Twas only ten years ago that a certain Jonny Wilkinson helped to land rugby union’s greatest prize courtesy of a dramatic drop goal. Even as
recently as March 2009, the now out-of-favour Ronan O’Gara converted a drop goal in the dying minutes in Cardiff to secure Ireland’s first
Grand Slam in over sixty years. These are but two examples of when drop goals proved to be of paramount importance in the rugby union
universe. However, having scrutinised the volume of drop goals recorded in the Six Nations in the last couple of years, there has
been a noticeable decline in the use of such weapons.
Clearly the introduction of five points for a try in the early 1990s has struck a blow to the art of drop goals. Teams have subsequently
been faced with the dilemma of deciding whether it would be prudent to opt for the easy way out of a three-point drop goal when they venture
deep into enemy territory, or should they instead chisel away at the opposition’s defences for many minutes and run the risk of a turnover
or knock-on or ruck infringement? The evidence of recent Six Nations contests suggests that teams prefer to gamble on the greater prize of
seven points for a converted try rather than the apparent cop-out of a mere drop goal. However, given the fact that defences are proving more
formidable or sustained attacks less effective, I would venture to state that many teams will look back in anger at the recent Six
Nations and kick themselves that they battered away at enemy lines and emerged with nothing, when a drop goal would have provided some
semblance of a reward for their pressure. One only has to look at the huge number of close contests in the Five Nations and Six Nations over
the last few decades to know that a successful or unsuccessful drop goal could have been the decisive factor in determining European
bragging rights.
Okay, let us examine the evidence. Were it not for Dan Biggar’s drop goal against Grand Slam-chasing England, there would
have been only one match which witnessed successful drop goals, namely Italy’s victorious outing against France. It is indeed a little
strange that neither England, France, Ireland, nor Scotland managed a successful drop goal in the whole tournament. The evidence from their
jousts seems to indicate that the fly half nowadays only attempts a drop goal when a penalty has been awarded and the referee is playing
advantage, and consequently the drop goal is then virtually the equivalent of a golfer’s practice swing. If he fluffs and indeed
scuffs the drop goal attempt, he knows that the referee will still award the penalty.
In fact, over the last two Six Nations tournaments there have been only five matches out of thirty which have yielded successful
drop goals. This contrasts with the heyday of such ammunition back in the 1980s when fifty-six of the decade’s one hundred Five Nations
skirmishes witnessed at least one accurate drop goal attempt. This fifty-six per cent volume slipped to a mere 31 out of 100 matches in
the Five Nations of the 1990s that hosted at least one successful drop goal. There seems a strong suggestion that the increase in the value
of a try in the early 1990s reduced the volume of drop goals. Fast-forwarding ever so slightly to the first decade of this century,
the infant Six Nations witnessed accurate drop goals in only 45 of its first 150 contests, which represents thirty per cent, almost half the
percentage in the 1980s.
I would venture to guess that such figures can be translated into other competitions and strands of rugby union, near and far. I
also took the liberty to browse through all the British and Irish Lions test matches since 1971, and again the trend was in evidence. In
the last fifteen Lions test matches dating back to 1993, there have been a paltry three drop goals [amounting to a measly twenty per cent
likelihood that there would be a drop goal scored in a Lions test], but there were 17 successful drop goals in the previous 23 contests,
dating back to 1971.
I could offload more statistics, but there does appear to be a decline in the use of drop goals in the Six Nations. This is a
matter of some regret to purists who perhaps feel that there is indeed much skill and teamwork in a foray into the opposition half which
culminates in an accurate drop goal attempt. Could it be that one could make a case for increasing the points value of a drop goal to
four points in the future, in order to persuade fly halves that the occasional drop goal represents good value? I will conclude with some
thoughts from the BBC rugby union correspondent Alastair Eykyn who dismissed the notion of a four-points drop goal but who conceded that
drop goals have been a scarce commodity in recent times: “My feeling is that we haven’t seen many DGs recently, but I think 3 points is the
right amount. Often there will be no DGs for a while, and then a rash of them – so it’s entirely possible that they will make a return and
be back in favour as a means of quick points in the ‘red zone’ as they like to say.”
Gary Watton; author, historian, blogger and sports statistician
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