GREENWICH, CT – It was another points-filled weekend in the PRO Rugby set-up. San Fran got off the schneid with their first win and San Diego stepped it up against stubborn Sacramento, who played inspired rugby while down a man. But let’s take a closer look at the PRO Rugby Stats in each match and see how the teams looked, By The Numbers.
But first, take a quick look at this Handy-Dandy [trademarked] Glossary before continuing:
- Average Penalty Points (APP) – Number of times points are scored off of penalties in the attacking half of the field divided by total penalties awarded in attacking side
- Defensive Hold Average (DHA) – Number of times a team repels its opponent within it’s own 22 meter divided by the number of times opponent enters within 22 meter line.
- Red Zone Point Average (RPA) – Number of times a team gets points when it goes inside the 22 meter line divided by the number of time that team is inside the 22 meter line.
- Attacking Plays – Offloads plus line breaks plus plays
- Penalty Difference – Penalties awarded divided by penalties conceded
- Turnovers – Times the ball changes possession not including penalties. Ex. counter ruck, interception, loose ball, etc.
Now that you’re up to speed, let’s take a closer look at San Francisco’s victory over Ohio.
For the first time this year things finally clicked for San Francisco. With the way they were moving the ball on attack, it’s easy to see why. San Francisco led the league in attacking plays with 16, 4 more than San Diego. The main contributor to this stat was the considerable number of offloads they had which opened up opportunities to poke holes in Ohio’s defense. They also had an impressive league leading 44% Average Penalties Points (APP). With only one penalty goal, most of those points came from tries. However, their game wasn’t perfect all around. San Francisco only won 40% of its lineouts and within it’s 22-meter line only had 33% for Defensive Hold Average (DHA) compared to Ohio’s 57% DHA.
Despite its strong defensive game, Ohio fell through on attack. Ohio’s ability to launch a successful attack was stifled by an 11% APP, a penalty differential of -8 and five turnovers compared to San Francisco’s two. As seen on the scoring diagram below, Ohio’s tries came from a number of short runs by their forwards. Ohio had 50% redzone point average (RPA), however, these opportunities were too few and the backs were unable to make anything happen from far out. With zero Attacking Plays, the backs needed to get more involved than they did.
San Diego‘s dominance made for some interesting statistics.
Despite only having the ball for 37% of the match and only a 21% APP, San Diego made the most of the time it had with the ball and was a threat from afar. Five of San Diego’s tries were from outside the 22-meter line and it had 3 plays of 50 meters or more. Thanks to the nifty steps and speed of USA Eagle Wing Takudzwa Ngwenya, San Diego was able to score from it’s own side of the field with the weekend’s most line breaks of six. San Diego also dominated the rest of the league in its RPA with 70%. Whenever the ball was run close to the try zone, fans knew that San Diego was going to score. Defensively, San Diego played a very strong game by impressively stopping Sacramento with a 70% DHA. Their ability to stop the attack, turn over the ball, and get it out of the 22-meter area was impressive.
Sacramento just couldn’t capitalize on this game. Having the ball for 63% of the match did not help them when they were 33% APP and 30% RPA. That sort of lack of efficiency simply cannot win games and a penalty difference of -8 hurt will always hold a team back.
It will be interesting to see if San Francisco can replicate its clever ball movement against a dominant Denver side, in this weekend’s only match. Let us know if there are any stats you’d like to see and we’ll try to accommodate. Please consider that we have limited hours in the day!
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P.s… Check out our on camera interviews with PRO Rugby San Diego Head Coach Ray Egan, wing Tim Stanfill & Sacramento Assistant Coach Kevin Battle…
And here are my interviews with High School All-America Coach Salty Thompson, USA Eagle Mike Petri and Penn High’s Cedric Vakalahi from the USA High School Boys Championships in Charlotte.
