Loose Pass: Strategic footwear choices, variations, TMO skills and unbroken ground
All Black Tyrel Lomax, Springboks Jean Kleyn and RG Snyman and referee Andrew Brace.
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with strategic footwear choices, strategic variations, TMO skills and some unbroken ground as we head into the World Cup…
Sliced
The grisliest image of the weekend was surely that of the knee of Tyrel Lomax, whose thigh was sliced open with all the efficiency of a breadknife through a watermelon by a flailing boot.
Lomax will now miss the opener against France, unless by some miracle the 30 stitches he has had applied to the wound do a special job of knitting both skin and muscle – the wound was that deep – together.
Just as clear as Ian Foster was after the game that it was the ‘blade’ studs on the bottom of a boot that caused the injury, he was also clear that this was not an act that was intentional. But he did say he thought that the authorities might like to have a closer look at the footwear in general.
Loose Pass, whose playing days were ended long before rugby players wore anything that couldn’t be screwed in, looked up reasons for wearing blades and found quite an interesting paragraph on Upper90football.com:
“Blade studs are larger than conical studs, and provide more surface area. The idea behind the shape of the studs is that they can more evenly distribute the weight of your body. This should also lead to more efficient power generation when accelerating.
“Blade studs also provide more traction than conical studs. This is due to the fact that the blades have much sharper edges. This added traction can be both an advantage and a disadvantage while playing.
“The benefit of this added traction is that you can change direction and accelerate with more control. This can help make you more explosive in tight spaces. The downside of this greater traction is that your joints will be subject to more stress when changing direction. This could put you at a slightly greater risk of ACL damage and other injuries.”
Now, Loose Pass may be old, naïve and out of touch, and we live now in days of far less risk of a set of studs being hammered down onto assorted limbs or appendages at the bottom of rucks, but it does seem to bely common sense that in a sport as full of chaotic, all-body contact as rugby we are allowing the protagonists to wear something that is actively explained as having sharp edges?
Moreover, it seems even odder that on a night when downpours were absolutely forecast, players would be wearing them anyway? Not that it did South Africa any damage, mind.
Anyway, perhaps it is a storm in a teacup, but it would be nice not to have to see a stray boot be responsible for 30 stitches again if we can help it.
Moving forward
Continuing on a theme, back in Loose Pass’ active days, teams rarely had the luxury of the full complements of substitutes that the modern teams do, never mind of choosing the mixture of said subs on the bench.
As all facets of the game eventually do though, the composition of the bench has turned into a strategic discussion as coaches look for the best balance of maximum impact and efficiency.
And it continues to be South Africa as pioneers. Having utilised the 6-2 split away from the traditional 5-3 mix and perfected its impact at the last World Cup, Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber now look to be unleashing the 7-1 split onto an unsuspecting world in this edition.
As if, in one go, letting loose the world’s second-best front-row onto opponents who were already tired from dealing with the best front-row was not enough, now it seems to be an all-enveloping tactic: have practically a whole pack on the bench and chuck them all on at the same time.
The 7/1 bench split by the Springboks last night was fascinating.
Will be surprised if we don't see it again at the World Cup.
The Boks brought all seven forwards off the bench at the same time in the 47th minute. pic.twitter.com/ebg7MBivKo
— Murray Kinsella (@Murray_Kinsella) August 26, 2023
It’ll be interesting to see if this becomes a thing. It can’t have done New Zealand’s beleaguered forwards much mental good on Friday to see 87.5 per cent of their opposing numbers replaced by some new ones looking just as big and fit and far fresher. Other countries renowned for their forward power have surely taken note of its effectiveness – yes, Georgia, we are looking at you.
But it is also interesting to note that there’s been plenty of undercurrent chat about picking backs who are versatile in their positions, not just from South Africa but from many nations. Eddie Jones has long cited positional versatility as an innovation frontier that needs further breaking down, and most of the coaches at the World Cup have given the nod to a player over another during the squad selections ‘because he can also cover X if we need him to’.
7-1 as an ongoing proposition? It makes sense, considering the attrition rate among the heffalumps. We’ll see, but if it continues, we cannot be far away from back-rows being deliberately trained to cover centre, for example, while the chat about half-backs being interchangeable continues to grow in volume, freeing up extra space on the bench. Canan Moodie himself has gone from wing to centre seamlessly. How many hookers do we see popping up on the wings these days? Interesting times.
When you know what you want to do, but…
Award for the best poker face of the weekend goes to Andrew Brace, forced to stand through several excruciating minutes in Madrid waiting for the video operator in the TMO booth to find the right clip to show.
It can be a dog show at the best of times, but this one was a classic, replete not only with picture of the coverage but also the nobs and dials and sliders of the video person’s computer screen and the occasional view of his mouse cursor flitting across it haphazardly.
The action replay neared the critical moment, then inexplicably jumped 40 seconds forward, then 80 seconds back, then played on in slow-motion. Then repeated. And all the while Mr. Brace stood there impassively, occasionally trying to hint that perhaps it would be good to just leave it to run until the tackle happened. It looked for all the world as though the TMO was battling with one of those disappearing controls you get on smartphone screens.
It probably isn’t the easiest job, finding the right angle of the right moment from a choice of dozens within a few seconds. But it is probably easier than this TMO made it look!
New order
The highest-ranked team in Pool C? Fiji, ahead of Australia and Wales. Pool D? Argentina, ahead of England, Japan and Samoa not far behind. Three of Pool B are in the top five in the world – including 1 and 2 – while the first match of the tournament has a better than average chance of being the final. The third-best team in Pool A is 13th in the world, Pools C and B both have four teams ranked above them.
The fact that the draw was a little skewed by having it take place so early only goes some of the way to explaining all this. Had Samoa executed in the final moments on Saturday night we’d have possibly been talking about them being ranked ahead of England too, not to mention Wales and Australia*.
Rugby’s top-level has become closer than ever, and while the exit of at least two of the top four is unfortunately all but guaranteed by the quarter-finals because of this draw, the chances of Fiji and/or Samoa making the semi-finals has never been greater; in no universe is this bad for the game.
*Extremely rudimentary napkin calculations indicate this might have been possible