Eagles 7s and Scoring on Line Breaks
Eagles 7s and Scoring on Line Breaks
The USA Men's National 7s team finished tied for 11th in the Wellington 7s, and thus saw France, Australia, Argentina, and Kenya pull ahead of them in the overall World Series standings.
The Eagles now sit 11th with 23 points; South Africa leads with 63 points, well ahead of #2 Fiji and #3 England.
We gave you some stats on the USA performance thanks to Matt Trenary at tranarian.com. Here is one more. We asked Matt to track break conversion rates. Basically, it means while tracking a line break, look to see whether a team actually scores from those line breaks.
Matt judged the resolution of a line break as either, a try is scored without any scrum or lineout (but penalties or rucks might happen), a try is scored without a scrum, lineout, or penalty interrupting the process (but ruck still OK), or a try is scored without a set piece, penalty, or a tackle happening.
Here are the numbers for the series as a whole:
| No set piece | No set piece or penalty | No set piece or penalty or ruck | ||||
| Raw % | % from average | Raw % | % from average | Raw % | % from average | |
| ARG | 71% | 1% | 64% | 0% | 60% | 2% |
| AUS | 73% | 3% | 71% | 9% | 61% | 5% |
| CAN | 84% | 19% | 76% | 18% | 66% | 13% |
| ENG | 80% | 14% | 80% | 25% | 70% | 19% |
| FIJ | 79% | 12% | 75% | 16% | 70% | 21% |
| FRA | 71% | 0% | 64% | -1% | 55% | -6% |
| JPN | 59% | -17% | 48% | -25% | 41% | -29% |
| KEN | 83% | 17% | 74% | 14% | 68% | 17% |
| NZL | 68% | -4% | 63% | -2% | 56% | -4% |
| PNG | 60% | -15% | 50% | -23% | 50% | -14% |
| RSA | 84% | 19% | 80% | 24% | 78% | 34% |
| RUS | 46% | -35% | 33% | -48% | 29% | -50% |
| SAM | 65% | -8% | 58% | -10% | 51% | -12% |
| SCO | 72% | 2% | 68% | 6% | 60% | 2% |
| UGA | 59% | -16% | 56% | -14% | 56% | -5% |
| USA | 76% | 7% | 71% | 10% | 66% | 13% |
| WAL | 73% | 3% | 67% | 3% | 54% | -7% |
| Average | 71% | 0% | 65% | 0% | 58% | 0% |
As you can see, Canada, England, South Africa, and Kenya all do quite well. Fiji is also good, although not as good as other teams at taking advantage of a line break and a penalty.
The USA is above average, and really only a shade behind Kenya and Fiji in this regard. Not surprisingly, the teams not used to World Series play, Russia, Uganda, Japan, Papua New Guinea, do the worst. The worst among experienced teams are Samoa and France.
Next up for the USA - Sydney, in which the Eagles open up the whole tournament with their game against Argentina, and then play Canada and Russia.
