Ireland - 2022 Year in Review

Player Stats:

·        We used 45 players over the course of the season, of which 34 players played more than 80 mins of rugby. 6 players played less than 40 mins of rugby, with 2 (Ross Byrne & Jack Carty) receiving less than 10 mins.

·        6 players (Beirne, Doris, Gibson Park, Furlong, Sheehan and Conan) were involved in all 11 games, with Beirne, Doris and Furlong starting all 11. Another 4 players were involved in 10 games.

·        Tadhg Beirne & Caelan Doris were flogged this year – Beirne played 802 of a possible 880 minutes (91%), Doris 797 of 880 (90%), and JVDF also played 88% of all possible minutes. 8 players played in excess of 75% of all possible minutes.

·        Back three players unsurprisingly led the metres carried stats (Hugo Keenan 512m, James Lowe 471m and Mack Hansen 439m), with Caelan Doris next at 317m. On an average carry basis, excluding players who played <80 minutes, James Lowe is the leader at 7.5m per carry, ahead of Jimmy O’Brien (6.8m per carry), Mack Hansen (6.1) and Hugo Keenan (5.7). Worst carrying stats of players with at least 30 carries is Tadhg Furlong (1m per carry), Kieran Treadwell (1.7m) and James Ryan (1.9m).

·        Caelan Doris led the way in terms of turnovers won (12) ahead of Beirne (10) and O’Mahony and Porter next, both on 6. 

Conclusions

We were very fortunate with injuries, and we relied heavily on our core players who racked up a lot of minutes this year.

We performed (obviously) very well, and had a multitude of players who had exceptionally strong years.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that despite JVDF's World Player of the Year award that Caelan Doris was our best player in 2022. He started every game, second most minutes overall, most metres carried outside of back three players (4th highest overall), most turnovers won, second most defenders beaten, and second highest number of tackles, with an astounding 96% success rate in those tackles.

Outside of the statistics, he had eye-catching man of the match performances in the crucial win in NZ and against Australia at the end of the season. He had a phenomenal year.

There is a stat for Turnovers Lost - but it's not crystal clear what it comprises. It seems to be a combination of a multitude of things including handling errors, loose kicks (which result in possession transferring) and finally getting turned over at the ruck in possession.

On that count, Mack Hansen (unusually) is by far in front, on 21. Second is Tadhg Beirne on 13, followed by JGP on 12 and then three players (Doris, Ringrose & Keenan) all on 11.

FWIW as well, Joey Carbery got 264 minutes for Ireland last year, playing in 10 of 11 possible tests. Jack Crowley also got 106 minutes of international rugby.

Of the total minutes allocated to outhalves over the course of the year, Sexton played 57% of them, with the remainder split (Carbery 30%, Crowley 12%, Ross Byrne 1%).

Yeah, agreed. I don't think it's a meaningful stat, so didn't include it in my initial write up.

What good is getting to a semi final if we then lose it?

Would you rather win a Grand Slam or lose a semi final (if the option is just one or the other)?

I had a look at this, over the past 2 seasons. I broke down the tries by style of try (options either Line Break, Maul, Pick & Go, Numbers Up, Cross Field Kick, Kick Through or Strike Move), and then by Attack Build Up option (Multi Phase, Set Piece or Broken Play). I finally looked at the timing of when we scored our tries.

In 2021, we scored 46 tries in 10 games. Broken down by 'style' the largest component was Pick & Go tries (14 tries - 30% overall), followed by Line Break tries (11 tries - 24%), Numbers Up (9 tries - 20%) and then Mauls (7 tries - 15%). We had a handful of other tries via cross field kicks (1 try), kick throughs (3 tries) and a strike move try (1 try - Keith Earls v England).

In terms of attack build up - 27 tries came after Multi Phase play (59%), 5 via broken play (11%) and the remainder via Set Pieces (14 tries - 30%). Of the 14 set piece tries half were mauls (50%), 5 from line outs (36%) and 1 each from scrums and a quick tap penalty.

No particular concentration on when we scored our tries: split 48% first half v 52% second half; highest ten minute window was 70-80 mins (8 tries), but we scored 7 tries in the 30-40 min window and also in the 50-60 min window, so scattered around fairly evenly.

In 2022, we scored five fewer tries (41 overall) in 1 extra game. We played a tougher schedule in 2022, versus 2021 when we played the USA, Japan twice and Argentina.

Largest source of tries in 2022 was Line Breaks (18 tries - 44%), followed by Numbers up (8 tries - 20%), Pick & Go (7 tries - 17%) and then the maul (6 tries - 15%). One single try via cross field kick (dubious one - Mack Hansen v France but didn't know how to classify it) and one Turnover try (Ryan Baird charge down v Italy).

Largest build up source was again Multi Phase play (27 tries - 66%), followed by Set Pieces (11 tries - 27%), Broken Play (2 tries - 5%) and the solitary turnover try.

Of the 11 set piece tries, mauls accounted for 55% (6 tries), followed by scrums (3 tries - 27%), restart (1 try - 9%) and quick tap (1 try - 9%).

On the timing, we scored slightly more second half tries (56%), and the largest windows for scoring were the opening 10 mins (7 tries - 17%), ten mins after half time (7 tries - 17%) and final ten minutes (7 tries - 17%), which to me is testament to our coaches ability to identify weaknesses, our tendency to start well, and our fitness.

Conclusion

Despite the narrative, over the two seasons, the maul is actually our fourth highest source of tries (13 tries - 15%), considerably behind Line Breaks (29 tries - 33%), Pick & Go (21 tries - 24%) and Numbers Up situations (17 tries - 20%).

We score the majority of our tries from structured multi phase attacks (54 tries - 62%), with set piece next (25 tries - 29%), with surprisingly few Broken Play / Turnover tries (8 tries).

Over the two years, the biggest window for scoring tries is the final 10 mins (15 tries - 17%), this is probably skewed a little bit by a lot of late 'salt in the wound' tries against the likes of Italy, Argentina and Japan, with the only meaningful late tries in my opinion being the two scored against England this year in Twickenham.

From looking at the clips of all of these tries - the two best occasions where our attack looked especially fluid and dangerous were the NZ third test this summer and the November internationals in 2021, especially against Japan and Argentina.

The best overall tries in my opinion were:

Hugo Keenan v Italy (2021), James Lowe v Japan (2021), Caelan Doris v NZ (2021), Garry Ringrose v Wales (2022), Joey Carbery v Italy (2022), Mack Hansen v South Africa (2022) and obviously Robert Baloucoune's outrageous finish against the USA in 2021, but the single best try was Hugo Keenan v NZ (third test - 2022).

Gone way off topic here, apologies for derailing thread and its probably one that needs it's own thread.

This is literally the last thing the Boards Rugby forum needs. The topic has been discussed to death at this point.