The Butterfly effect

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependency on initial conditions in which a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. To put it in rugby layman's terms, your forwards win you games and your backs decide by how much.

Often we don't realise the effect one area has on the other. A halfback is seen as a bridge between the forwards and the backs but the quality of the halfback play is often not related to the quality of the forward play. Take Will Genia. When he is allowed by his forwards to operate in space, he is a devastating runner. The time and space afforded him by his forwards means he can play with front foot ball. Aaron Smith is currently operating in that environment. The speed of his pass and ability to recycle ball can be hypnotic or devastating depending on which team you support. But in the tighter games where his forwards are not providing a solid platform and not protecting that ball for him, he becomes exposed as any other.

When we look at a ruck, we see a lot of bodies piled on top of one another. It's very difficult to get a sense of who is in there and with lots of bodies entering the ruck area, it's very difficult to get a sense of who is doing what in real time. You might track one player but that often means you fail to pick up what other players are doing. The unseen work of a six at ruck time is harder to pick out than a six carrying up the ball or linking up out wide. Hooper gets the plaudits for his work in the loose but I can't help but think his incredible work in open play (how about that try from the back of the scrum against NZ) tends to cover up his failings in the tight.

Moreover, it's tempting to see the ruck area as a domain of the forwards. That's why we can't see anything. It's just a load of fatties piled up in the same area. It's difficult to get a sense of how many backs are being sucked into the fringes and committed to the ruck area. When the ball gets spun out wide, we often see forwards in the backs setting up ball to be recycled further out wide. We think those forwards are always tackled by other forwards and we wonder when they're really going to spin out wide and leave those fat, wheezing giant tortoises out of it. But those gaps out wide don't get manufactured out of thin air. That ball is like a magnet in the contact area and it doesn't matter if it's a forward or a back. They will get collected in that area and that will leave space in other areas.

It's very tempting to break down the performance into backs and forwards. I think our forwards did well but our backs were terrible with their one-on-one defence. When Burrell came on for Eastmond we tightened up our defence. These are examples of comments from the third test when England played NZ. But the gaps that were not nearly as apparent in the second half as they were in the first half cannot be attributed solely to the changes in the backline. Rugby is like a chessboard and the pieces can get shifted around the board and can get out of alignment. But those misaligned pieces need to be seen from an individual as well as a global point of view. Ideally you want your players lining up against their opposite players. Each player has one player as their responsibility and you trust your players to get that man. The fact is, however, it's often not your opposite coming at you. What has gone on before has an effect on what is up against you at that moment. Players have their core requirements - kicking and distribution from the halves, scrum and lineout and ruck work in the forwards - but beyond this, players have to adapt to the situations going on around them and that calls into play a wider skill-set. In this area, we can lose sight of what individual players are doing and the effect that has on the players around them in the coming plays.

I've just decided to take Madrid off my bucket list.

I've just decided to stay put then.