Opinion: Steve Borthwick’s ‘foolhardy’ data-driven decisions ‘mitigate failure’ as England live in the past
England fly-half Marcus Smith and an insert of head coach Steve Borthwick.
Looking back at the weekend’s proceedings at Twickenham against New Zealand, the big talking point was the replacement strategy of Steve Borthwick, sending on a raft of replacements in a game where England were on top.
Now, I fully understand the need to properly use data to inform rugby decisions, but using it in isolation and relying wholly upon it is the stuff of foolhardy coaching.
Coaches have live data streaming via Sportscode and other apps all the time. They measure fitness and fatigue in real-time, they have detailed stats on interventions, tackle count and all manner of aspects of the match, yet to use these in isolation is incredibly dangerous.
England’s biggest data takeout is in their last ten Tier 1 Test matches they are averaging 3 points in the last 20 minutes of the game. In every one of those Tests, England were ahead at the 60-minute mark, yet closed out only half of them, and in each instance bar the Ireland game last year, those matches were against teams ranked lower than themselves.
Reading the data in detail, England have averaged 5.5 replacements in those last quarters, so something simply must tell you that the strategy is NOT working. In fact, you could argue that against New Zealand three times and South Africa once, that the strategy removed momentum. So why are England slavishly continuing with it?
Different Resources
When South Africa, Ireland or New Zealand unload their benches, they tend to have players coming on that augment the situation; proven, hardened Test athletes with a significant ability to change up tempo. Now, Borthwick said clearly post-game that when you have a player of the quality of George Ford on your bench, then you have to use him- but is that really the case?
Are Nick Isiekwe, Theo Dan, Fin Baxter, Harry Randall and Ben Curry really better players than the men they replaced? Sure, they might have energy in their legs, but they don’t have ownership of the game that’s in progress, they take time to get up to speed and in the case of the players I listed, there is a drop off in both experience and quality, so I simply don’t get the adherence to a pre-determined plan that’s provably NOT working based upon the previous ten Tests.
Sending cold players into hot situations is a practice that fails more often than not. How many times have you seen a new hooker introduced with a key throw, only for him to fluff his lines because he’s simply not up to speed and not warm enough to complete his discipline.
I get why Borthwick would send George Ford on, but objectively George hadn’t played a proper game this season and Marcus Smith was delivering a match-winning performance. One substitution decision cost England the result, but it also will erode Smith’s confidence in terms of his impact and his 60 minutes of brilliance. Rather keep him on, let him own the result and learn from the experience for the next World Cup when we might need him to close a tight knockout game out.
Analysts will give you the fatigue argument, but it’s one that needs careful consideration. A three-minute injury stoppage can have a really positive affect on those tiring; there are players- the likes of Tom Curry, Ellis Genge and Jamie George to name a few- that have massive personal moments in matches and removing that capability is dangerous.
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History
Relying on data means you are using history to make decisions. The information, by definition, is living in the past and it doesn’t look at the potential of the moment or the flow of the game at that point in time.
It is about feel- combining objective data with the subjective feel of the coaches and players in terms of what’s happening in front of them- and right now England are not balancing this equation properly, with overreliance on stat-driven preplanning over and above an intuitive feel of the match situation. Put simply, eyes and feel tell you more than a spreadsheet of numbers- if it didn’t you may as well play fifteen pocket calculators against each other.
Now, don’t get me wrong- data used correctly is incredibly beneficial. The strong coach uses it to inform his intuition- just in the way Rassie Erasmus and the Springboks use it. But the weak coach uses it to mitigate failure, and I’m concerned that’s the way England are heading if they don’t start reacting to the game situation over and above the data situation.
Change in rugby, just in life, has to be for the better. For England, we know that in the last ten Tests, our changes haven’t been for the better and unless our coaches can turn their thinking around then we’ll continue to drop off in the last 20 as we’ve probably done.
So my message is clear- get experienced impact players on the bench, use them wisely, but above all, do it according to what’s happening on the pitch, not on the laptop screen.
