Scoring profiles and defense performance analysis in Rugby Union

S, Koh; Furukawa, Takuo; Murakami, Jun; Shimozono, Hironobu; Nagamatsu, Masaki; Miyao, Masahiko; Yamamoto, Takumi; Watanabe, Ichiro; Yasugahira, Hiroshi; Saito, Taketoshi; Ueno, Yuichi; Katsuta, Takashi; Kono, Ichiro

doi:10.1080/24748668.2007.11868409

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…For both the team and their opposition teams, lineouts were found to be more beneficial to generate scoring opportunities than scrums. These results are consistent with Coughlan et al (2019), who found that lineouts followed by a driving maul are common approaches to scoring tries (albeit in a different competition, Super Rugby), and with Sasaki et al (2007), who found that around one-third of tries came from lineouts in the Japan Top League in 2003 to 2005the highest of any try source. As well as creating lineouts or perhaps prioritising them over scrums, for opposition teams playing the team, effective strategies may include maintaining possession with repeated phase-breakdown play (over six repetitions), shutting down the team's ability to regain kicks, and making sure to find touch on exit plays from kick restarts made by the team.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Supervised sequential pattern mining of event sequences in sport to identify important patterns of play: an application to rugby union

Bunker

Fujii

Hanada

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Given a set of sequences comprised of time-ordered events, sequential pattern mining is useful to identify frequent sub-sequences from different sequences or within the same sequence. However, in sport, these techniques cannot determine the importance of particular patterns of play to good or bad outcomes, which is often of greater interest to coaches. In this study, we apply a supervised sequential pattern mining algorithm called safe pattern pruning (SPP) to 490 labelled event sequences representing passages of play from one rugby team’s matches from the 2018 Japan Top League, and then evaluate the importance of the obtained sub-sequences to points-scoring outcomes. Linebreaks, successful lineouts, regained kicks in play, repeated phase-breakdown play, and failed opposition exit plays were identified as important patterns of play for the team scoring. When sequences were labelled with points scoring outcomes for the opposition teams, opposition team linebreaks, errors made by the team, opposition team lineouts, and repeated phase-breakdown play by the opposition team were identified as important patterns of play for the opposition team scoring. By virtue of its supervised nature and pruning properties, SPP obtained a greater variety of generally more sophisticated patterns than the well-known unsupervised PrefixSpan algorithm.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Supervised sequential pattern mining of event sequences in sport to identify important patterns of play: an application to rugby union

Bunker

Fujii

Hanada

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…Winning teams won more turnovers at the ruck than losing teams, 8 and ruck turnovers were related with try scoring movements. 9 In rugby sevens, similar findings to 15-a-side rugby union have been identified. Ruck retention and possession correlated with an increase in point scoring and a higher tournament ranking, while turnovers conceded and an increase in rucks formed were associated with lower scores.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Effective strategies at the ruck in men’s and women’s World Rugby Sevens Series

Barkell

O’Connor

Cotton

2017

International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching

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Despite the growth of research on rugby sevens since its inclusion into the 2016 Olympic Games, some performance aspects of the game remain in their infancy. The ruck is one such area that has had little examination. The aim of this research was to examine the relationships between ruck actions and ruck success. A series of men's (N ¼ 2521) and women's (N ¼ 1474) rucks were coded from a sample of men's (N ¼ 117) and women's games (N ¼ 65) played within the World Rugby Sevens Series in 2014. Both attacking and defensive ruck actions were analysed. Variables included player numbers in the ruck, the actions of the first players to the ruck, ball placement from the tackled player, the body height, weight distribution and position of the attacking player in the ruck. Chi squared analysis identified that one versus one rucks were most commonly formed. If an attacking player arrived first, then there was a greater chance of maintaining possession compared with the first arrival being from the defensive side (p < 0.001). Findings suggest that the squeeze ball placement technique is risky due to its association with turnovers and penalties against the attacking team in men's rugby sevens (p < 0.001). The body position of the first arriving attacking player requires the attacking player to lower their shoulders below the opposition shoulders (p < 0.001), use the tackled player to support their weight (p < 0.001) and aim to ruck to a position past the ball rather than stopping with their bodies over the ball (p < 0.001). Analysis of opposition actions identified that an early jackal was most successful at producing turnovers (p < 0.001). Results illustrate successful ruck strategies in rugby sevens from both an attacking and a defensive viewpoint. Successful ruck actions are similar in both men's and women's rugby sevens.

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“…Although this approach is useful as a means to increase the number of data, this level of analysis ignores the variation in playing style over each match and typically lacks consideration of the influence of opposition. Ignoring data from the opposition will likely distort any relationships present [41], particularly when one considers that various studies included data over multiple competitions [3,4,6,25,38] as well as over several seasons [9,21,22,25,30,34] potentially misrepresenting performance outcomes. One paper examined the efficacy of two methods of data analysis to predict match outcomes [41]; isolated performance indicators, considering only the isolated data from a single team, were compared to a descriptive conversion method by calculating the differences between each team's data for each individual match.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance Analysis in Rugby Union: a Critical Systematic Review

et al. 2020

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Background: Performance analysis in rugby union has become an integral part of the coaching process. Although performance analysis research in rugby and data collection has progressed, the utility of the insights is not well understood. The primary objective of this review is to consider the current state of performance analysis research in professional rugby union and consider the utility of common methods of analysing performance and the applicability of these methods within professional coaching practice. Methods: SPORTDiscus electronic database was searched for relevant articles published between 1 January 1997 and 7 March 2019. Professional, male 15-aside rugby union studies that included relevant data on tactical and performance evaluation, and statistical compilation of time-motion analysis were included. Studies were categorised based on the main focus and each study was reviewed by assessing a number of factors such as context, opposition analysis, competition and sample size. Results: Forty-one studies met the inclusion criteria. The majority of these studies measured performance through the collection and analysis of performance indicators. The majority did not provide context relating to multiple confounding factors such as field location, match location and opposition information. Twenty-nine performance indicators differentiated between successful match outcomes; however, only eight were commonly shared across some studies. Five studies considered rugby union as a dynamical system; however, these studies were limited in analysing lower or national-level competitions. Conclusions: The review highlighted the issues associated with assessing isolated measures of performance, lacking contextual information such as the opposition, match location, period within match and field location. A small number of studies have assessed rugby union performance through a dynamical systems lens, identifying successful characteristics in collective behaviour patterns in attacking phases. Performance analysis in international rugby union can be advanced by adopting these approaches in addition to methods currently adopted in other team sports.

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Scoring profiles and defense performance analysis in Rugby Union

Cited by 15 publications

References 4 publications

Supervised sequential pattern mining of event sequences in sport to identify important patterns of play: an application to rugby union

Supervised sequential pattern mining of event sequences in sport to identify important patterns of play: an application to rugby union

Effective strategies at the ruck in men’s and women’s World Rugby Sevens Series

Performance Analysis in Rugby Union: a Critical Systematic Review

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