Success story or train-wreck? What the science says about Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell partnership
by Charlie Morgan
Fittingly, at the end of a week in which Emma Raducanu has led English rugby union’s news agenda, Ben Darwin reaches for his own tennis analogy to explain the significance of cohesion as it pertains to the fledgling midfield combination of Marcus Smith and Owen Farrell.
“The Bryan brothers [Bob and Mike] are a magnificent doubles team, but not the best individuals,” he says. “Let’s put them against Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
“Nadal and Federer would have to overcome some things. They’d have to adjust to court changes. They’d have to learn how to serve in doubles, and how to manoeuvre two people around the court rather than one. And then figure out who takes a shot when the ball comes down the middle of them.
“Habits are really hard to undo. But the question wouldn’t be ‘will they win?’ It would be ‘how many games would it take for them to win?’ It might take them 11 matches. From that point on, they’d probably never lose. But after they’ve lost the first five matches, do you panic and f---ing change things?”
Darwin, a former prop who played under Eddie Jones for the ACT Brumbies and Australia before embarking on a career in coaching and performance analysis, founded GAIN LINE Analytics in 2013. His company is an operations and management consultancy that interrogates data to determine the quality of human connections within an organisation.
A conversation with Darwin unearths intriguing titbits. When a team wears an alternative shirt, he says, their attacking returns generally drop by 40 per cent. The unfamiliarity causes players to flinch as they look for offloads. Defence is not as affected by kit changes because individuals are focussing on opponents.
New Zealand’s grey-clad loss to France in the Rugby World Cup 2007 quarter-final is one example of this principle. Darwin believes Ireland are worth a punt for World Cup glory in 2023 if they continue to tap into Leinster’s cohesion. He was more impressed by their 60-5 thrashing of Japan in Dublin because it was achieved in spite of jarring purple jerseys.
Concerningly for England supporters waiting to watch Manu Tuilagi on the wing, positional changes can be debilitating for cohesion according to GAIN LINE’s models. Jerome Kaino’s one and only Test start at lock, as well as the lack of shared experience between centres Ryan Crotty and George Moala, was a precursor to the All Blacks’ 40-29 loss to Ireland in Chicago five years ago.
Darwin’s own relationship with Jones has not always been smooth, but he is not about to add his voice to the most common criticism of his countryman: that Premiership performances do not seem to matter.
“The nature of English sport is that people are impatient because there is always someone else,” Darwin says. “People bagging on Eddie for not picking on form… you should never pick on form. ‘Form’ is the context of them playing in a different environment that has nothing to do with England.”
Jones’ reliance on foundations built by Stuart Lancaster has been shrewd, Darwin suggests, because a 13-club system is “fundamentally disadvantaged” compared to regional, provincial and franchise systems. The all-action union of Tom Curry and Sam Underhill is probably the only completely new combination blooded by England since 2015. That does not surprise Darwin.
The back-row duo of Tom Curry and Sam Underhill is arguably the only combination that has been unearthed by Eddie Jones
“People say Scotland, Wales and Ireland are underdogs because people look at resources,” he says. “I look at England as underdogs. For them to win a World Cup, everything has to go right – absolutely perfectly. And even then, they are pushing uphill.”
“With the All Blacks or Ireland or Scotland, you could lose a whole team and still have cohesion because there are so few clubs,” he adds. “With England, once you get beyond a squad of 23, it would fall off a cliff.
“It isn’t a system that regenerates well. It collapses, and you can see that in the ups and downs of England’s form over the last 20 or 30 years.”
GAIN LINE say World Cup winners tend to fulfil at least one of three selection criteria. The first is harnessing club cohesion. The second, as South Africa did in 2019 by assembling and maintaining a core of players and coaches with shared experience at the Stormers, is to be “ridiculously consistent” for the 18 months leading up to the tournament. Lastly, as was England’s method in 2003, you keep a largely familiar group together for two whole cycles.
And so, to Smith and Farrell. Time in training, both under Jones and with the British and Irish Lions, will have helped in the same way that emerging nations – plus ‘big system’ nations like England and France – tend to perform better at World Cups after long camps. Australia’s own midfield reshuffle, following the withdrawals of Quade Cooper and Samu Kerevi, is another consideration.
“Nothing clicks straightaway,” Darwin says. “It might look like [Smith and Farrell] do, but ‘clicking’ means that they are able to perform well under duress, and that is not possible. If they do well against a poor team, they are not clicking. They’re just not being tested.
“In any relationship, from all the research we do, the first game is generally the worst. But that is comparative to what they are up against. It could work, but it is also about the context of attacking Australia’s weaknesses.”
Hierarchy is another potential limitation. “Marcus Smith is likely to do whatever Farrell tells him to do because of his lack of experience at Test level,” Darwin continues, before delving into the archives for another convincing case study. Australia’s 76-0 thrashing of England in 1998 was Stephen Larkham’s first start at fly-half after 12 caps that had largely come at full-back.
“When you win a game like that, destroying a team that is theoretically competitive – ignoring who’s in the team and how it is built and just saying ‘we beat England’ – it creates a lot of momentum. Thirteen of the starting XV played in the World Cup final a year later.
“Larkham came up against a terrible defensive line and looked amazing. Let’s say they played against the All Blacks and lost by 20. They might have decided that Larkham at 10 was a bad idea.”
Darwin argues that high cohesion manifests itself most tangibly in defence. England gradually grew tighter while confronting duress on that infamous ‘Tour to Hell’. After shipping 76 points in Brisbane, they conceded 64 to New Zealand in the first Test. In the second Test, the All Blacks scored 40. In the final Test of the trip, against a South Africa team that went on to win that year’s Tri Nations, the score was only 18-0.
“England couldn’t change their team in 1998. They couldn’t drop them all and send them home, so they kept them together. Because they kept them together, they defended better.
“My point to this is that so much of what is going to happen with this [Smith and Farrell] is about what they are up against. It can go quite well and buy them time, or it could be an absolute train-wreck.”
Seeing Smith and Farrell together this autumn has obviously been a priority for Jones. But, if he is serious about developing the combination, he will look beyond the Wallabies this weekend.
Topic: What the Data Science says about England Rugby (Read 1734 times)
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