Tigers v Exeter (A) - Premiership - Saturday 23rd December 2023 - KO 3-00pm

[Tiglon]

You'd need 50 people to count to 34? Exeter kicked 32 times.

We made more passes than Exeter, and made twice as many offloads.

Exeter were forced to make a lot more tackles than we did, because we ran the ball more than they did.

The difference wasn't that we kicked too much, it's that we kicked badly and dropped the ball too many times.

Thanks. It's frustrating that "we kicked to much" is the defacto response to any loss where we struggled in attack. The interplay close to the breakdown has never got going and we so often make errors under a small amount of pressure. It's the area of obvious weakness for us.

It's interesting that Northampton are often referred to as a team that have a great attack, and that Tigers kick too much, yet Northampton have kicked more than Tigers so far this season (in the Premiership).

The difference between the team that kicks the most and the least is about 7 kicks per match. 28 per game is the lowest (Gloucester), 35 is the highest (Saints). The 3 teams in the bottom 4 of the league other than Tigers are also the 3 teams who have kicked the least. So, if anything, more kicks equals better results.

Bath, who are top of the league (and generally considered to be an attacking team), have carried the second least so far, just once more than Saracens. Tigers are average for number of carries, but have by far the fewest clean breaks - 28, compared to 37 for Newcastle and 53+ for everyone else.

So, it's not that we are kicking instead of trying to run it, we're just not running it very well.

[Ian Cant]

Well done Tiglon I’ve always believed stats don’t lie.
Whatever happens we need to beat Bath!

[Scott1]

Stats or not,whichever way they fall the facts are it’s been a poor season so far for the most part!

[TigerFeetSteve]

The one big positive I took from both this game and the Bristol game was despite being so poor for periods, both of those games had a point of time in the last ¼ where we were still capable of getting something out of the game. We're actually not letting teams get away from us.

[Old Hob]

You'd need 50 people to count to 34? Exeter kicked 32 times.

We made more passes than Exeter, and made twice as many offloads.

Exeter were forced to make a lot more tackles than we did, because we ran the ball more than they did.

The difference wasn't that we kicked too much, it's that we kicked badly and dropped the ball too many times.

Thanks. It's frustrating that "we kicked to much" is the defacto response to any loss where we struggled in attack. The interplay close to the breakdown has never got going and we so often make errors under a small amount of pressure. It's the area of obvious weakness for us.

It's interesting that Northampton are often referred to as a team that have a great attack, and that Tigers kick too much, yet Northampton have kicked more than Tigers so far this season (in the Premiership).

The difference between the team that kicks the most and the least is about 7 kicks per match. 28 per game is the lowest (Gloucester), 35 is the highest (Saints). The 3 teams in the bottom 4 of the league other than Tigers are also the 3 teams who have kicked the least. So, if anything, more kicks equals better results.

Bath, who are top of the league (and generally considered to be an attacking team), have carried the second least so far, just once more than Saracens. Tigers are average for number of carries, but have by far the fewest clean breaks - 28, compared to 37 for Newcastle and 53+ for everyone else.

So, it's not that we are kicking instead of trying to run it, we're just not running it very well.

Thank you Tiglon. I've never subscribed to the lazy trope that we just hoof it and run; nice to see the evidence (that I was too lazy to look for, myself ).

[KiwiTig]

Great stats !

[CrumblingTerrace]

A raw count of kicks is useful in a limited way, though.

Rather, you need to understand where on the pitch these kicks are happening; after how many phases; what the score was.

I sense 'we kicked to much' refers to a particular type of kicking... e.g. when we're losing and we only give it 1-2 phases on the halfway line before kicking it away.

[Tiglon]

A raw count of kicks is useful in a limited way, though.

Rather, you need to understand where on the pitch these kicks are happening; after how many phases; what the score was.

I sense 'we kicked to much' refers to a particular type of kicking... e.g. when we're losing and we only give it 1-2 phases on the halfway line before kicking it away.

I completely agree. Kicking in the modern game us all about when and where you do it.

Few teams will go through more than a couple of phases on the halfway line without making progress and choose to keep trying. There's really little point in persevering with slow ball on the back foot in the middle of the pitch against a set defence - you're just going to go further back until you do decide to kick, or make an error.

The kicking in that situation is almost always the right thing to do, our problem is that we end up in that scenario too often.

[sam16111986]

You'd need 50 people to count to 34? Exeter kicked 32 times.

We made more passes than Exeter, and made twice as many offloads.

Exeter were forced to make a lot more tackles than we did, because we ran the ball more than they did.

The difference wasn't that we kicked too much, it's that we kicked badly and dropped the ball too many times.

Thanks. It's frustrating that "we kicked to much" is the defacto response to any loss where we struggled in attack. The interplay close to the breakdown has never got going and we so often make errors under a small amount of pressure. It's the area of obvious weakness for us.

It's interesting that Northampton are often referred to as a team that have a great attack, and that Tigers kick too much, yet Northampton have kicked more than Tigers so far this season (in the Premiership).

The difference between the team that kicks the most and the least is about 7 kicks per match. 28 per game is the lowest (Gloucester), 35 is the highest (Saints). The 3 teams in the bottom 4 of the league other than Tigers are also the 3 teams who have kicked the least. So, if anything, more kicks equals better results.

Bath, who are top of the league (and generally considered to be an attacking team), have carried the second least so far, just once more than Saracens. Tigers are average for number of carries, but have by far the fewest clean breaks - 28, compared to 37 for Newcastle and 53+ for everyone else.

So, it's not that we are kicking instead of trying to run it, we're just not running it very well.

Preach.

What's frustrating is that we've got some big ball carriers that should be giving us momentum. There's a lot to work with we've just got to either polish up what we're trying to achieve or come up with something new.

[sapajo]

How many times over the last couple of season have we watched our forwards queue up on the try line taking turns trying to run through a brick wall ending and ending up with nothing rather than moving the ball out wide? I can only assume that we have such little confidence in our backs play and / or are deluded in our forwards play as we seldom spread the ball to the backs ?

[Scott1]

How many times over the last couple of season have we watched our forwards queue up on the try line taking turns trying to run through a brick wall ending and ending up with nothing rather than moving the ball out wide? I can only assume that we have such little confidence in our backs play and / or are deluded in our forwards play as we seldom spread the ball to the backs ?

Our red zone conversion rate has seemed to be dire for a long time!

[Tiglon]

Against Exeter we scored 2 tries from 5 visits to the 22, which isn't awful. If Pollard had his kicking boots on it would have been an almost identical points per visit ratio as Exeter - the problem was that they had 9 visits to our 22, due to our poor kicking and handling errors.

Against Newcastle we scored 47 points from 8 visits, which is an exceptional nearly 6 points per visit. Newcastle also had 8 visits to our 22, but scored 0 points from them. It was our red zone conversion that (emphatically) won us that match.

Against Gloucester we scored a very respectable 4 points from each of our 8 visits, whereas Gloucester achieved just over 3 points from each of their 5 visits.

Against Saints we only had 7 visits compared to their 11, yet outscored them 17-14 from those visits.

When we lost to Quins, both teams had 9 visits but they outscored us 29-25.

Against Sarries we scored just 14 points from 9 visits.

Vs Bath we scored 10 from 5.

Against Sale 17 from 7.

And, against Bristol, 14 from 9.

Seems like in the first 4 games our conversion was very poor, but it has improved significantly. Not surprising given our returning players.

As others have pointed out, stats only tell part of the story - there are of course very different types of red zone possession, the best probably being when the defensive team gifts you the ball with a turnover instead of kicking the ball to safety....

Unfortunately, one of the stats Prem Rugby doesn't provide is handling errors, which I think would be very telling for Tigers this season. However, you can sort of estimate it with turnovers conceded less the oppositions turnovers won. By doing this, you find that our handling was much worse than the opposition in the first 3 matches, but then improved for the next 5 (which unsurprisingly saw much better results) before dramatically reverting against Exeter.

Another interesting stat is that against Exeter they kicked more metres than us. In fact, this is the only stat I've seen that directly correlates to winning - in all our league games this season, the team that has kicked more metres has been the winner.

[Scott1]

Only stat that counts 8th place Played 9 Won 4 Lost 5 BP 4 20 pts

[Tiglon]

Only stat that counts 8th place Played 9 Won 4 Lost 5 BP 4 20 pts

That's more than one stat...

Anyway, sometimes (for some people) it's interesting to look at other stats to try to work out why the big stat is "8th".

[Scott1]

Only stat that counts 8th place Played 9 Won 4 Lost 5 BP 4 20 pts

That's more than one stat...

Anyway, sometimes (for some people) it's interesting to look at other stats to try to work out why the big stat is "8th".

Interesting yes,but there’s only one that counts at the end of the day