Another Autumn Nations campaign concluded last month. 2 wins, 2 losses, magical Finn Russell, grumpy Gregor Townsend and so on and so on. I’m going to (mostly) leave the thoughts and opinions on Scotland’s performances to others and in a departure from the usual, rather than bang on about props, I’m going to provide a bit of a statistical analysis of the performance of our forward pack as a whole.
First of all, a bit about the methodology used here.
I’m only looking at our forwards to make this manageable.
I’m only looking at the performances of those who started games OR who came on as subs during the first half (Young and Ashman sneak in). So for instance Jack Dempsey’s stats cover the game against Argentina where he started and the game against New Zealand where he replaced Hamish Watson early on but NOT his other appearances off the bench. The reason for this is that the stats for second-half subs are generally all over the place and it saves me from explaining lots of anomalous data points. That’s not to say that said sub stats won’t be worth a look at some point in the future though. I’ve also not included George Turner (35 mins) and Sam Skinner (22 mins) who were both replaced during the first halves of their only starts for the same reason.
The stats themselves are from the Autumn Nations Series site and I’m led to believe from the approximate million ad break inserts voiced by Brian Habana, are provided by Sage. None of this is particularly complex stuff though I’ve calculated some custom metrics (which I’ll explain when they appear) which may or may not be very robust but I think when combined with the eye test feel right in their outcome. We’re also missing breakdown stats and anything to do with the set piece which is criminal because they’re key metrics for forwards, but I couldn’t find them anywhere so there we are!
We’ll have a look at effectiveness when carrying, performance in defence, impactful moments (good and bad!) and do a bit of a conclusion. And of course stats don’t always tell the whole story so that’s always a potential caveat to anything below but hopefully we’ve a sample size large enough to be pretty robust for most of the players even if we know some metres gained are harder work than others etc.
So like Jamie Ritchie pitching into some Argentinian handbags, let’s delve into the stats.
Firstly let’s look at how the big lads upfront got on when carrying the ball.
For this I’ve pulled in minutes played, the number of carries and total metres made, then done a simple calculation on the former two to get carries per 80 minutes. This gives us both an idea of work rate in attack and effectiveness.
A few things strike me here. First of all Richie Gray stood out over his two appearances mostly for his instant impact on our line out but he was pretty useful when he got his hands on the ball too topping the chart for metres per carry. However he was also pretty much our least prolific carrier. Hamish Watson also carried very effectively albeit not as often as we love to see. Ashman comes out of this very well on both metrics and certainly showcased what he looks set to add more of in the future and Schoeman and Jonny Gray both carry very frequently and whilst not high up on the metres made metric undoubtedly deserve credit for making the hard yards so often.
Schoeman in particular carried at a rate of 10 per 80 minutes which is prodigious for a prop. It’s been said that scrummaging in the second row takes twice the effort that it does in the back row, and that scrummaging in the front is more than twice as much hard work again. It’s hard work however you quantify it and Schoeman’s workrate in the carry, on top of the scrum solidity, is a major bonus.
However it’s Jack Dempsey that stands out in a league of his own here in terms of offering himself to take the ball forward, averaging 11 carries per 80 minutes and at just under 6 metres per carry he’s pretty effective as well. Comment section after comment section has talked about the need for a ball carrying no 8 and the above suggests Dempsey is exactly that however I’m also going to mention Matt Fagerson. There aren’t many who carried more often and there aren’t many who carried more effectively and his carrying stats are pretty much unchanged over all four games including his foray at 6 vs Argentina. He was consistently excellent and topped the metres made chart amongst the forwards with 42 against the All Blacks.
One other thing. If I’d have included George Turner here he’d have literally been off the chart in terms of his carries per 80. So whilst he didn’t quite manage enough minutes as a starter to feature he’s still worth a shout out. Massive contribution. Brown played pretty well over his two appearances however he’s not in the same league as Ashman or Turner as a ball carrier.
Our biggest struggles in the carry though seem to come when within 5 metres which these stats don’t capture of course. Schoeman, Ashman and Dempsey are all powerful carriers close in though so we should get better here. My suspicion is that our issue is less power and more the franticness that seems to set in and so frequently saw isolated carriers held up over the line, especially by New Zealand. It’s an area that will surely be identified as a work-on.
Next up we’ll take a look at performance on the opposite side of the ball, any guesses on how Jonny Gray will do here?
For this we’ve got the number of tackles per 80 and tackle success rate.
Now the general criticism I see of the Tandy defence is that the weak spots are out wide. And given our forwards generally aren’t the ones defending out there, this claim bears up pretty strongly with only three players under the 90% mark for tackles completed and a decent clutch all missing none at all.
I don’t think there are any shirker’s here, it’s clear to me that all our forwards put in big shifts defensively and it’s an area of strength for the team.
I’m going to call out Jonny Gray and Watson first of all. Both average over 15 tackles per 80 minutes with unsurprisingly Gray missing none and Watson only missing 2 (is he human after all?). Perhaps more surprising though is Dempsey doing very well here only missing 1 in 20 and racking up those 20 at a rate of just under 15 per 80 minutes. Graft is a feature of recent Scotland backrows and Dempsey has shown a big workrate on both sides of the ball which I’ve no doubt will have endeared him to the coaching team despite him perhaps not having caught the eye as much as he does for Glasgow.
Again though we need to mention Matt Fagerson. He’s averaged 17 tackles per game missing only 4 and he’s maintained that over 300 minutes (only Jamie Ritchie played more with 310). I said consistent earlier but what else can you say here? He’s a machine.
Lastly a quick word for Zander Fagerson and Schoeman who both averaged over 10 tackles per 80 over the four games.
So having looked at attack and defence, perhaps there is a way to mangle the two together to get an idea of overall contribution. (You can skip the next paragraph if you’re bored by maths!).
Of course there is! For this I’ve multiplied carries per 80 by average metres made per carry to get a carry rating. And I’ve multiplied tackles per 80 by success rate to get a tackle rating. I’ve then looked at the averages for each of the players for each metric, weighted them by minutes played and used the difference in both numbers to divide the carry rating (the higher value) to get comparable numbers so the scale will work.
So what does this tell us? Nothing new, Dempsey is out on his own as our most effective carrier and contributed to the defence massively too, Gray and Watson are prominent for their tackling. We’ve already seen all of this but I hope this visualisation really helps demonstrate Matt Fagerson’s impact with and without the ball. This is an industrious group of forwards and he’s excelling. Ashman and Dempsey both carried better however over many less minutes and didn’t score as highly in defence.
You could also draw a conclusion that generally, Scotland players rate higher for their tackling than their carrying. I’d be hesitant to go too far with that given the metrics may or may not be that comparable but I do think there could be something there. I believe (and I think the stats support) that Townsend demands high workrate and high tackle numbers from his forwards as a minimum. I think when you look at the names leading the carrying ratings, namely Dempsey, Ashman, Schoeman and Matt Fagerson these are all either still young and/or relative newcomers to the side and it’s a really promising sign that we may now be seeing players break into the 23 who are very effective ball carriers above and beyond some previous incumbents like Wilson or Brown who may have easily matched their tackle numbers but would not have carried as often or as effectively.
Blah blah blah Matt Fagerson is doing all the boring basics you might say. Fair enough so let’s try and see if we can identify the moments that matter and change the impact of games.
This is lovely and simple and unadjusted for time played just shows us how many of each of these impactful moments each player has contributed. Two defensive metrics (blue) and two more attacking ones (red).
The tight 5 may not stand out here as much but that’s fine because we know they make up for it with their grunt at the set piece. The one exception though has to be Pierre Schoeman, he was prominent in both attack and defence as we’ve already seen but also contributed turnovers, broken tackles and a cheeky offload. Only 5 offloads incidentally across the whole group, clearly Townsend has instructed the forwards to leave the flair to the backs! But if it isn’t clear from everything so far that Schoeman goes above and beyond being just a very solid prop, this should cement it.
Captain Jamie Ritchie does shine here too and indeed carried the majority of the team’s turnover threat whilst Watson and Dempsey both unsurprisingly broke several tackles amongst strong contributions.
Again though Matt Fagerson stands out with 4 broken tackles and a forward leading 5 dominant tackles! Now I’ve often read that he apparently lacks physicality, not only do the stats suggest otherwise but when I apply the eye test I recall a moment during the Fiji match where Bill Mata approached the Scotland defensive line at something approaching full tilt. Fagerson stopped him dead. I think any doubts about his ability here can be put to bed.
We should probably check how these stats look though when compared with minutes played, just to ensure it’s a fair comparison.
Fagerson leading the way, and clearly too and Ritchie and Schoeman come out of this well too. Gilchrist isn’t always the most exciting selection and despite playing a lot of minutes the above chart in combination with his average tackling and carrying stats suggest there could be room for improvement in the second row. I wonder if Cummings would provide a more impactful complement to either of the Grays who both stand out for either their line-out impact (Richie) or defensive contribution (Jonny). The former is surely a fixture going forward given our lineout is much poorer without him so perhaps Cummings would be the man to add a bit more oomph beside him. Sam Skinner could be an option too. We’ve talked already about the difference players like Schoeman and Ashman can make to our pack and it does feel like Gilchrist is firmly in the mould of (very) hard worker but without a point of difference. If we want to compete with the top nations we need something extra or stand out in every position and a red scrum cap may not cut it.
Seems only fair that we should also take a look at the more negative moments of impact too though.
Now I must confess that I’m unsure of whether scrum penalties are included or not here in the official stats so we’ll be kind to Schoeman and assume that they may be, I also don’t believe Sage recorded knock ons amongst the handling errors (which is bizarre but there you go) so bear that in mind. I’ve also left out yellow cards, there weren’t many and they were all for varying things so I don’t think their inclusion would add much.
Jamie Ritchie really stands out here with 8 penalties, doesn’t he? We need to bear in mind that he also topped the chart for turnovers won and that’s a high risk, high reward game. However he’ll want to cut out the silly penalties such as the one for the extra roll near the New Zealand line and the one for tackling an Argentine from the ground going forwards.
Credit to Matt Fagerson again though, 1 penalty conceded in 300 minutes? Impressive discipline. Credit to Fraser Brown too who has often been labelled a penalty magnet but kept his personal count down to 1.
Time for me to wrap this up with a bit of a conclusion then. I think our forwards sometimes take a fair bit of flack, not physical enough and so on and it’s not always without merit. I have to say though my opinion both from having watched the Autumn series and looking at the stats is that we’ve got a group of forwards here who have gone toe to toe with four very good and physical sides and generally held their own outside of a period in the first half against Fiji where we had to weather a real storm. To a man they work enormously hard, there is grunt in spades in that pack and when drawn into a dogfight against the Argentines no backward steps were taken.
Schoeman gets through a huge amount of work for a prop as does Fagerson and I strongly believe that in Ashman and Dempsey we have a couple of big carriers coming into the side and this should give us an extra edge going forwards (literally and figuratively) adding more power. Unfortunately stats for the breakdown (rucks hit, first man to arrive and so on) aren’t freely available anywhere I could find, but I feel would tell the same story.
You may have noticed a bit of a recurring narrative running through my analysis as well, namely mention of Matt Fagerson. I’m going to stick my neck out now and say I thought he was our player of the series ( or at least the pick of the forwards given Darcy Graham’s performances). In fact I think he’s currently our best forward and I’d have no hesitation in having him as the first name on the team sheet up front. In my opinion he’s come on leaps and bounds over recent seasons and has answered every question asked of him. His workrate is off the chart in both attack and defence, he’s added real physicality to his game, rarely going backwards in contact and his consistency is seriously impressive, to maintain these levels over 300 minutes across 4 consecutive weekends is no mean feat. He may not be a Duane Vermeulen or Billy Vunipola when it comes to the eye-catching carries but he’s frequently top of our metres made stats and his overall contribution speaks for itself.
Backrow selection looks very competitive right now. Fagerson we’ve discussed, Ritchie is captain and Darge will surely come back in when fit too and I do like the look of Dempsey on the bench because he adds huge impact. Would it be madness to leave out Watson? Even seemingly slightly off his best, the stats do suggest Watson is still operating at a high level and he has time to peak again before we kick off against England in February. That’s some real depth brewing and we didn’t even get to see Crosbie this Autumn who I really rate. Not to mention Bradbury or Muncaster…
Who would you pick in your backrow?
I’m keen to read your thoughts and I’d love to get any feedback on this article particularly if you enjoyed it, then what else you’d maybe like to see in the future. The same for the backs? A comparison between what I’ve shown here and our peers and opponents? Something looking at impact from the bench? Let me know.