly (and I think more impotantly) those little close short passes between the forwards, which makes the defensive line have to commit more across the field, not only does this exhaust the opposition defenders but gives after a period of time more holes wider out, as the defence has to bolster up more on the insides.

I thought Foxy and Mehterns both had the ability to really control a game by know when to kick and when to pass. Mehterns was a pretty good runner too.

On the other hand an interesting bit of thinking about the game AWOP.