Teams according to Gerry Thornley
Ringrose out. Big loss.
6-2 France and Ireland. I'll believe it when I see it.
IRELAND (v France, possible): Hugo Keenan; Calvin Nash, Robbie Henshaw, Bundee Aki, James Lowe; Jack Crowley, Jamison Gibson-Park; Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Tadhg Furlong; Tadhg Beirne, Joe McCarthy; Peter O’Mahony (capt), Josh van der Flier, Caelan Doris.
Replacements: Rónan Kelleher, Cian Healy, Finlay Bealham, James Ryan, Ryan Baird, Jack Conan, Conor Murray, Ciarán Frawley.
FRANCE (possible): Thomas Ramos; Damian Penaud, Gael Fickou, Jonathan Danty, Yoram Moefana; Matthieu Jalibert, Maxime Lucu; Cyril Baille, Peato Mauvaka, Uini Atonio; Paul Gabrillagues, Paul Willemse; Francois Cros, Charles Ollivon, Gregory Alldritt.
Replacements: Julien Marchand, Reda Wardi, Dorian Aldegheri, Cameron Woki, Sebastien Teofifenua, Paul Boudehent, Nolann Le Garrec, Louis Bielle-Biarrey.
There’s not one player in the back five who that statement isn’t applicable to. There aren’t any perfect players out there - everyone has strengths and weaknesses.
What we haven’t lacked in recent times for Ireland is disciplined automatons who can play in complicated systems with high levels of accuracy.
What we have lacked (at the very highest level) is big physical players who can be difference makers as carriers and hitters and bring a bit of intensity and physicality to our pack.
Id take the chance on him and have him in the 23 this Friday.
Wing seems to be the hardest position to get top quality internationals in Ireland specifically. Elite props and 10s are rare worldwide.
He was less effective at 8 to start the year also though because we essentially couldn't get quick ball without him so its less number on the back and more composition of the pack. If we put mccarthy in a psdt role i think hed excel right now but that means someone else picks up the slack in other areas
Yeah, it was notable against Toulon where they were getting the ball to Coombes - there were plenty of carries in the centre channel etc of set pieces where his power is letting him skittle defenders and win gainline.
When he’s making the sort of carries a lock is usually asked to do - closer to the ruck, into a well set defence of multiple forwards lined up and typically not with a lot of momentum - he’s obviously a lot less effective.
What’s been consistently impressive from McCarthy is how good his footwork and power is on those tight carries. He’s breaking tackles frequently even when carrying in really messy situations. His disallowed try v Leicester (where he ran it in from 60m) was a really telling example of his athleticism and pace.
Its less the position changes it and more the workload i think. Jager in particular seems to allow coombes to go back to carrying woth more omph instead of hitting every ruck going. Theres certainly a similar question to be asked of a lot of the munster forwards that i would of mccarthy but with the caveat that mccartht younger so its more forgivable
Brilliant insight. Thank you!
I know that under Andy Friend at Connacht the "Bounce" stat was emphasised as a measure of player work rate and commitment. We were always playing bigger packs so the lads needed to rejoin the line faster to compensate. It was posted on the changing room noticeboard the Monday after every game. Now I understand where it came from.
Possibly the best thing that's ever been posted on this sub.
Yes. Edogbo and McCarthy look like the very near future......and maybe Sheridan who also looks like a brute.
I wonder if edogbo would have been a training panelist, he is pretty easily the best lock according to that dataset.
That could be a very costly injury for country and province.
Going off of form this season, 4-8 ought to be
Ryan
McCarthy
Baird
VdF
Doris
I can see an argument for Beirne at 6 based on his turnover ability, but Baird has been the best 6 by some distance this season.
That's really interesting, thanks for the colour!
Annoyingly - even the rudimentary stats Leinster used to provide are no longer provided with the same detail since the website refresh a month or so ago.
But I did look at Coombes' numbers this year - he is still a really high volume carrier (174 carries across the 13 games for Munster this season) but he's a low impact carrier in terms of actual metres per carry. His total metres carried this year is 342 metres, so the metres per carry stat is a fairly low 1.8.
I know there were games where he moved into the second row during the game, but just going off the games where he started in the back row his metres / carry average is 2.1, whereas for the three games where he was in the row this falls to 0.7.
His volume is a little lower when he starts in the second row as opposed to 8 (11 carries versus 14 on average), but he clearly gets the opportunity to carry in wider channels where he's more effective when in the backrow.
Not surprising that his most effective game of the season was the Toulon game when restored to 8, where he averaged 4.4 metres a carry off 10 carries. His numbers by comparison in the second row against Leinster (albeit an awful night weather-wise) were abysmal, and even worse against Exeter in Europe.
The comparison to McCarthy is more telling here - McCarthy is outshining Coombes as a carrier when playing exclusively in the second row.
The IRFU centralised their statistics and video analysis a few years ago for individual provincial players - it was meant as a shared resource for all provinces to use from age grade up.
This was in part due to frustrations at the inaccuracy of OPTA who used students in the UK a lot and quality varied
Every weekend the provinces play. Someone breaks down the footage for individual player stats. These stats go into a internal database to be accessed by professional coaching staff across the provinces.
Of course all the provinces have their own video and performance analysts. But due to the time consuming nature of individual player stats - many opt for this IRFU service.
I did this analysis for approx 2 years and it was quite interesting. And a brief breakdown is below. Note this was 3 years ago and could have changed. But I'd bet not by much.
Individual player stats are broken into 3 areas. With 1 person breaking down each area each game - Attack, Defence and attack breakdown - ie. attacking rucks.
Attack and defence were all quite nuanced into passing, carries, post contact, extra efforts etc. All of which give significant insight into a players performance.
From a defensive POV especially regarding the breakdown, you'd be looking at aspects including
These would then be graded in terms of successful, wasted/ no effect.
So when you're looking at attacking breakdown, which is analysed in isolation of attack and defence - you'd be looking at how an attacking arrival affected the ruck in terms of preventing the above listed scenarios.
A player hitting an attacking ruck first looks at what the involvement is - ie. Clear or Seal. And they'd be graded at what arrival they had ie. 1st to 5th predominantly.
And they'd be graded by and large into 2 categories, effective or ineffective. And if it was ineffective they'd be graded on why - ie. missed target, physicality, body position, too slow etc.
So in terms of an attacking player in a run of the mill ruck the gold standard ruck in simple terms for a 3 man pod would be:
Caelan Doris - Carry off 9, collision won, no post contact (offloads etc, knock on etc.)
Joe McCarthy - 1st clearout, effective (no ball slowed, no opportunity for opp to disrupt)
James Ryan - 2nd seal, effective (no other player to clear so seal, ball presented clean for 9)
These stats are then exportable from the centralised DB so you can see how many rucks a player hit and how many were effective. You can also see which areas are predominantly ineffective so the player can have their work ons.
This system used to be simpler but they made it more nuanced because they realised there were players who were "ruck tapping" ie. they'd arrive at a ruck (say 4th seal) and get graded on a ruck arrival which upped their numbers and looked better on the stat sheet lol.
That's not to say that the linked article graded it like that. But I would be surprised if it was much different.
But I know that when selection time comes in the IRFU would be using some of the generated stats above to help their decisions
Not with the other four fit. You can guarantee Ireland will have him training to cover lock and he's only a knock or two away from being the bench option.
Leaving aside the Stats. From the eye test its evident that McCarthy is ready to play at Test match level for 80mins if needed
Delighted with McCarthy's emergence, also Ahern and Edegbo at Munster. Props, OHs and then 2nd rows are the hardest positions to get International quality in Ireland so having him emerge and a couple of more prospects in the pipeline is superb. He should definitely be in 23 for Sat. 6/2 split with Conor Murray and Frawley backs on the bench gives us resonable cover.
Hard not to think that McCarthy is potentially a special talent.
That has been evident to Leinster fans for a good while now, but he's getting the run of games in the Champions Cup to back it up.
Specific stats like those where you understand how the data maps onto your gameplan are very valuable. When their video analysts clip their games they'll likely be categorising a pre-defined list of effective actions so they can drill down into the stats. Ireland and the provinces will have similar stats for their gameplans but we just don't get to hear about them.
Encouraged reading this.
https://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2024/0129/1429296-fogarty-ireland-have-learned-from-their-scrum-mistakes/
Esp. these two quotes from Fogarty.
"There's definitely a few pictures we can clean up on. We don't want to show a referee or touch judge an easy image. With our props, we're trying to show as best a picture we can, being nice and square in what we're doing.
------------------------
"How we can control weight, post the 'set', is something that we've focused on, so we want to show tidy pictures to referees and want to work with them as best we can.
__________________
Proof will be in the pudding.
Porter was asked about "Painting Positive Pictures" at the start of last years Championship - (Ref was also Dickson v Wales)
https://www.rte.ie/sport/rugby/2023/0201/1353230-porter-painting-positive-pictures-key-for-irish-scrum/
And also after 1st test v NZ (Dickson again)
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/2022/07/05/ireland-new-zealand-tour-2022-andrew-porter-scrum-weakness/
I'd say two things about that. Team stats they keep themselves will be better. Secondly, they are probably useful but stats used 20 years ago in baseball were useful and revolutionary, but we know now that they were often wrong and/or superficial. Basically, we are at the beginning of the journey in rugby.
Counter argument would be south africa apparently massivly rate certain stats. Theyve one thats effective actions per min or something thats a bit of a gospel for them aparently
Those basic physical stats if they are correlated to game success are probably the most important stats. But usually only teams would know them.
For example, in baseball exit velocity is obviously important for power, but they figured out that if you hit over a certain number once as a prospect that alone changes your power projection significantly. I hope i didn't butcher that, its been a while since i read it. i think it was 107mph.
There are probably stats like how quick you can jump and how high that are very important for the lineout. I doubt they have figured out how important each one is though and where the 'cutoffs' are.
The concept of empty stats as well is very well developed in american football and baseball, but less so in rugby.
I daresay any of the stats we see are very rudimentary alright, would love to know more about what the type of thing the players and management themselves have access to.
I remember when reading Keith Earls autobiography, and as an aside he mentioned he was still at or near the top of some of the metrics like Counter movement jumps for leg strength, fastest time over 10m, fastest time over 30m, max metre's per second hit during games from their GPS trackers.
Stats in rugby are in the absolute dark ages compared to something like baseball.
I find them fun more than anything. Or a reminder to keep a closer eye on someone during a game.
I take stats with a pinch of salt these days since I heard ‘statistician’ Derek McNamara on OTB rugby telling everyone how the data reveals that Ardie Savea isn’t actually that good how there was no way LAR could beat Leinster in the Heineken Cup final.
You'd imagine it's some combination of Time to the ruck (objective, quantitative) and quality of the involvement (subjective, qualitative).
It's a difficult one to measure, would love to know a bit more about how they go about it.
"making a nuisance" must be very subjective because McCarthy is a proper bollix at almost all the defensive rucks he hit, to slow down opposition ball. its a patent tactic of leinster this year.
Come on like bairds not playing second row
I didn't include coombes, baird or ahern because i couldn't isolate lock minutes.
I'd guess if you value volume while still being at least good if not excellent at everything, you'd value coombes. Just a guess tho
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