All Ryled Up

Eddie Jones’s ‘entertaining’ press conference at Sydney's International Airport on the eve of the World Cup overshadowed an intriguing coaching manoeuvre within the Wallabies coaching panel.? Perhaps whilst rugby journalists were heeding Jones’s advice and giving themselves uppercuts, little was made of Brad Davis’s decision to resign as the nations ‘Attack’ coach.? At the time, Eddie Jones, emotionlessly boasted that the removal of Davis would make the coaching panel better stating that “I think we’ll improve the coaching staff”.? In his place, Jones surreptitiously announced that NRL veteran, Jason Ryles would take over the reigns as the conductor of the Wallabies attacking methodology.? This adjustment to the coaching line up made him the third attack coach in the space of a 9-month period.? Ryles was available as he had prematurely finished up as an Assistant Coach with the Sydney Roosters mid-season and has been earmarked to join the Melbourne Storm in a similar role for 2024 and beyond.? His only rugby union experience prior to this seems to be a short stint as a skills coach with England alongside Jones before the world descended into COVID-19 oblivion.? As such, if you include the breakdowns that are connected to both the offensive and defensive strategies, Ex NRL players with very limited coaching experience in rugby are now spearheading the lion’s share of the tactical components of the game.

This resolution is quite fascinating considering the decision to go into the World Cup campaign with only one recognised fly-half who had only started two international games keeping mature distributors Quade Cooper, Bernard Foley, and James O’Connor who have collectively amassed 219 caps on ice.? Consequently, the Wallabies have bravely entered this elite tournament with one inexperienced fly-half being tutored (in attack) by an equally inexperienced (in rugby) coach to command the attack.? Whilst critical principles of play such as go forward, creating time and space, and applying pressure are common to both codes, the way these concepts are established in rugby union can be quite nuanced and complicated for a variety of reasons.?

Firstly, due its chaotic nature, rugby provides a rich source of unpredictable and unfamiliar situations that players need to contend with.? As teams oscillate between attack and defence through ongoing contests for possession, the game offers significant variability and uncertainty which could be addressed in a multitude of ways.? One way in which modern coaches have attempted to deal with this chaos is to design highly prescriptive and sequenced plays from the steady attack platforms that prevail such as the scrum and lineout.? Whilst this may give players stability and assurance it doesn’t allow players to play ‘in the moment’ and seize upon opportunities as they emerge such as slow defenders, poor tacklers, and spaces between, behind and outside defenders.? Conversely, an alternative approach is to embrace this chaos and prepare attacking protocols that contain a delicate balance between structural and unstructured elements empowering players to take advantage of situations as they present.? For example, the 2018-19 All Blacks successfully used a “motion offence” style of attack borrowed from basketball and manipulated for rugby, which gave the players freedom to utilise the skills within a ‘framework’ to maintain rapid ball movement until a defensive mismatch or lack of coverage could be taken advantage of.? This system is fluid, meaning that player’s attacking style emerges naturally in response to what’s in front of them and cannot be replicated as they rely on their instincts and skill execution in the moment.? This approach clearly requires a high degree of perceptual skills and for the attackers to understand that they should ‘listen to what the defence tells them to do’. This approach is a significant shift to the aforementioned pre-programmed approach which may or may not be being adopted by the Wallabies.

Secondly, the way attacking raids are launched in rugby, varies widely adding to the complexities of the 15-man game.? An attacking team’s source of possession may commence from but not limited to an uncontested kick, contested kick, breakdown turnover, knock on, scrum, line out or depending on how many tries you score a kick off.? The quantity of these sources is not necessarily equal as shown in the figure below gathered from a recent QLD Premier Rugby game (Figure 1).? Often, sadly, these facts are not taken into consideration when coaches design their practice sessions leading them to spend large amounts of time launching attacks from platforms that are not predominant throughout a regular game.? When you take a deeper dive into each of these sources of possession further nuances emerge. For example, LO attack contains a host of factors that need to be considered by coaches when developing a commensurate attacking strategy. These dynamics include the following features.

1. Numbers in the LO (e.g.,4,5,6 etc).? How many and which forwards stay out of the lineout.
2. Target area within the LO (e.g., front, middle or back)
3. Delivery of ball (e.g., off the top, down and pop, rip and roll, rip and feed, rip and pass etc.)
4. Opposition’s LO defensive formation (e.g., tail gunners and scrum half positioning and actions)
5. Backline defensive formation (e.g., for short LO’s which forwards have dropped, where are they now positioned and what principles of defence are they using)
6. Backfield formation (e.g., wingers and full-backs positioning, are they using a pendulum, how far are the wingers covering across etc.)

?

?Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly it is the offensive breakdown that ensues when ball carriers are tackled that becomes the lifeblood of any attacking system.? Successful and speedy recycling of possession ensures that offensive raids continue to apply and sustain pressure on the defensive lines until they faulter.? This area of the game is again unique in rugby union as it combines a blend of technical, tactical, and decision-making skills coupled with raw power adding to the complexity of attack in rugby union.? Recent research on the 2022 6 Nations tournament revealed that breakdown effectiveness (winning or losing breakdowns) was less important as breakdown efficiency (speed of ruck).? For example, Italy who struggled for success in this tournament won 94% of their offensive breakdowns, however, were last in efficiency winning only 53.3% of their breakdowns in under the key marker of 3 seconds.? Understandably, this chain of events correlated negatively with their point scoring ability.? Conversely, current world leaders, Ireland and France dominated this statistic with 69% and 60% of their respective rucks won under the magic figure of 3 seconds whilst their effectiveness (94% & 96%) was relatively the same as Italy’s.? Unfortunately, with the Fijians turning over the Wallabies ball at the ratio of three to one it was clear that the Wallabies struggled in both aspects of effectiveness and efficiency with the Flyers giving them an absolute masterclass in this area.? This clearly impacted Australia’s ability to apply and take advantage of attacking pressure leading to them lose possession position via breakdown turnovers and frivolous kicking due to having no other options.

The purpose of this post is not to criticise Jason Ryles as a coach (as all reports suggest he is a very good Rugby League coach) but rather to highlight the complexities that need to be considered and addressed when cultivating rugby union attack methodologies.? Therefore, the focus shifts more on the decision makers to question if they believe that matching inexperienced players with inexperienced (rugby) coaches is the right concoction for a national team to perform on the international stage.? I do agree that having a diverse range of coaches within a coaching group is important to inoculate against the dangers of cognitive entrenchment but would question whether the scales have been tipped too far in this instance. Moreover, even if Jason Ryles is or was to be successful, he is likely to return to Rugby League coaching in 2024 so whatever progress could or would be made is going to be compromised upon his looming departure.? Presumably this would mean that a total of 4 attack coaches will be appointed to the Wallabies in less than a year and a further three veteran fly-halves cast aside essentially placing all our eggs in Carter Gordan’s inexperienced basket.