This year’s Tri-nations had the highest average of tries per game in more than a decade and saw a dramatic reduction in tactical kicking, according to an International Rugby Board (IRB) report released yesterday.
The 52 tries scored over nine matches played between Australia, New Zealand and South Africa was almost double the tally for last year’s tournament and compared favorably with the 3.2 tries per match in the Northern Hemisphere’s Six Nations.
TRIUMPH
The statistics will be seen as a triumph for new rules governing the breakdown, which were aimed at improving the attacking team’s ability to recycle the ball quickly at the tackle and keep the action flowing.
The increase bucked a trend of a 60 percent to 70 percent reduction in the number of tries scored over the last 10 years in the two major annual international rugby tournaments, the report said.
Another encouraging trend, it said, was the decrease in the proportion of tries to penalty kicks, from 2.5 kicks to one try last year to near parity this year.
The increasing influence of goal kicking in rugby has long been one of the main complaints of mainly Southern Hemisphere critics of the trends in the international game.
POSSESSION KEY
Those same critics would also have been delighted with the reduction in kicking in general, almost certainly a result of the importance of retaining possession under the new rules.
There was an average of just 37 kicks from hand per match compared to 60 in earlier years, the report said, with one match featuring just a single punt from a player who was not under pressure.
An illustration of the dangers of aimless punting down the field came in the report’s analysis of each team’s play during the tournament.
The All Blacks, who won the Tri-nations unbeaten and will be favorites to win the World Cup on home soil next year, scored 50 percent of their 22 tries in the tournament from possession obtained in their own half.
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