I am not going to talk about my hobby horse of home town refereeing in this thread. But I am going to assume that the reader accepts that there is a natural advantage for the home team in rugby. You are welcome to assume whatever reason you like for why that advantage occurs. There is a new style of rugby emerging in this year's super XV that I will call road rugby. I am taking the name from the NHL where you play Road hockey. Road hockey consists of plenty of dump and chase, scoring early to take the crowd out of the game, and just trying to scramble your goals rather than scoring pretty goals. The emerging style of road rugby is to keep the ball in hand. When at home teams are kicking it back when they receive the ball at the 30 metre mark. These days the travelling team is trying to run it back from the same field position. Or at least the thinking teams are - the teams that don't are getting thumped by 20 points. The other thing the road team does, when on defence, is commit a competitive number of forwards to the breakdown. They are trying to break up the home team's possession as early in the tackle count as possible. Good road teams, the Canes (even though they lost), and the Force to a degree. This year's comp has seen a significant winning trend for the home team, we will see some some road victories in the second half. Not an avalanche of them, but some.
That's quite interesting, because I'd assume conventional logic would be that you shut up shop a bit away from home, and kick more than you'd run.
And that is why the SA teams are getting dicked on the road. You just get less quality possession on the road so you must make it count.
Surely if you aim to recycle the ball as much as possible, you're risking more at the breakdown and thus giving the referee a greater role? I don't think that's a wise tactic away from home.
Good post. Running the ball from deep in your territory rather than kicking it will lead to more breakdowns. However the road team is carrying the ball into that breakdown and I am pulling this out of my ass but I would say the attacking team doesn't get penalised as much at the breakdown as the defensive team. So more breakdowns in the context you have outlined is an acceptable risk.
