16 Questions that could define the United Rugby Championship - Wales
Right now the league doesn't feel like the most important thing in Welsh rugby, but there were shoots of hope last season. Building something greater amid uncertainty will be the biggest challenge.
After looking at the Irish and South African teams, now we look at the Welsh. Don’t worry, the WRU barely gets a look in.
Scarlets
Were the Scarlets last season’s good bad team or bad good team?
The terms “good bad team” and “bad good team” originated in US sports to help describe those teams that aren’t clearly good or bad. A “good bad team” is broadly one that unexpectedly sees some success even though it clearly has some significant flaws. A “bad good team” is one that appears to have clear potential but under performs possibly due to inconsistency. Looking through last season’s data, it’s hard to decipher where the Scarlets fit.
The argument for a good bad team - the attack
The Scarlets attack didn’t exactly set the world alight. Yes, they finished 8th and had the 8th most points, but you would much rather have Connacht’s attack stats (unfortunately they couldn’t kick to save their lives).
The Scarlet’s attack consistently struggled across the season. They did better at clean breaks, but generally struggled to break teams down and get on top. They had one of the lowest possession rates, struggled to get into the opposition’s 22 and once there were inefficient at converting the territory into tries - the Ospreys, Connacht and Ulster were all better at each of those. I can’t even say they were good at playing in less structured possessions - they scored the 3rd fewest tries on kick returns (5) and were 9th for the percentage of turnovers won that led to tries. This is not the attack of a team that was ever going to be a threat in the playoffs.
The argument for a bad good team - the defence was elite
Here is a list of teams that had a better defence than the Scarlets.
Don’t believe me?
You may say they are not as good as Leinster, Glasgow and the Bulls as those teams conceded fewer points, but the others had more possession and therefore spent less time defending. The more important data points, at least for me, are those relating to how the teams recovered from missed tackles. No other team was as good at stopping the attack once the defence was breached. This was an elite defence that, at worst, should be considered the equal of Leinster, Glasgow or the Bulls and if it continues in 25/26 then defence coach Jared Payne should have the pick of any club or international role. This team should have been top 4.
Conclusion - this was a bad good team
Though it was nice to see the Scarlets snatching a playoff place, their play and ability should have been awarded with a higher seeding. Their defence was elite and the attack may not have been as bad as it looked. Their points scored per 40 mins possession was an impressive 4th behind the Bulls, Leinster and the Stormers. If they could hold on to the ball, a big if, then there attack was pretty effective.1
Unlike the Stormers and Connacht who need to play a bit more conservatively, the Scarlets need to be a bit less to give their attack more opportunities to cause damage. Head Coach Dwayne Peel, who is also the attack coach, should recognise the weapons he has with and without the ball and play to the team’s strengths.
Cardiff
Can Cardiff add an attack to a foundation of defence and set piece?
Last season started very well for Cardiff. Aided by an easier strength of schedule in the first half of the season (due to playing 6 of 9 games at home), Cardiff found themselves in third place with high hopes of making the URC playoffs for the first time. In the end they missed out on the final place by just a point, paying the price for picking up only 1 point in their final two games in South Africa.
Cardiff had a pretty solid game. They had a good scrum and maul and though their lineout needed work it wasn’t a mile off some of the top teams. And they tackled. Boy did that love a tackle. They made the most tackles and saw contributions across the squad.
No one could doubt the player’s committment or work ethic, but the chart also highlights a general lack of successful carries. Not many players made 20%+ more than the average number of successful tackles and those players did not play a lot. And do you see the best carrier, Thomas Young? He’s off to the Dragons.
Attack was a big issue throughout the season and not just with ball in hand. They made the second fewest offloads, scored the second fewest tries from either turnovers or kick returns, won very few opposition lineouts and though the scrum was solid it did not win enough penalties. They were lethal once in the opposition 22 (1st) but they didn’t get there enough (13th).
Central to all of this was a general lack of possession. They had the third lowest average possession when playing at home (48%) and the second lowest when playing away (43.1%), constantly putting themselves in a place when tackling was the only choice and they were no closer to the 22. It probably didn’t help that they kept kicking the ball away. Both finalists kick the ball a lot, but they had constant turnover threats to win the ball back (a turnover for every 20 tackles). Cardiff put the tackles in but did not have the same threat with a turnover every 30 tackles.
There is hope though as Cardiff’s recruitment will add more attacking threats. Though they have lost Thomas Young, in return comes Taine Basham who made even more successful carries per 80 minutes while playing for the Dragons. He is not as good a tackler as Young but Cardiff don’t really lack in that department. Now he’s in a more successful environment I would not be surprised to see Basham starting for Wales this Autumn.
Ioan Lloyd comes in from the Scarlets and will bring more of a carry threat than Callum Sheedy (should he play 10) while providing good cover for Winnett at 15. George Nott, also from the Dragons, should prove to be a further plus.
Last season Cardiff showed what you can do with a solid base, breaking into the challenger space and remaining part of the conversation until the last day of the league season. At the same time they discovered a team needs an attacking mentality to reach the next level - somewhat ironic considering their coach has just left to be Wales’ attack coach. Hopefully they have added some attacking thrust over the summer and will turn up looking to take every opportunity to punish teams and not just hang with them.
Ospreys
Can Jac and the Morgans be a hit this year?
Last season, of the 523 URC players listed on Opta’s Club Rugby Hub, 7 had Morgan as a first or last name. 5 of them played for the Ospreys and all of them should be back this year. I know that teams can be moulded in the image of their captain, but this is ridiculous.
And what sort of music does this band of Morgans play? Lift music. There are very few interesting points to make about the Ospreys and how they played in 24/25. When you look through the data, over and over they appear somewhere between 8th and 13th. Not great, but also not the worst. Like left music, they were inoffensive if you noticed them, but usually you were thinking about something else.
Yet this team went to the playoffs in 23/24 - what changed? Basically nothing. They actually scored more tries and had a slightly better points difference in 24/25 but finished with 10 fewer league points, from 50 to 40. This looks like a big drop off but really it was returning to the level they should have been at - the Ospreys were 23/24’s good bad team (see Scarlets) and should not have made the playoffs at the expense of a team like the Lions.
So, can they be a hit this season? Or at least put together a novelty record for the Christmas number one? Things don’t start much harder than away to the Bulls, especially for a team that has not won their opening game since they beat the Dragons away in 2021. [Fun fact: the Ospreys have never started a URC season at home - their last home league opener was in 2018 against Edinburgh.] Things do get easier from then and overall they are expected to have one of the easier schedules, largely because they are in the Welsh region.
They also have some good players. Obviously they have Jac, a player who was somehow underrated before the Lions Tour (did nobody watch Wales’ matches?), and the incoming Ryan Smith from the Queensland Reds should help them deal with the loss of Adam Beard to Montpellier. In the backs, Jack Walsh provides consistent impetuts while Dan Edwards continues to develop towards fulfilling his potential. Kieran Hardy was also excellent, providing a try scoring threat, but it would be good to see him make things happen for his teammates. I am particuarly keen to see more of Harri Deaves, the all action flanker who was above average at pretty much everything in limited minutes.
And yet, do I believe the Ospreys will be relevant this season, either because of their success or style of play? Not really. As much as I like some of the players, there is nothing about what happened last season or over the summer to suggest much will change, and come May people will have stopped talking about the Ospreys as they focus on the league’s rockstars.
Dragons
Can the Dragons play with joy?
Have you ever seen a movie or show (or read a book!) where there’s a character who faces almost certain doom with a crazed relish? Think of a Viking berserker, a gladiator or Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is not stoic persistence or a positive attitude like the one your manager insists on before starting a pointless task. This is the love of the fight for the fight’s sake, a desire to jump into the abyss as a glorious opportunity while others stare deeply, an attitude that unnerves friend and foe alike. Their faces ablaze, eyes wild and mouth wide as they shout “Today is a good day to die!”
This is how I think the Dragons should approach next season.
The Dragons find themselves in a tough place. They have won only a total of 8 matches over the past three seasons, not enough to qualify for the playoffs in a single season. Once again, their squad has seen one of the league’s highest churn rates with a lot of experience leaving. And then there is the threat of being closed down as part of the WRU’s proposal to reduce the number of Welsh professional teams from four to two. When one of the other teams is your close neighbour, the capital’s team and owned by the WRU, you have every right to think that this is likely the end2.
It is only natural for the players and management team to worry about what an end will bring. They have mortgages and families to consider after all3. But that’s not going to help them win matches. The opposition may assume the Dragon’s players will be distracted and not 100% committed, so imagine their surprise when they see the crazed look in the eyes of a team indulging in the nihilism!
Of course, putting the existensial threat to one side, there are reasons to believe this season may be better. Though a lot of new players have come in, they are largely experienced pros (i.e. at least 29 years old) who know what it takes to be consistently competent. That doesn’t sound great but it would be a positive step for a team that last season conceded 130 points more than the next worse team.
The head coach, Filo Tiatia, has also been in charge for a full preseason, giving him the chance to embed skills and approaches that the team can rely on when things get tough, i.e. a lot of the time. However, if the players play each game as if it might be their last, joyfully celebrating every try, turnover and tackle, I think it will unnerve an opposition who recognise the futility and cause a few surprises along the way. The league needs a Welsh team to make a big impact on the league, and surely a dragon would be the most appropriate to do so.
If we look at the difference between the points scored and conceded per 40 mins the Scarlets rise to 3rd. The biggest frauds were Munster who came a disappointing 10th.
Just a thought, but could clubs help the players’ partners find higher paid jobs so the players’ incomes is less vital? Maybe hire the kids as models? Set them up as Directors of a high-tech business in a low tax area?