Ireland Team Talk XII: Farrell's First Fifteen

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

• Post tackle effort
• Slowing the ball
• Disrupting the ball
• Turning the ball over
• Committing extra bodies
• Bounce - ie, straight off the deck back into D line
• Long on ground

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

So Ireland are following Leinster down the South African path

I posted about him in the Champions Cup thread the other night... I discovered that stats site over the weekend. Coombes is carrying into contact... and if I am reading it right... on purpose, ideally committing tacklers, and with a view to offloading. And is hitting the gainline better than most, but as you say, not making huge metres per carry.

Here was my reading of it from that thread in relation to his carrying:

"He's top carrier of URC in Europe (I thought those stats were for Europe and not just leagues, think I'm wrong on that?) and 4th overall (when including players from English/French leagues). Only 7 of his carries weren't into contact... he's 55 carries ahead in that regard of URC players! Very clear what his role is. Of that Top 20 (carriers) he has the lowest dominant carry rate... but he's 8th for gainline success. He's consistently making some very hard yards is my reading of that?

In addition, of those Top 20 carriers he's 2nd for committing 2+ tacklers to his carries.

Can't find offloading stats for Europe here but he's well capable of an offload. At the very least he's freeing up space in the backline if we get quick ball, which if you look at Munster's linebreaks stats or the likes of Nankivell's stats alone... appears to be working, maybe? Also, he's Munster's second highest offloader for the season behind Frisch (Source: Munster website) so maybe that solves that one?"

As I said in that post, I guess it depends on what coaches want from their players/gameplan.

The France team has been named. Still very strong despite their injuries and absence of Dupont.