On RugbyThe IRB have just completed their statistical analysis on the World Cup and the welter of stats reaffirm, for the most part, many of one's initial impressions. In fact, the 2007 version followed the trend of previous World Cups and was not the death of attacking rugby which England's unlikely run to a tryless final perhaps suggested.
And amid the figures there were one or two interesting insights into Ireland's negligible contribution.
In its conclusions, the IRB note that South Africa emerged triumphant in large part for adhering to the rugby they had played in the years leading up to the tournament, whereas, by comparison, France and New Zealand forgot themselves.
South Africa's game "was based on a strong set-piece, an aggressive defence and an ability to turn transgressions into points. In RWC 2007, it proved highly successful. Their own lineout was as successful as any, they managed more lineout steals than any other team and had an effective scrum. Securing possession was not seen as the ultimate objective - pressure was the priority - and their kick-at-goal rate was at the satisfactory 75 per cent mark.
"In addition, but excluding the final where no tries were scored, they scored tries at a consistent level throughout the tournament with match-try counts of 8, 3, 4, 9, 5 and 4."
By contrast, when the heat came on in a knock-out scenario, the All Blacks abandoned a ball-in-hand game between backs and forwards and resorted to a recycling game.
For example, when New Zealand beat France by 47-3 in November 2006, "they scored seven tries, creating just 43 rucks and kicked the ball 29 times. They made few passes - just 91 - but were clinical in their execution.
"This formula disappeared, however, in their RWC quarter final match against France. Instead of creating 43 rucks, New Zealand created 165, or almost four times as many. This was around 100 more than a normal New Zealand game; was around 50 per cent higher than the next highest in the tournament and is almost certainly the highest figure ever seen in an international match. It was at a scale that New Zealand had never remotely experienced before, with an often-seen expansive approach being replaced by forward attrition. The successful formula of recent years had been abandoned for some reason and New Zealand found themselves out of the competition."
Similarly, when France beat England 22-9 in Marseilles in August, they kicked the ball just 19 times. In the RWC semi-final, however, against the same opponents, they kicked the ball 46 times and lost.
"Again, the perceived safety of kicking into the opponent's half outweighed a possible alternative strategy that could have resulted in a different outcome."
Penalties have regularly outnumbered tries in the semi-finals and finals of the World Cups and in this regard 2007 was no different from 2003, 1999 and 1991. Even so, the winning team scored the most tries in 81 per cent of the matches, the exact same percentage as in 2003 and similar to previous World Cups on average.
In terms of tries for seconds in possession, Ireland were 11th in that table, scoring a try for every 489 seconds with the ball.
Interestingly, all bar Scotland of the eight quarter-finalists, plus Wales, found a rich source of tries was off turnover ball (South Africa scored eight of their tries in this manner) and from opposition kicks, but unsurprisingly, non-counter-attacking Ireland scored only one try off turnovers and one try off an opposition kick.
A high percentage, five of their nine tries, came off lineouts.
Ireland were indicative of a cultural divide between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with the latter scoring one in three tries from their half, whereas teams from the Northern Hemisphere scored one in five tries from their half (Ireland scored only two out of nine from their territory).
Although 60 per cent of tries were scored in the second half of games, Ireland were one of only four teams (England, Samoa and Portugal being the others) to score more tries in the first half.
Indeed, in the many, varied and sometimes trivial tables of statistics, Ireland didn't top too many tables. But there were some vignettes which, none too surprisingly, rather questioned Eddie O'Sullivan's contention that Ireland had "transitioned" from a kicking to a passing game.
In terms of average passes per game, Ireland were ninth, and per minute of possession were 10th. Ireland finished bottom of the table indicating the percentage of passes by forwards (only 11 per cent), whereas Wales topped that table with 30 per cent.
Curiously, Ireland's backrow passed the least of all the backrows at the World Cup.
By contrast, Ireland averaged 31 kicks per game, fewer only than Argentina (34) and Italy (33), and level with England and Georgia. It will come as no surprise that Ireland had the second-worst goal-kicking success ratio (54 per cent) of the 20 teams at the World Cup, bettering only Romania (46 per cent).
Taken in isolation, one wonders how these welter of figures and percentages are as reliable or even revealing as they might be, and it is disappointing, for example, that there were no statistics on off-loading, perhaps the most revealing of all the stats that are now de rigeur in modern day rugby.
One wonders, too, how revealing the IRFU's somewhat more painstaking and deliberate review will be and, by hiring Genesis to conduct the review, how much of a fudge it might be.
Will the people conducting the Genesis review have sufficient knowledge of the game to conduct this review fully? Will they be permitted to examine all aspects of Ireland's World Cup, including the performance of the management committee in granting Eddie O'Sullivan a four-year extension even before the tournament began?
Will they also fully examine the performances of the Irish management team/coaching staff as well as the players? Will all the players be interviewed, and if so, to what degree will they feel confident to give their true views of their employers? If the majority, or all, of the answers to these questions is "no", then you'd have to question its worth.
