25 Drop out

ward2wise

Can someone explain why our out half kicks the drop out too far to allow our players to compete for it. Would he not be better to boot it as far down the field as possible. At least then the opposition would not be starting an attack inside our half.

Losty Dublin

In short it boils down to tactics. Kick for length and you force the opposition to play a long way from your try line but you afford them the chance to run at you with three lethal weapons; namely time, width and space. They also may to kick the back towards you to isolate your teammates or to try and force a mistake. Also, there is a chance that the ball may go dead and that your team loses possession.

The options are to kick very short to compete for the ball but at a high risk of conceding knock forwards or penalty kicks in what are dangerous attacking positions that may cost you points. Kick mid way and you have a better chance of either pinning down the oposition in a maul and forcing them to kick back at you or making them come at you from somewhere that you'd prefer them to be.

This is a very simplistic answer and I know that others here will expand on this or can explain it in clearer terms.

irishbucsfan

Yep, more and more it's being considered a better option to try and lead your chasers by a few feet. If you can catch the receiver just after the reception before they've been able to start moving forward, hit them backwards and then get some mobile forwards over the ball you can force a penalty or a turnover and you're looking at first phase against what is almost always a scrambling defense. We did it with great success against England last year. It's a perfect tactic for a team who have someone like Conor Murray to kick, someone like Andrew Trimble to chase, and a back row like ours to clean up at the breakdown.

What has annoyed me recently is people not seeing this and complaining about kickers who are kicking it too far!

Dave_The_Sheep

It depends on the situation.

1. You go short.

You do this to give your team the best chance to reclaim the ball. Much like the on-side kick in NFL, your team has the best chance to recover the ball, and go on to score.

Usual situation: Chasing the damn lead, need points.

2. You go long.

Kick it long, into the opposition 22 hopefully, they have to run it from deep. How to defend a lead 101, make them attack in their own half. All you have to do is defend, end game.


Usual situation: Your team is ahead, make sure they don't **** it up.



As you say, going long forfeits your own team's chance of getting the ball back, but forces the opposition to run from deep.

3. You can't decide. You go middle.

Uh, not sure. Mix the previous two, hope your out-half read the game well, and clobber anyone close to you on a matter of principle. Game.

The Black Stags

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Yep, more and more it's being considered a better option to try and lead your chasers by a few feet. If you can catch the receiver just after the reception before they've been able to start moving forward, hit them backwards and then get some mobile forwards over the ball you can force a penalty or a turnover and you're looking at first phase against what is almost always a scrambling defense.

There is a brilliant example of this about 9-10mins into the SA vs NZ rugby championship game last season. It's a set play move by SA, the kick mid length when the camera pans out you can see their back line lining up for the counter.
Read receives the kick and is immediately hammered to ground by Bismarck - who is excellent at pinching turnovers off the deck. A ruck forms SA have the ball, all their players are already lined up to attack the scrambling NZ defence and SA get a try off first phase ball as Le Roux sails past a prop caught out in the defensive line.

I unfortunately can't find a good video for it, but it perfectly illustrates what irishbucsfan is saying.

Would be interesting to see stats on how often a turnover is gained from this tactic, as opposed to winning the ball back from your own kick off by kicking a few metres shorter.

If you have a dominant scrum, I'd assume it's worth the risk of competing and knocking on, as you know the opposition is under pressure either way.

irishbucsfan

The Black Stags wrote: »

There is a brilliant example of this about 9-10mins into the SA vs NZ rugby championship game last season. It's a set play move by SA, the kick mid length when the camera pans out you can see their back line lining up for the counter.
Read receives the kick and is immediately hammered to ground by Bismarck - who is excellent at pinching turnovers off the deck. A ruck forms SA have the ball, all their players are already lined up to attack the scrambling NZ defence and SA get a try off first phase ball as Le Roux sails past a prop caught out in the defensive line.

I unfortunately can't find a good video for it, but it perfectly illustrates what irishbucsfan is saying.

Well I can show you a video of the England game at least to illustrate the point a little clearer. I can maybe try to get an RC clip as well (to disspell the SHvNH myth). These images are a little large, sorry about that there's no option to resize, might just change them to links instead of embedding them.

Here are the first 3 phases from the game against England in the Aviva stadium last year.

Here Simon Zebo takes the ball on the left wing. The aim here is to get the ball out into a wide area in order to kick it back to England. You want to make these box kicks from a wide area so that you can limit the options of the opposition and squeeze the receiver up against the touch-line. Because Zebo is the left winger and won't be available on the next phase he take it into midfield so that Ireland can move right with the ball instead. Then the half backs give the ball to Jack McGrath on the right side of the field in order to set up the exit:



First thing to look at here is who is there for the kick on the blindside. You have Tommy Bowe as the chaser who is there to get up the field as quickly as possible and smash the receiver (the diminutive George Ford). Inside him you have POM and Jordi Murphy who have lots of pace to support him and also great ability on the ground. In fact you'll notice they are so comfortable with the pace that POM actually eases off in order to time his rucking better, just shows how perfectly weighted the kick was.

The English pack is absolutely nowhere here. One of the big difficulties they have is that because the breakdown is such a mess with scrum halves and wingers trying to hold off Murphy/POM, they have to come a long way back past the ball in order to join legally. Before they know it the ball is out and Toner has dived on it:



At this point the English pack are in disarray a bit. You can see they've all been dragged in the direction of that breakdown, and now SOB has the ball and their focus is entirely on him. When the camera pans out here you see just how narrow their defense is. SOB takes it almost entirely to the line and so they start drifting late as well, they're given a little bit of a chance by the quality of his pass but we get the ball wide to Zebo via Payne and now suddenly we're on the English 10 meter line. Not shown here is the fact that the English concede a penalty on the next phase. 3 phases and we've gone from our 22 to a very early lead:

irishbucsfan

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Well I can show you a video of the England game at least to illustrate the point a little clearer. I can maybe try to get an RC clip as well (to disspell the SHvNH myth). These images are a little large, sorry about that there's no option to resize, might just change them to links instead of embedding them.

There was no 22 drop out there, right? I can understand the dangers of the kicking game when executed well. Your example is based on catching the defence out of position, which is much less likely from a drop out.

I can see your basic point, though.

irishbucsfan

Basil3 wrote: »

There was no 22 drop out there, right? I can understand the dangers of the kicking game when executed well. Your example is based on catching the defence out of position, which is much less likely from a drop out.

I can see your basic point, though.

Yeah it's not drop-out but it's the same concept. You can actually find players isolated like that from drop-outs as well although mostly just against disorganised sides.