Inside the Reds-naissance: Five areas where Les Kiss' 2024 team has upgraded on last year

06/06/2024 04:00 PM

Before the gravel-hard, junkyard quick Reds invade Hamilton and go full cowbell silencing, we should applaud their regular season revival.

Regardless of whether the favoured Chiefs win at home, or the visitors take a famous scalp, the year-on-year gains of rugby fortunes in Queensland should cause a sitcom remake called Beverly Hills Bogans.

There are the obvious and most relevant 'KPIs.' Eight wins rather than five, a whopping 164 point improvement in points differential, and rather than a 7-try deficit in scored-conceded, a handsome 20-try profit margin.

The team did not turn over much from a year ago. The XV top minute players from 2024 were all in Brad Thorn's squad last year. Heavy minute men (900-plus) Liam Wright (1111 minutes), Jock Campbell (1046), Ryan Smith (989), Fraser McReight (946) and Hunter Paisami (925) were already well in place.

The only new players to log more than 450 minutes were Jeffery Toomaga-Allen (476) and Tim Ryan (455). This was not a new team.

Dig a little further and the plot thickens and sweetens at the same time. Affable Les Kiss and hardman Thorn are not polar opposites but clearly sing from different hymnals on attack.

The Reds took steps forward by stepping back on a few categories.

Some of them bear an unmistakable stamp of intention, rather than random result.

Offload scepticism

Last year the Reds completed 135 offloads, almost ten a game. Subtract 38 from that in 2024. Ramifications ripple from that: the Kiss Reds are choosing moments better. Queensland shot up to third in the competition in offload completion success (74.6%).

Joe Schmidt is notoriously sceptical of offloads, because the ratio of risk to reward can be quite high in Tests.

A lost offload does not only end many an attack unnecessarily; counterattack from spilled ball is one of the hardest to scramble back and end. He will approve of lower offload attack shapes which are tight. The Reds had the second most narrow attack in Super Rugby Pacific (only the Blues played tighter).

Tighter attack

It may come as a surprise but the 2023 Reds ran the ball slightly more often yet made over 500 more metres in gains.

The 2024 Reds stayed closer to the ruck, asked their halfbacks to make shorter passes, and ended up with more line breaks (89, fourth in the competition), beat 24 more defenders, sped their ruck, and crucially had the third best line breaks-to-try finishing rate (42.6%) in the league.

What was all that built on? Gainline success of 65.3%, behind only Kiwi attack teams, the Blues and Hurricanes.

By "playing downhill" off shorter passes, with rucks resourced by big locks and props, the rather wobbly passes of tipsy Tate McDermott are rendered acceptable. Defences just cannot set.

Accuracy

Take madness out of the equation and it is accuracy at tackle and clean which is most vital to avoid cards.

This year, the Reds only garnered two yellow cards. I focus more on yellows than reds because they tend to be more indicative of the team's practices. Red cards are red mist.

Two cards put the Reds at the top. Last year, it was five; not bad either.

But any team in any league will take two at the start of the season.

Another accuracy attribute is founded on mauls and scrums.

The Reds scrum was not a juggernaut this year, but it was in the top four of the league in not leaking penalties (only 2.5% of the Reds scrums were pinged).

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At maul, the Reds were tidy: they had the highest maul completion win rate (96.6%) leading to the highest maul try per game result (0.8 per game). Forming mauls which roll five to ten metres is more about precision than power per se.

Junkyard defence

The Reds' plus-104 points total and (for Super Rugby Pacific) stingy defence is built on no-quit, no-excuse tackling.

First-up tackling completion (which can be deceptive but if high, does not hurt) was second highest (88%) in the comp, whilst the dominance of those tackles caused turnovers.

Their 7.6% figure (Opta Stats' assessment of the portion of the Reds' tackles which were dominant, which matched the 'eyeball test') led the league.

Where some teams fall down (or make up for low tackle percentage) is in the scramble, but the Reds had the best: only 12.2% of opponent line breaks finished in a try. This one facet, more even than the Reds' finishing skills, caused their renaissance.

Familiarity

Rehabilitating Harry Wilson joined us on our podcast recently and commented at how confident he is at knowing where Fraser McReight is if he needs him. Similarly, Liam Wright's and Ryan Smith's cumulative 2,000-plus minutes this season meant restarts and lineouts made sense. Jock Campbell was a traffic director for young Tom Lynagh.

All in all, the Reds have just given their fans (and the Wallabies' new coach) something to remember. And analyse.

Now, on to Hamilton.