It’s the balls. More specifically, it’s how far the balls are flying when kicked.
Everyone has had a trigger point in which they came to the realisation that the balls are travelling a lot further than they usually do. It may have been Antoine Dupont’s box kicks, Freddie Steward’s 22-to-22 clearance or Beauden Barrett’s sudden propensity to bring out the spiral punt - there have been plenty.
Statistics from Opta back up the eye test. On average, each kick is sailing 33.5 metres, almost three metres further than the average kick in the latest Six Nations and a walloping seven and a half metres further than the recent Rugby Championship.
Beauden Barrett in action during the All Blacks' opening loss. Photo / Getty Images
Water-cooler discussions and WhatsApp groups have played weather analysts, ball manufacturers and physicists to decipher what is causing the phenomenon. The consensus of these pseudo-analysts is that the weather is a big part of the reason. Temperatures in France are currently more akin to what those players heading to the men’s Cricket World Cup in India are likely to experience than at a rugby tournament - with games being played in heat as high as 35C.
Peter Breen, a former Otago representative, Melbourne Storm kicking coach and the founder of rugby coaching and kicking programme (and tee) Rugby Bricks, knows more about kicking a rugby ball than most. He uses a squash ball example to explain what is happening to the balls in France.
“We’ve always seen that temperature has an effect. You think of a squash ball when it gets warm. The air thickness, things travel further in the heat.”
Breen says many a kicking session in Dunedin on cold winter nights has told him with certainty the advantages of kicking in warmer conditions.
An unnamed kicker at the World Cup told the Times another reason he believes the balls are travelling further is that they are more “kicked in” than the versions used in the Northern summer.
Fresh out of the packet, balls have bobbles all over them designed to provide more grip. While grip means they’re easier to catch, simple aerodynamics tells you they won’t travel as cleanly through the air. A goal-kicker will find over time their favourite pigskin will begin to lose its grip and become smoother to the touch over time - and move differently through the air.
Ball manufacturer Gilbert doesn’t have years to wait for this to take effect, instead, they employ a process of “kicking in” - similar to cricket bat manufacturers “knocking in” a new willow. This can be done the old-fashioned way - sending balls to teams to use in training - or using a machine in their factory.
Gilbert, who have manufactured match balls for Rugby World Cups since 1995, brought out their premier iNNOVO model ball which has been used for test matches since 2022. Breen says a large part of what’s happening with ball flight can be attributed to the research and design of the iNNOVO.
“They started testing these smart balls about two years ago, at the start the little microchip was falling out, quite often coming out of the balls so now they’ve got that right. They’re using a slightly newer grip on the ball this time round,” Breen says.
He says manufacturers like Gilbert often save their best rubber compound for the most important balls, in this case, the Rugby World Cup balls - similar to what Kookabarra would do when making cricket balls.
“They kind of just got this smart ball right. It was pretty unstable there a year ago, there were a few complaints about the smart technology and the ball being a bit more wobbly than normal, so they’ve probably got to the point now where it’s rock solid.”
This would explain what Richard Wigglesworth, England’s attack coach and kicking expert, told the Times.
“They never say they’re different, but they are slightly different.”
The man who kicked all 27 of England’s points against Argentina, first five-eighth George Ford, also said the balls at the World Cup feel different to those used at club level.
“The ball is different to the balls we’re playing with in the Premiership. They do seem to travel a lot faster and they’re going a lot further,” Ford said.
George Ford of England kicks three of his 27 points off the boot against Argentina. Photo / Getty Images
Gilbert seems to have struck gold in tinkering with their iNNOVO design, says Breen.
“They’ve probably got the stitching right, they’ve got the compound right. I know Gilbert has a lot of different grip technologies. They use a five-star pimple on a lot of balls, this has got a unique one, so yeah, the same ball but researched and developed.”
In the All Blacks’ opening loss to France, many were quick to highlight a tactic used by Beauden Barrett to spiral-punt the ball, rather than the end-over-end method more regularly seen in the modern game.
“Two reasons. For a 50:22 spiral, the spiral just cuts through the air. So if you think about the ball from foot to rolling into touch, the quickest way possible is to bang a low, hard spiral. The other, I worked on this with Billy Slater, when you’re chucking up a spiral bomb, the person dealing with it doesn’t just have a 180-degree kick to that they have to deal with, now it’s 360 degrees,” Breen says.
He says when kickers are looking to maximise hang time or distance in the hopes of a challenging catch or fumble, a spiral can turn a five-second kick into a six- or seven-second kick that allows for chasers to increase the pressure on the catcher.
While the All Blacks’ kicking tactics were questioned following the loss to France, Breen says he didn’t see an issue in the type of kicking, but assessed the French simply dealt with the kicks in a way that nullified their effectiveness. He theorised the style of the Top 14 competition may have prepared the French players for an aerial assault.
“They almost call it a glove when the players retreat and glove the catcher and really protect them - and maybe we haven’t seen much of that on our side of the world.”
Will Toogood is an Online Sports Editor for the NZ Herald. He has previously worked for Newstalk ZB’s digital team and at Waiheke’s Gulf News, covering sport and events.
