Try tsunami sends a mixed message
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Peter Jackson looks at an increase in points scored but suggests the figures may be hiding a problem for the Premiership.
Over the last seven rounds of the Premiership, Bristol Bears posted numbers which might have been cut and pasted from Virat Kohli’s scorebook at the cricket World Cup: 101, 73, 57, 99, 40, 61, 81.
The figures show the aggregate points totals generated by the Bears in those seven fixtures, starting with routs at Ashton Gate over opponents within sight of reaching the Premiership final; Bath, dispatched 57-44 in late January, Northampton similarly so, 52-21 in the next match two months later.
The Bears’ total points, for and against over those seven games, amount to 492, an average of 70 per match. They are not alone in purveying a game as close to a point-a-minute as makes no difference.
Harlequins have averaged the same total, in their case over a longer period. Their last nine results of the season produced totals of 81, 84, 64, 73, 68, 83, 52, 76, 59 points: 640, average 70 per match.
The stats can be interpreted as support for widely contrasting points of view: evidence that the Premiership has never been more entertaining or damning proof that the try is being bashed as never before during the 201 years since the Webb-Ellis boy began trending.
Nobody has traded them more extravagantly than Quins, 91 in their nine matches since resuming serious business post-Six Nations: 40 for, 51 against which works out at a try every eight minutes. A figure of a different kind, arguably Tinseltown’s most enduringly lustrous, would have given short shrift to those scoffing at ‘basketball’ rugby.
Mae West, Hollywood’s prototype sex symbol, famously professed her belief that she could never get enough of what she liked: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”
Shakespeare may not have been her thing but she would have been cute enough to appreciate the opposite female point of view on the subject, as expressed by Rosalind on love and marriage in The Bard’s As You Like It: “Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?”
Too much of anything is liable to devalue the thing itself. Michael Schumacher turning Formula One into a long procession of unrelenting monotony springs to mind as an example of a good thing for the German and Ferrari proving anything but for his chosen sport.
Remove the contest, as Schumacher and his machine did in 2004, and almost every Grand Prix that year became a foregone conclusion. Remove the contest, as Gloucester did by sending their stiffs to Northampton a fortnight ago, and you end up with the Premier League equivalent of a 14-0 home win.
Quins’ supporters, punch-drunk on tries over the previous eight weeks, saw five more in the first-half against Bristol at The Stoop last weekend. Another six in the second when the Bears scored twice as many (4-2) added up to a deflating experience for the arch apostles of the Gung ho game.
The Premiership is now so awash with tries that not a single match over the entire regular season ended without one. Those who went closest, Sale v Bath in Salford last November when Jonny Hill’s solitary touchdown made the difference, collide at The Rec this weekend in the play-off semi-finals.
Two of the last three matches at the World Cup offered welcome examples that tries are to be treasured rather than scattered like confetti. The South Africa-England semi-final featured one try (RG Snyman’s), the Springboks–All Blacks also produced just one (Beauden Barrett’s) yet both stand as thrilling examples of epic, relatively low-scoring contests.
Generations weaned on grit and gristle as essential ingredients wonder what’s happened to the contest and the fundamentals that made it so. The once sacred part of the catechism demanding that the ball be fed straight into the scrum as opposed to the second row has long gone.
“The Premiership is so awash with tries that not a match ended without one”
Nobody, least of all referees, pays a blind bit of notice any more and yet the law remains in the book, almost as if World Rugby has left it there in the blithe hope that nobody will notice.
The Premiership’s broadcasters, naturally enough, laud their product to the skies, marvelling at the capacity of clubs like Harlequins for turning lost causes into stunning victories and vice versa. The narrators advise viewers not to leave their seat for fear of missing the next bit of wizardry heading their way.
They would have you believe that it is the best club league in the world except that it’s not. The French Top 14 has what the Premiership hasn’t: greater depth of competition, larger crowds and, most crucially, relegation-promotion. There are no 90-nils in France because the clubs value their survival in the top flight above anything else. Inevitably there are some one-sided matches but they don’t undermine their collective credibility by resting the first XV for a secondary European competition.
Consequently, there is no risk of the fans being short-changed like Gloucester’s at Franklin’s Gardens. The public humiliation of a club famous for its backs-to-the-wall ferocity seemed an exorbitant price to pay for the off-chance of winning the trophy for Europe’s also-rans, the Challenge Cup. Vincent Koch and his Springbok Sharks put paid to that.
A tell-tale sign of the biggest single driving force behind the Premiership’s try tsunami is to be found in comparing the top 30 scorers across the three major leagues 10 years ago and now. Back then, only two forwards made the list: Northampton’s USA No.8 Samu Manoa and Wasps’ dual-purpose back rower, Guy Thompson. There was not a hooker to be seen although Ashley Johnson of Wasps managed eight for the season, one fewer than Jamie George and Schalk Brits combined for Saracens.
Fast forward a decade and five of the species are into double figures for the season, beneficiaries of a set-piece manoeuvre which once locked into place is virtually impossible to stop by lawful means: the driving lineout.
Johnny Matthews has scored 14 for Glasgow and Scotland, Dan Sheehan 13 for Leinster and Ireland, Peato Mauvaka 12 for Toulouse and France, Theo Dan 10 for Saracens and England, Tom Stewart likewise for Ulster and Ireland.
Ewan Ashman and Curtis Langdon are not far off. Another hooker, Jamie Blamire, missed a chunk of Newcastle’s bleak season but still finished up as the club’s leading try scorer with six.
