Defence Is Optional

Saw the age old meme “defence is optional in Super Rugby” across this sub again in the weekend so thought I might commit a bit of the work week looking into it. Now this definitely isn’t the complete picture as I can’t be fucked looking back at seasons worth of data, nor do I know how to. Instead I just took data from the most recent rounds of each major rugby union club competition.

Couldn’t find anything from the premiership since the weekend of the 27th of Jan, round 11, so used that. Also the URC was a bit wobbly with who was playing when so used the weekend of 15th February, round 11. The remaining competitions, Top14, Super Pacific and Japan league 1, were all taken from the most recent rounds the weekend of the 23rd of February.

From my extensive research I found that the URC had the highest tackle percentage with 86.2% followed closely by Super with 85.9%. Top14 was similar with 84.1% then lower down was JL1 and Premiership with 82.0% and 80.4%.

Points scored from a missed tackle was also interesting with Super the only competition scoring well above three points per missed tackle where the remaining teams were all around the low twos. Would’ve been interesting to have taken into account how many of those points were due to tries scored or goals kicked, but I didn’t think about that til now and can’t be fucked going back through everything.

Of course from this you could argue anyway you wanted, that Super rugby makes the second most tackles yet still has very nearly the same tackle percent as the URC means that they’ve indeed got good defence just with better execution post break. Or of course you could argue that Super has poor cover defence and shouldn’t be leaking as many points considering the defence is fairly accurate. Or a hundred other reasons why your league is best and the rest are sub par.

Anyway. Enjoy.