Scotland: A Review

(c) PA Photos

"I talked about their game plan, their tactics, it's very difficult to see what they're doing" Jeremy Guscott on Scotland.

After watching the Scotland/England round 2 match-up I was very bothered by Scotland's performance because it felt like the first two rounds of the Championship at that time just ran so counter to the performances I remembered from last year. So I started to dig into the numbers a bit more and see just how delusional I had been about what happened last year.

In my 6 Nations preview for Scotland (here) I talked about their improved attack and scoring prowess in last year's tournament, and I was trying to be positive, but I wasn't looking or thinking about the whole picture at the time to understand the flaws in their game. I think as we have seen in their first three games in 2014, that positivity that was even there in the summer tour has mostly disappeared into a big team-wide malaise. Under Scott Johnson the team has secured some memorable wins and had the feeling of an improving side, but like his successor Andy Robinson those wins were built on the flawed performance of the other side (or their kicker *cough*Australia*cough*) and dogged defence by the Scots and when they got the result it was not often because they were the best side on the pitch. 
To that point, I'm sure some people could argue that the best team on the day wins. And sure, on the whole and with a big enough sample size, that is mostly true and at Test level there typically isn't a very large gap between teams. But the good team typically has the ball more and is in the other team's end with greater frequency. And that usually ends in a win, and yes you could pick some examples that might put a wrench in the gears that idea (slow ball for 5 minutes yes yes), the truism here is that the best defence is to have the ball.

Last year:

We're gonna set aside concerns about the Scottish defence for now, and though there were/are issues, they really are systemic of a larger problem that we all can guess: Scottish attack play. I think that we can start looking at this area by examing one particular statistic from 2013: The table below is an excerpt of data from the IRB analysis of the 2013 6 Nations tournament (great document) showing how often the backline players kicked, divided by position (Wingers do not seem to be accounted for?).   

per IRB 2013 6 Nations analysis

Across the board the Scottish backline hoofed the ball downfield more than their counterparts, and sometimes by a sizeable margin. The fact the Scrumhalves for Scotland kicked so much more than their counterparts isn't necessarily surprising if you've watched their games as the boxkick and chase seems to be the preferred safety valve for this coaching staff. Given the team can employ some height and speed on the wings with Tim Visser and Sean Maitland it seems reasonable that trying to put the opposition under pressure with a high challenge or a good kick-chase would be a decent strategy to employ every now and then. The disparity in numbers between the teams goes well beyond just box kicking more. Scottish backs of all kinds showed a greater propensity for kicking than their components, and thus it goes beyond the individual and points to a game plan that called for an above average amount of kicking. 
Per the same document, Scotland kicked the ball (on average) every 30.5 seconds of possession, which was a full 10 seconds more than the average for the rest of the 6 Nations teams (which they brought down; remove Scotland and the average raises to a kick/42.7 seconds of possession). The eyeball test makes it clear from any of their games that kicking is a tactic employed by Scotland to try and gain a footing in their games, and this goes back years to a dependency on Chris Paterson to kick penalties and Dan Parks to try and push teams back, but there are some other factors worth considering beyond a national predilection for putting the boot to ball (not alluding to the football fanatism that dominates the region)
The key root of this stat is a matter of of circumstance, mostly. It's not that Scotland's playmakers would get 30.5 seconds into their phase play and says "fuck it" and kick it away (well...) but that the team was in their end more frequently and had to use kicking as the primary means to move the ball instead of attacking the opposition. Their players across the board kicked more because they were often in a possession that necessitated a clearance kick based on percentages. Here is a spreadsheet I compiled (via scrum.com stats) showing the territory breakdowns for each Scotland game and each team, further separated by the halves. While it'd be great if you looked at it, the big take away is that the ball was in Scotland's half 68% of the time during last year's tournament. 68! Their kicking per seconds of possession average was brought down by the fact they got the ball in their half more often and had to employ a clearance with greater frequency than other teams. Your team has to kick the ball away more when they are constantly needing to clear the lines and get the ball out of your 22. The ball being in your half with greater frequency also presumes that more penalties given away in your half and the greater the chance of the other team putting points on the board.
Scotland only had the ball 40.6% of the time for the tournament, and by kicking the ball away with such greater frequency they were dooming themselves to low possession numbers. I compiled this handy dandy spreadsheet from the aforementioned IRB report to look at Scotland's possession during the tournament, and as you can see, it's not pretty. When they did have the ball it was kicked it twice as much as the opposition employed on average, as this possession usage chart will tell you. Their breakdown success (94%, IRB report) was on par with the rest of the competition, and even though they did not have as many offensive breakdowns as the rest of the competition it stands to reason that they could have retained their possession as well as the other teams. While the ball was in their end more often, Scotland went with a percentages game that a) didn't work and b) only put them under greater pressure. Kicking the ball away, in the end, did not help alleviate pressure as the other teams enjoyed possession and territory and were rarely threatened by a Scottish side that did not want to play rugby at all. 
The issue of possession is really the root of their defensive concerns as well; since they had control of the ball so much less than their opponents they had to make more tackles, and more tackles means more missed tackles, more penalties conceded, more time on the backfoot. Try scoring is still the premium event in rugby, and when you don't have the ball then you're poorly positioned to score and win the game. The wins against Ireland and Italy last year were not markers showing an improved side but complete fuck-ups by opposition teams that should have won based on possession and territory. "Statistics are like a bikini, it shows a lot but not the whole thing and if you go back in time, the stats may be lying" Scott Johnson quipped before the England test which opened the 2013 6 Nations (a game in which Scotland were thoroughly outclassed). Statistics don't lie, they're just a representation of what happened, and what repeatedly happened was Scotland conceding possession and being unable to turn their small share of possession into anything meaningful. Johnson was saying that just cause a side could get beaten in the statistics column doesn't mean they can't get a favourable result, and that's certainly true, but those results are outliers, not standards.
Lastly (mostly just to end this post), we can take a look at try origins from last year to hopefully emphasize the overall point of this post. 

Per IRB 2013 6 Nations analysis

5 of Scotland's 7 tries started in their own half, via intercepts, counter-attacks and general sweeping moves, showing that it is possible for them to hold on to the ball in their half and have that eventually lead to a score. Due to low territory and possession they only scored twice from possessions starting in the opposition half, which is woeful and tied with France for last. Defensively, you can see they conceded the most tries and also the most where the team gained possession in the Scottish end. It would seem that to return to winning ways or at least positive rugby would be to try and maintain that possession in their end and try and keep their defence from being stressed so completely. A nebulous problem, and we didn't even incorporate penalties, but right now the tactic of kicking away possession is going to leave the outcome of Scotland's games in doubt.