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Opening weekend stats put spotlight on the try-less England attack
By Liam Heagney
England have been cock-a-hoop since Saturday’s reputation-restoring Rugby World Cup win over Argentina – but some stats from that 14-man, 27-10 victory in Marseille still leave much to be desired about the calibre of their attack and their ruck speed.
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George Ford scored all 27 points for Steve Borthwick’s side, who has lost Tom Curry to a third-minute red card, adding six penalty kicks to his 10-minute first-half drop goal hat-trick to settle the opening weekend fixture in England’s favour without them needing to score a single try.
England’s inability to get over the line was a hot topic during the Summer Nations Series build-up.
Having finished the Guinness Six Nations series with just a single try in each of the games against France and Ireland, they scored just one try per game versus Wales (twice) and Ireland before scoring three tries against Fiji.
That left them with a total of eight tries in six matches, on average a try every 60 minutes. They did manage, though, to break their duck regarding a lack of tries scored by their backs.
Before Jonny May’s ninth-minute effort against the Fijians, England had to go back to their late February Six Nations win in Wales for a try scored by a back, Ollie Lawrence’s 75th-minute effort.
England’s issues with scoring tries persisted in Marseille, but that shortcoming was largely forgotten amid the hoopla of the manner of their heroic win – being a man down for 77 minutes of a fixture they came into as underdogs.
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However, statistics provided on all 16 teams following the opening weekend fixtures have now laid bare how blunt the England attack continued to be. Here are some of the negative stats:
- Only Romania made fewer carries (73);
- Joint fewest metres made with Scotland (230);
- Fewest linebreaks with just one;
- Only Romania made fewer offloads (two – both from Alex Mitchell);
- Only Georgia had a lower collision dominance in their attacking carries (19 per cent), just 10 of their 52 carries in contact;
- England were 11th for gainline success (44 per cent);
- Third-slowest average ruck speed of any team (4.75 seconds) and the most rucks longer than five seconds (33 per cent);
- Had the fewest phases inside the opposition 22 (6).
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though, as there were other round one statistics where England fared much better:
- Joint-highest positive outcomes from their possessions with Wales (83 per cent), second-fewest turnovers lost (7);
- Scored the joint-most points from outside the 22 (without entering it at all) with France (15);
- Fifth-best red-zone efficiency with 2.40 points per entry
- Won the second-most scrums overall (eight) but only Argentina and Scotland with a worse success (80 per cent).
Click here to see the opening weekend statistical review on all 16 teams who were in action
Discounting the fact that England played with 14 men for the majority of the game, the fact remains that they don't have an attack worthy of the name.
The reasons for this are myriad, lack of consistency in selection at 9,10,12 & 13, a very limited game plan coupled with the fact that England have lacked fwd domination to enable them to generate quick ruck ball.
Also the fact that their catch- pass ability is currently woefull.
Nick Evans should have been retained or they should have approached Sam vesty to run the attack, Wigglesworth is not an international attack coach.
"Team with flanker in the bin for 78 minutes is less effective at the breakdown and on the gainline." Hardly surprising, is it?
Given that Ford has spoken openly about adopting a strategy of taking points as efficiently as possible to preserve the team's energy for defence, none of these stats is particularly surprising.
England do need to demonstrate that they can get their attack firing, but the Argentina game is so far out of the ordinary pattern of play that it's a pretty pointless exercise to try to draw conclusions from it.
Gummy dogs ...