The weather outside was frightful, but the defences throughout the quarter-finals were just downright frightening.
All four matches were about unrelenting defensive effort in the face of underdogs who knew they needed the ball to win. Which begs the question, how come only half the teams who qualified for the semi-finals won the possession battle?
Stat of the week
New Zealand took the bull by the horns this week. Well, they made a tackle every eight seconds in their quarter-final 46-17 victory v South Africa, which is how long a rodeo rider has to stay on a bull to get a score.
The rodeo rider is getting thrown around at the behest of the bull, but in the Black Ferns’ case they were using that amazing defensive effort to put their own stamp on the match. New Zealand’s 283 tackles v South Africa were the most in the tournament so far.
Remarkably, second place in that list comes France, as Les Bleues made 252 tackles during their 18-13 win over Ireland. Both teams had just 35 per cent possession. How did they both win? And, in New Zealand’s case, how did they win by 29pts?
You need the ball to score tries. However, you don’t need the ball for very long to score lots of points. New Zealand scored eight tries from just 91 carries, that means that every 12th carry resulted in them crossing the line.
South Africa on the other hand scored three tries from 178 carries, that’s a try every 59th carry. Not all carries are created equally.
New Zealand had 85.7 per cent of carries get over the gainline. The gainline is an imaginary line drawn horizontally across the pitch at every breakdown. If you get over the gainline on your carry it means you are advancing towards the opposition line. South Africa made 57.3 per cent of their carries over the gainline.
South Africa had more carries but more ineffective carries and ultimately carried for 113m less than the Black Ferns. All that added together meant that New Zealand had twice the 22-entries of South Africa (14 v 7) and more points per entry (3.3pts vs 2.4pts).
All this is to say that possession tells us a lot about how a game was played but it won’t tell us who ‘should’ have won the match. To know that we need to see what a team did with the ball they had, not just how much of it they had.
Elite footwork
At a wet Ashton Gate, England were able to unpack a game plan which fitted the conditions perfectly. They kicked 37 times for over a kilometre, both highs for the tournament.
Scotland responded with 26 kicks (sixth most) and 889m (fourth most) but still lost the territory battle 54 per cent to 46 per cent. If you’ve got your abacus out you’ll realise that Scotland actually kicked further per kick than England, so how did they lose that battle?
When you kick the ball, three things can happen. The opposition can run it back, they can kick it straight back, or it goes into touch and they get a lineout (unless it’s a 50/22 but we don’t need to worry about those here).
On Sunday, England had 13 lineouts and Scotland had 19. Lineouts are a brilliant attacking platform, 37 per cent of all tries this tournament have come from lineouts. That is more than any other try origin. Why were England happy to gift Scotland so many of these golden opportunities? Because they were confident of pinching a lot of those lineouts. Scotland won just 11 of their 19 lineouts (England won 12 of 13) and each of those eight turnovers gave England the chance to attack a disorganised defence.
In wet weather, running from deep is fraught with risk but kicking passes that risk onto the receiving team. When England felt that pressure they were able to tilt the field back towards Scotland by kicking long in opportunities where they might have fancied a run if the skies were clearer.
Iron women
By the end of the quarter-final weekend there were eight women who had played every minute of every match (320 minutes). They were; Francesca McGhie, Rhona Lloyd, Emma Orr (all Scotland), Georgina Freidrichs, Maya Stewart, Piper Duck (all Australia), Byrhandre Dolf (South Africa), and Julia Schell (Canada).
With Scotland, Australia, and South Africa exiting the competition at the quarter-final stage it means that only Schell has the potential to play every minute of every match of every round in this World Cup. That’s what the stats nerds will be looking at this weekend!
