The data that shows why run-and-gun Lions are now a different beast
The number of tries scored in Super Rugby has also doubled since 2013, but a wide per-game try gap that opened up between the hemispheres pre-COVID has since been narrowed. Former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika said last month he'd been stunned to see the level of attacking skill in the Premiership while coaching Leicester.
'The days of kick it and chase it and hope for good outcomes at the set-piece, from a northern hemisphere perspective, are very much in the past,' Fisher said.
'If you look at the quality of the [Lions] players, particularly the halfbacks and the 9 and 10, the width, the speed of pass, the vision, the appreciation of space, it's an exciting prospect for our [Queensland] boys.'
The Lions were expansive in their loss to Argentina in Dublin, but didn't go away from it in Perth, as many thought they might. The Lions scored eight tries against the Force and did so mostly with superb transition attack, wide-running forwards and a whopping 23 offloads.
Again, counter to stereotypes, the most lethal of the Lions in Perth was Scottish No.10 Finn Russell, who is widely regarded as one of the world's most dangerous attacking players.
Russell has been paired with skilful Irish halfback Jamison Gibson-Park in the team to meet Queensland, and they're likely to be the Test halves. The attacking-minded duo of Mack Hansen and James Lowe will operate out wide.
The Reds' last clash with the Lions in 2013 is remembered for Luke Morahan's incredible solo try but this tour the Queenslanders source of strength will be their forward pack, which contains a bevy of big men who have points to prove to Joe Schmidt, like Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Josh Canham, Seru Uru and Joe Brial, and Ryan Smith and Angus Blyth on the bench. With Matt Faessler, Aidan Ross and Jeffrey Toomaga-Allen also in the engine room, but some inexperienced halves, the Reds would much prefer close-quarter combat than touch footy.
That could see the Reds being the ones to take pace out of the game, use contestable kicks, and play to the set-piece, particularly given the Force also troubled them at scrum time in Perth. If they're still in the game at the hour-mark, the pressure will then flip all onto the Lions.
'We are a team that showed over the course of the last 18 months in particular that our set-piece is strong, particularly with our scrum, our ball,' Fisher said.
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The Age
7 hours ago
- The Age
The data that shows why run-and-gun Lions are now a different beast
It is almost double the per-game try average of the Premiership season 12 years ago, which ended just before the last Lions tour to Australia in 2013. The number of tries scored in Super Rugby has also doubled since 2013, but a wide per-game try gap that opened up between the hemispheres pre-COVID has since been narrowed. Former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika said last month he'd been stunned to see the level of attacking skill in the Premiership while coaching Leicester. 'The days of kick it and chase it and hope for good outcomes at the set-piece, from a northern hemisphere perspective, are very much in the past,' Fisher said. 'If you look at the quality of the [Lions] players, particularly the halfbacks and the 9 and 10, the width, the speed of pass, the vision, the appreciation of space, it's an exciting prospect for our [Queensland] boys.' The Lions were expansive in their loss to Argentina in Dublin, but didn't go away from it in Perth, as many thought they might. The Lions scored eight tries against the Force and did so mostly with superb transition attack, wide-running forwards and a whopping 23 offloads. Again, counter to stereotypes, the most lethal of the Lions in Perth was Scottish No.10 Finn Russell, who is widely regarded as one of the world's most dangerous attacking players. Russell has been paired with skilful Irish halfback Jamison Gibson-Park in the team to meet Queensland, and they're likely to be the Test halves. The attacking-minded duo of Mack Hansen and James Lowe will operate out wide. The Reds' last clash with the Lions in 2013 is remembered for Luke Morahan's incredible solo try but this tour the Queenslanders source of strength will be their forward pack, which contains a bevy of big men who have points to prove to Joe Schmidt, like Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Josh Canham, Seru Uru and Joe Brial, and Ryan Smith and Angus Blyth on the bench. With Matt Faessler, Aidan Ross and Jeffrey Toomaga-Allen also in the engine room, but some inexperienced halves, the Reds would much prefer close-quarter combat than touch footy. That could see the Reds being the ones to take pace out of the game, use contestable kicks, and play to the set-piece, particularly given the Force also troubled them at scrum time in Perth. If they're still in the game at the hour-mark, the pressure will then flip all onto the Lions. 'We are a team that showed over the course of the last 18 months in particular that our set-piece is strong, particularly with our scrum, our ball,' Fisher said.
Sydney Morning Herald
7 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The data that shows why run-and-gun Lions are now a different beast
It is almost double the per-game try average of the Premiership season 12 years ago, which ended just before the last Lions tour to Australia in 2013. The number of tries scored in Super Rugby has also doubled since 2013, but a wide per-game try gap that opened up between the hemispheres pre-COVID has since been narrowed. Former Wallabies coach Michael Cheika said last month he'd been stunned to see the level of attacking skill in the Premiership while coaching Leicester. 'The days of kick it and chase it and hope for good outcomes at the set-piece, from a northern hemisphere perspective, are very much in the past,' Fisher said. 'If you look at the quality of the [Lions] players, particularly the halfbacks and the 9 and 10, the width, the speed of pass, the vision, the appreciation of space, it's an exciting prospect for our [Queensland] boys.' The Lions were expansive in their loss to Argentina in Dublin, but didn't go away from it in Perth, as many thought they might. The Lions scored eight tries against the Force and did so mostly with superb transition attack, wide-running forwards and a whopping 23 offloads. Again, counter to stereotypes, the most lethal of the Lions in Perth was Scottish No.10 Finn Russell, who is widely regarded as one of the world's most dangerous attacking players. Russell has been paired with skilful Irish halfback Jamison Gibson-Park in the team to meet Queensland, and they're likely to be the Test halves. The attacking-minded duo of Mack Hansen and James Lowe will operate out wide. The Reds' last clash with the Lions in 2013 is remembered for Luke Morahan's incredible solo try but this tour the Queenslanders source of strength will be their forward pack, which contains a bevy of big men who have points to prove to Joe Schmidt, like Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Josh Canham, Seru Uru and Joe Brial, and Ryan Smith and Angus Blyth on the bench. With Matt Faessler, Aidan Ross and Jeffrey Toomaga-Allen also in the engine room, but some inexperienced halves, the Reds would much prefer close-quarter combat than touch footy. That could see the Reds being the ones to take pace out of the game, use contestable kicks, and play to the set-piece, particularly given the Force also troubled them at scrum time in Perth. If they're still in the game at the hour-mark, the pressure will then flip all onto the Lions. 'We are a team that showed over the course of the last 18 months in particular that our set-piece is strong, particularly with our scrum, our ball,' Fisher said.
ABC News
11 hours ago
- ABC News
The Dom Sheed goal was one of West Coast and the AFL's greatest moments, but it nearly never happened
Here's one for you. Would you rather play out a 300-game AFL career with multiple All Australians, best and fairests and universal acclaim, or enjoy a solid career that features one glorious, iconic, premiership-winning highlight? Perhaps we can call it the Dom Sheed Paradox. For as good a player as Sheed was in his prime, his name will forever be tied to one kick, one moment that will endure long beyond any other memory from his 165-game career. The winning goal in the 2018 grand final, in which West Coast beat Collingwood by five points, is Sheed's ticket to AFL immortality. No matter who you support, you've seen it enough times to have it burned in your memory — the momentary hush as Sheed composes himself, the bellows of support and derision flying his way from over the fence, the sublime balance of the left-footed drop punt and the unerring flight of the ball piercing the goal's narrowed gap. There have been few moments in footy this century more inspiring, more significant, and more difficult. As Brian Taylor's call for Channel Seven described, Sheed needed to be inch perfect, and was. But it's a moment that nearly never happened. The amount of things that needed to fall into place to put Sheed on that field, let alone in that spot, let alone at the end of that play stands as a reminder of how fine these lines are in sport. A butterfly flaps its wings, Collingwood loses another grand final and Dom Sheed is presented the keys to Kalgoorlie. For starters, Sheed was only in the West Coast side at that point of the season because Andrew Gaff wasn't. Gaff, who was All Australian in 2018 and among the Brownlow fancies late in the year, was in the midst of a suspension for the punch that shattered Andrew Brayshaw's jaw. Sheed had been dropped for that game, a Western Derby in round 20, after an inconsistent season to that point. Had Gaff not copped his eight-week ban, ruling him out for the rest of the season, Sheed would have struggled to break into an otherwise settled Eagles midfield that had no obvious place for him. To his credit, Sheed played some of the best footy of his career over the next two months, helped inspire the Eagles' September run and ended up sharing West Coast's player of the finals award with Jack Redden. Fast forward to grand final day, and having trailed by the best part of five goals in the first quarter, West Coast had pulled itself briefly in front and now narrowly behind with the clock ticking down. Sheed had again been among the Eagles' best during the head-spinning game, but was two minutes away from ending it on the losing side. As Collingwood launched a foray forward, with Adam Treloar preparing for a fateful kick in the direction of Jeremy McGovern, Sheed was supposed to be off the field. His number had come up for a rotation, and he was meant to be headed for the bench. Instead, midfielder Sheed decided to hide out the back of the play near the Eagles' forward line, not wanting to miss the closing stages of the biggest game of his life. At almost the exact same moment Will Schofield, in what has become the defender's favourite post-career yarn to spin, went on a glory run up the middle of the MCG and ended up wildly out of position when the Eagles turned the ball over. It meant McGovern had to cover Schofield's man, Jordan De Goey, putting the star intercepter in the perfect spot at the perfect time to take a towering mark. Via Nathan Vardy and Liam Ryan, the ball made its way to Sheed's hands in the forward pocket at the Punt Road End of the MCG. At this point of the retelling, if you listen closely, you can hear a Collingwood fan somewhere off in the distance bellowing out a well-worn refrain. "Maynard," you see, "was blocked". And maybe he was. Willie Rioli certainly stopped Brayden Maynard from getting to Sheed as the ball approached, and whether you think that's because Rioli was preparing his own play on the ball or that he was engaging in illegal shenanigans, you're not really wrong. It was a genuinely 50-50 call. Sheed also kind of played on a little bit, which is to say he made a sizeable and deliberate move off the mark, seemingly out of sheer panic in the moment. If it was round 13 and not the dying embers of a classic grand final, maybe an umpire blows up on Rioli for the block or calls Sheed to play on, and the panel shows debate it for three minutes and we all forget about it two days later. But no. Gaff punched Brayshaw so Sheed returned to the West Coast team, and Sheed played well so the Eagles made the grand final, and Sheed didn't go off when he was supposed to and instead lingered in the forward line, and Schofield went AWOL so McGovern switched to De Goey, and McGovern took the mark, which led to the ball getting to Sheed and Sheed was awarded the mark and not called to play on. And Dom Sheed kicked the goal and we will talk about it forever. The latter years of Sheed's career have been a hard luck tale, injury thwarting him at every turn. Had things gone another way his retirement at barely 30 years old may not have registered much beyond WA. Instead it has led to an afternoon of celebration across the league and a wearing out of a truly great AFL highlight. It nearly never happened, but for all except the Magpie fans among us, we should be very grateful it did.
