The Six Nations has for years resisted the bonus point system, citing various reasons including tradition and the possibility of a team winning the grand slam but not the championship, but next year’s tournament will trial a system that is used in every major professional tournament in the world in a bid to encourage more open play.
This year’s Six Nations would not have been affected by bonus points, with England still going into the final round as champions, but its 15 matches produced an average of 4.7 tries. Take away the matches that involved Italy, and that average drops to 3.5.
The average in this year’s Rugby Championship (which has tweaked its system so that a team must score three more tries than the opposition to claim a tries bonus) was 5.8. Its 12 matches produced 70 tries compared to 71 in 15 in the Six Nations. There was no equivalent to Italy but the tournament did contain the most prolific side in Test rugby, New Zealand.
Interestingly, given the current talks of a more aligned global calendar during which the Six Nations has been asked to consider starting the tournament later in the season, the February try average this year was 3.3 compared to 6.8 in March. The previous year the average was 3.0 over the first three rounds with the remaining six averaging 7.5.
The ides of March do tend to cause Italy to collapse, but excluding their March games this year, the try average was still appreciably up on February at exactly five. Having resisted bonus points for so long, will the Six Nations stop insisting the tournament has to start at the beginning of February?
Had bonus points been around in 2013 Stuart Lancaster’s England, rather than Wales, would have won the Six Nations despite being trounced in their final game in Cardiff. Both teams finished on eight points with four victories, but Wales neither scored four tries in a match nor lost by seven points or fewer. Under next year’s trial system, they would have finished on 16 points, one behind England who would have secured a bonus point in victory over Scotland (the only match in that year’s tournament in which a team scored four tries).
When matches involving tier one nations are considered, the current autumn series has produced more tries than in 2014: 6.2 compared to 4.4. It reflects the emphasis now placed on getting the ball away quickly from the breakdown and challenging teams in wider areas.
Only one of the 10 countries has scored fewer tries this month than they did two years ago, Scotland down one from 11 in three, while Wales stayed the same on eight in four matches. Even though they won three of those games, a distinct improvement on previous Novembers, their coaching team has come under fire for a series of underwhelming performances.
Like France, Wales are trying to return to a style of play associated with them in years past, based on cunning and running rather than gunning. It is taking time as players used to being bottle-fed learn to think for themselves, but England under Eddie Jones are showing the way having made significant progress in the past year.
They have the opportunity, against the Australia side they whitewashed in the summer, to go through the year unbeaten. To compare them now with the first match under Jones in Scotland last February is to see two vastly different teams; in attitude rather than personnel.
Jones gave a presentation to the Rugby Football Union before the autumn series in which he outlined his plan not only for the next month but through to the 2019 World Cup in Japan. He said the improvement in England had its roots in the relationship with the Premiership clubs and that it was based on a strong identity forged by the team leadership of Dylan Hartley, Owen Farrell, George Ford, Billy Vunipola and James Haskell, although the latter two will be absent through injury on Saturday.
Jones said that in the next year he wanted to develop a second leadership group and oversee a team in which some 80% of the players had leadership qualities. He wanted, as Wales’s Rob Howley does, his players to be self-reliant and robust, believing that they could beat anyone, anywhere, any way how.
Coaching, he put it, should be adaptive, not prescriptive. A successful team was not just based on supreme conditioning – he pointed out that in the three Tests in Australia England had outscored their opponents in the final 20 minutes of each match – but individual responsibility. He wanted strong set-pieces and an improved maul to provide the foundation for expressive players.
England, he said, were not the best team in the world but his intention was that they would be by 2019, building in the next two years before peaking in the last Six Nations before the World Cup and then winning the tournament. They had the talent and now their game had clarity.
Jones has used the autumn series to assess his options. Injury has forced that to some extent and it will be interesting to see how England cope without Billy Vunipola on Saturday, a forward who has a central role in the way they play, rolling over defenders to provide quick ball for the half-backs and Farrell to exploit.
It is a pity, for the neutral, that Australia lost their unbeaten tour record against Ireland last weekend, but even without a grand slam to aim for they have the spur of revenge for what happened against England in the summer. Jones has raised the temperature by bagging the Wallabies’ scrum and the Australian media, confident his players no longer melt in the heat.
England and Ireland have shown the Lions the way in the last month, two physical teams who can play and live off their wits; fixtures and fittings to go with the nuts and bolts.
This is an extract taken from the Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. To subscribe just visit this page and follow the instructions.
