RUGBY MATTERS
It’s official! Don’t bother with box kicks, they aren’t worth the effort
MANY of you have grown to detest the ubiquitous box kick with a vengeance recently and I share your pain.
Nothing is a bigger cop out and detracts more from rugby as a spectacle, so my attention was naturally drawn this week by a set of statistics which seem to underline their sheer futility. As Eddie Jones himself tells us, we must pay more attention to sports data and the messages they impart.
Wallusch Datenbank are a quirky German-based sports statistics and data site run by the eponymous Jacek Wallusch that specialises in the NFL and Rugby Union and Jacek put the first 12 rounds of this season’s Premiership under the microscope and in particular the box kick, ie all the season up to lockdown bar one round.
According to his data there were 1,206 box kicks in 72 games of which only 164 kicks (13.6 per cent) resulted in the kicking team retaining possession; 184 kicks (15.3 per cent) resulted in aerial contests, 219 kicks (18.2 per cent) went directly into touch, 62 kicks resulted in a knock on by the receiving team and 24 by the chasing team. Messy hardly does it justice.
The remaining kicks – 513 by my calculation – were successfully fielded by the receiving team who either happily accepted the gift of possession, often running the ball back with much profit.
Of the miserable 13.6 per cent that resulted in the kicking team retaining possession those sides scored just four tries from subsequent phases of play. As a positive, proactive, attacking tactic, the box kick barely gets off the starting grid.
Now I fully understand the relieving properties of a box kick from deep in your 22. If the ball goes into touch that’s an acceptable outcome while at the same time such a kick gives you a slim chance of regaining possession and at the very least you make the chase so well organised and aggressive that it can embarrass the receiving team. As a very limited objective this has merit.
Saracens do it well, Ireland also when Conor Murray has his kicking boots on, but frankly that’s about it. The reason Saracens have excelled by the way is that their chasers in chief – Sean Maitland and Alex Lewington – are about the only chasers who don’t try to illegally steal two or three yards and start in front of the kicker before he lets fly. They deliberately hang back, seeing no advantage in arriving early. The trick is to arrive at the same time as the ball.
But away from that scenario the box kick is worse than useless and hideously overused. Sir Clive Woodward is one of those who rails against its overuse. Often it seems to be the last resort of the team that has run out of ideas or doesn’t possess enough skill or patience to continue ‘playing rugby’.
The box kick has become a mystifying tedious time-consuming ritual which often starts with the scrum half laboriously organising the mind-bogglingly tedious and frankly ridiculous caterpillar of protective players. What do you do for a living Dad? Oh I’m an important part of the club’s caterpillar son!
The caterpillar having gestated, the pampered scrumhalf who nobody is allowed to touch and can delay ‘lifting’ the ball almost indefinitely, then totally ignores pleas from the referee to speed things up, before firing an often aimless kick up field thus denying his team of possession. Meanwhile in the stands – or currently in front of the TV – most of us have lost the will to live.
It’s groundhog day rugby. It spells out the message that we are not good enough to do anything with the ball, we give up, you have it. We would much rather defend than attack.
Possession though is surely everything in rugby, that’s a verity that never changes. Expressions such as “it was a good game not to have the ball” are ludicrous. How can it ever be better not to have the ball and allow the opposition to dictate play? Just be more skilful and inventive. The forwards bust a gut to win the pill, so why on earth do scrum-halves then kick most of that possession away?