Touch and go
Farah Palmer Cup: Semi-Finals; Mitre 10 Cup: Round 7
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Tip-On!
If you want to watch former Highlanders and All Blacks fly-half Lima Sopoaga — who came off the bench for Wasps on Saturday at Twickenham — pull off a superb piece of skill in the Gallagher Premiership final, you can catch a replay of his work to keep an Exeter kick in play here.
All in-game data per ESPNScrum unless otherwise stated.
Fins up
Tasman might not be blitzing through the Mitre 10 Cup Premiership at the same pace as they did last year, but the province have still been devastating going forward in 2020.
Despite having to spend most of this season without 7 starters from last year’s final — Will Jordan, Levi Aumua, Jordan Taufua, Liam Squire, Pari Pari Parkinson, Tyrel Lomax and Tim Perry have made a combined 5 appearances in 7 rounds of action — Andrew Goodman and Clarke Dermody’s side have still managed to score 34.7 points and 5.0 tries per game this season, both the top marks in the competition. (For reference: in last year’s regular season, they averaged 39.1 points per game.)
As you would expect given these marks, they’ve been very effective at progressing upfield with ball in hand. Kicking only once every 6.7 carries (compared to a competition average rate of once every 5.3), they have largely eschewed putting boot to ball and instead focused on dominating the running game: they have made 55.9% of the total carries in their games, and 64.4% of the total metres — both the highest marks in the Premiership.
But particularly interesting is the way in which they’ve progressed the ball effectively this year. There is usually a relatively strong relationship between a team’s ability to generate clean breaks and their ability to score tries, but the 2020 Mako have been moving the ball upfield and scoring prolifically while making breaks at a rate that is only slightly above average for the competition:
They are not cutting teams apart with an excessive amount of ball movement either: their average of 1.37 passes per carry is in line with the competition average, and their offload rate of 9.2% is only slightly above average.
Rather, it appears to be the sheer quality of their ball-carrying that is doing the majority of the damage. They have beaten a defender (that is, caused a missed tackle) once every 4.3 carries through 7 rounds this season; Wellington are second in the Premiership by this metric at a rate of once every 4.8 carries, and across the entire Mitre 10 Cup teams average one every 5.4.
As well as bringing their dominance of possession to bear, the Mako have simply been able to get the ball in the hands of their most dangerous running threats with great regularity:
Even without regular appearances from Will Jordan, the signing of Mark Telea has ensured that the drop-off in quality of the attacking work from their back three has been minimal; the Blues winger, Leicester Fainga’anuku and David Havili are all well known for their effectiveness with ball in hand, and are all among the Mako’s most frequent carriers in the chart above.
In the midfield, Fetuli Paea has stepped up into a more regular role in Aumua’s absence and performed similarly effectively alongside the impressive Alex Nankivell. After making a solitary NPC start in 2019, Paea has already made 6 — and played 492 total minutes — in 2020.
Their pack also contains a nice mix of threats, with the industrious Hugh Renton, Andrew Makalio — a clever distributor — and Sione Havili their three most frequent forward carriers. The latter is a player who already holds up well in collisions at Super Rugby level, and is physically dominant in the NPC: he has beaten a defender once every 5.2 carries, while the team's other forwards have done so only once every 10.1 carries.
Tasman travel to Wellington this weekend to take on the Lions, and will put themselves in a good position to secure another playoff spot if they come out on top of what shapes as an abrasive contest. If they do make it all the way back to the Premiership final, their team will look markedly different to the one that clinched an unbeaten season 12 months ago — but the Mako will still have plenty of ball-carrying quality to call upon.
All chalk
With a 15-point win for Canterbury over Auckland and a 17-point win for Waikato over Manawatū, the favourite emerged from each of last weekend’s Farah Palmer Cup semi-finals.
As there were no crossover fixtures between pools prior to the playoff stage, assessing the relative strength of the North and South Pool winners ahead of Saturday’s decider is not straightforward. However, basic analysis of the team’s performances throughout the regular season — coupled with the margins of victory in the semi-finals — can help us get close to a reasonable estimate.
James Semple’s Waikato had an average margin of +27.2 points per game across their 6 North Pool games — 11 points higher than Auckland’s mark of +16.2. Meanwhile, in the South Pool, Canterbury’s record of +56.8 points per game across their 5 fixtures was 37.6 points better than Manawatū’s. (Head to head, Waikato beat the Storm by 9 points in Round 7 of pool play and Blair Baxter’s Canterbury beat Manawatū by 26 points in Round 2.)
If Waikato are (on a per-game basis) approximately 10 points better than Auckland, then Canterbury outperformed them by around 5 points in their win last Saturday. Conversely, if Canterbury are approximately 30 points better than Manawatū, then Waikato underperformed them by around 13 points at FMG Stadium Waikato on Sunday.
On this basis, we might expect to see a Canterbury win by a margin of 1 to 2 tries in Saturday’s final in Christchurch.
Breaking new ground
Anton Segner’s Mitre 10 Cup debut for Tasman at the weekend made him the fifth native continental European to play competitive provincial rugby in New Zealand this season.
Rugby pilgrimages to the country from the UK and Ireland are fairly common — see Oli Jager, Jack Regan, Piers Francis, Joe Marchant and others — but the Mako’s young German flanker exemplifies a different strand of the same thread.
Segner originally came to the country as a short-term exchange student at Nelson College, but stayed on after the offer of a rugby scholarship and went on to represent the New Zealand Secondary Schools side for two consecutive years.
Similarly, Bay of Plenty Steamers lock Stan van den Hoven — originally from the Netherlands — saw an initial scholarship at the Inside Running Academy in Mount Maunganui turn into a multi-year stay on Kiwi soil; as well as his Mitre 10 Cup appearances, he has been a part of the Chiefs development system and attended a national U20 camp.
A number of other Dutch prospects have also recently moved across the world for stints at the Academy: Lisa Egberts, Ezra van Ramele and Lynn Koelman all used their time under Director Mike Rogers to work their way into FPC squads for 2020, and — according to a piece by Rikki Swannell — now “have designs on staying in New Zealand for another year”.
All of these moves indicate the draw that a Kiwi rugby education still holds for young players in nations without professional rugby infrastructure of their own, despite often having more practical options closer to home. Segner has previously stated that rugby was his “main reason” for coming to the country, while Egberts noted simply that “New Zealand is the best place to go because rugby over here is really big”.
Moreover, the fact that all five players have stayed beyond (or returned after) the period of their initial visits is a strong endorsement of the country’s rugby culture. (This is corroborated by the positive messages of players like Tyler Ardron — who has professional experience in Europe too — upon their departure.)
While Egberts, van Ramele and Koelman are all internationally capped, Segner is a real prospect — and the teenager has the goal of becoming the first All Black to be born on the continent firmly in his mind:
Right first time
Netball and rugby are now the “two biggest codes” in top-level women’s sport in New Zealand, but the Black Ferns are still fed by “a narrow high performance pathway” (per assistant coach John Haggart) that is underdeveloped in comparison to the one managed by Netball NZ.
However, as Ashley Stanley noted in the opening piece of a series on the development of female athletes for LockerRoom, this does afford New Zealand Rugby a certain freedom as they look to take the women’s game to the next level:
Stanley gets to the crux of the matter when she identifies the key question to be addressed by governing bodies as “how to care and develop people through their chosen sport, without coercing or manipulating them to win at all costs”.
The idea that there are in fact things more important than winning is something that professional sports of all hues have always struggled to design into their systems as a positive feature — but, as they scale up the elite women’s game, NZR have the opportunity to build on some of the positive signs that came out of the marketing of Super Rugby Aotearoa and prioritise the right things for their athletes and for the general public.
Pass of the week
It’s hard to break into the national consciousness as a Kiwi outside back given the overabundance of talented options available at the wing and fullback positions, but All Blacks Sevens representative Jona Nareki has continued to chip away in domestic competition over the past couple of years.
Throughout 2020, the Feilding HS product — who moved south to Dunedin after finishing school with childhood friend Vilimoni Koroi — has shown off his rounded skillset: his left-footed kicking ability is valuable to every team he’s a part of, and he regularly roams infield to wreak havoc against defenders who can’t match his acceleration and footwork.
In the opening exchanges of Otago’s Mitre 10 Cup win over Northland last Friday, Nareki popped up off his wing again to help create his team’s first try — and displayed another aspect of his game in the process.
With the home team on the attack deep inside the Taniwha 22 at Forsyth Barr Stadium, the left wing is stationed at second receiver outside makeshift first five Jono Hickey. After he receives a crisp pass from Hickey, Otago are nominally in a 3v3 situation: Michael Collins and Freedom Vahaakolo are outside him, with Rene Ranger, Pisi Leilua and Scott Gregory standing opposite.
But Nareki has already got to Ranger’s outside shoulder before receiving the ball, and the 34-year-old centre is having to labour to keep up. While keeping the ball in 2 hands, the Otago 11 scorches through and draws fullback Scott Gregory away from his assignment on the end of the defensive line.
That assignment is the dangerous Vahaakolo — and, with the crucial defender committed, Nareki shows brilliant skill to release a miss pass across the face of Collins (and Leilua) to his colleague on the right wing without breaking stride:
Rather than allowing him a simple run-in after skinning Ranger, Gregory forces his Highlanders teammate to have to execute a more difficult skill if Otago are to score — and Nareki has no trouble.
Loose threads
In case you missed it on Twitter this week
More evidence of young Auckland playmaker Zarn Sullivan’s exceptional ball-handling skill last Saturday against North Harbour
Quick hits
Crusaders assistant Jason Ryan spoke about his new role with Fiji under Vern Cotter this week, and how — in addition to benefiting his own development as a coach — it will give Scott Robertson’s team more fresh IP to work with:
The piece also mentions Ryan’s relationship with former All Blacks forwards coach Mike Cron, who he “frequently utilises…as a mentor”. Cron was recently a guest on an episode of Peter Breen’s excellent Rugby Bricks podcast, and provided fantastic insight into how his thinking about rugby is filtered through fundamental concepts of movement and biomechanics.
While there’s still one weekend of Farah Palmer Cup action remaining, the Black Ferns selectors have already named their squads for the Possibles v Probables match due to take place at North Harbour Stadium on Saturday 7th November. Many of the usual faces are there, but a number of promising uncapped players have also been included. In the forwards, look out for goal-kicking prop Krystal Murray, ball-carrying loose forward Kaipo Olsen-Baker, physical blindside Lisa Molia and lineout expert Maiakawanakaulani Roos; in the backs, playmakers Carys Dallinger and Rosie Kelly are joined by centre Amy du Plessis, outside Grace Steinmetz and the versatile Iritana Hohaia as exciting new prospects looking to break into Glenn Moore’s national squad.
Taranaki and Chiefs flanker Lachlan Boshier was recently interviewed by Aaron Goile of Stuff, and the player’s own explanation of why he has missed out on selection in the competitive All Blacks back row — “[a] few bigger bodies and a bit of physicality there, that’s what they want” — chimes with what we’ve heard from the team’s coaching staff on the matter. He was also realistic about being able to make improvements in the necessary areas in the short term:
Although he moonlights as an excellent NRL analyst, Jack Snape’s primary role at ABC is as a politics reporter. Those two beats intersected yesterday in an exclusive story about the Roosters’ former All Black Sonny Bill Williams and his views on aspects of Australia’s immigration policy; you can read the full piece here.
Finally, read Nick Bishop’s latest piece for The Roar on Matt To’omua’s “sound fundamentals”, and how the injured Wallabies midfielder “complements James O’Connor’s outside back skill-set perfectly”.