Six Nations analysis: Why Wales’ attack is so shockingly BAD and how Warren Gatland can fix their ‘biggest issue’
Sam Larner looks at where Wales are failing on attack and how they can fix it going forward.
Following Wales’ 13th straight Test defeat, Sam Larner takes a look at where Warren Gatland’s team can improve, particularly on attack, for their Six Nations round two fixture against Italy.
Wales failed to score a single point in their hefty defeat to France in round one and much of that had to do with their inability to capitalise on opportunities in good field positions while they also held onto possession when they should have kicked it away.
Sam makes his Planet Rugby return, providing a weekly video discussing some of the key trends in the modern game, focusing on particular tactics that he has spotted during the weekend’s action.
This week, he turns his focus to Wales‘ faltering attack and the small improvements that they can make as they aim to end their winless streak and avoid a Wooden Spoon finish in the 2025 Six Nations.
Zones
Wales were comprehensively dismissed by France, partly down to their struggles in the midfield.
So first of all, what we’re talking about are these four zones across the pitch: the green, yellow, orange and red zones going from left to right.
So in terms of attack, green is your own 22 and red is the opposition’s 22. In the green and red zones, a team needs to know exactly what they are going to do.
If you are in the green zone, you’re most likely going to be kicking. We saw during Scotland against Italy, Scotland did score from their green zone from a scrum but the scrum is a great platform because the opposition feels like they have to drop two players. The scum-half is obviously also involved in the scrum which means you’ve only got four frontline defenders but, apart from that, you’re going to want to be getting the ball out of your green zone. In the red zone, you keep hold of it and keep going until you score the try. Unless, as Dupont showed on Friday night, there’s a clear opportunity to kick.
The yellow and the orange zones, though, they’re more complicated. These occupy 56% of the pitch but 64% of possession actually starts in one of these two zones – this is between the 22s; 22 to halfway and halfway to the opposition 22.
So 64% of possessions start there but only 4.2% of possessions that start there result in tries. So it’s quite a low number – perhaps maybe more than you expected – but quite low. However, 19.7% of possessions which start in either the yellow or the orange zone will end in either a turnover or a penalty conceded – this is why they’re so crucial.
When you’re in this area [the yellow and orange zones], you can either restart an attack or get a penalty, which means you can kick into touch… but you can restart that attack and get go-forward ball, or you can turn it over.
What teams need to be smart at is deciding when to play and when to hold off.
Six Nations Round Two: Fixtures, kick-off times, referees and global TV channels
How Cardiff and Scarlets manage the zones
So let’s look at an example from the URC this year. We are going to look at the Scarlets. We are going to look at this box-kick over-the-top that is won by the Scarlets but it’s under huge amounts of pressure.
Gareth Davies, being very experienced, is immediately thinking, ‘we’re going to have to get this ball away, there’s no mileage in try attack here’.
Benetton are on the front foot and the Scarlets going backwards. So Davies rightly decides, we just want to get the ball away, but does decide that they are going to give it one go and try to gain momentum.
They’re going to get one carry in and make a break or find some space but they gain a yard and everything is slow, so in this case they’re just going to kick the ball away.
They don’t want to hold onto possession for much longer than that. There’s no mileage in keeping on going and they smartly kick. It’s not a great kick but they win the ball and now they’re 15-20 yards further up the pitch.
In that first example, the Scarlets are instantly under pressure and have no interest in playing, they give themselves one go and then they are going to kick it away.
Now, let’s have a look at an example of when it is on to attack and how Cardiff reacted to a poor kick from the Dragons. Cardiff instantly start thinking the opposite of what the Scarlets thought and going ‘We might be on here’.
So first of all, you have got to win the ball in the air which they do and then, they’ve got to look up at the defence.
As an attacking team, if you can see the numbers on the back of the opposition that’s a great sign, which is the case for Cardiff – three or four of the closest Dragons players have all got their backs turned – so they can’t see what’s going on for Cardiff, who have spotted the space.
And you can see the movement in the backfield here to get as many players into a position to dictate what’s going to happen.
The Dragons are now looking at a possible try-conceding threat here because it has all gone wrong for them. The ball goes out the back, there is a bit of space and nice hands to get out wide, and it’s a big two-on-one and the Dragons are saved by some great scramble defence.
Ultimately, it doesn’t go to hand with Cardiff but what we can see there is Cardiff are switched on and they know in these zones if there’s an opportunity, they must go for it. But as the Scarlets saw, if there’s not an opportunity you have to kick it away.
Wales’ biggest attacking issue
One of the biggest problems we saw from Wales on Friday night against France is that they did not know when to kick and when to carry.
What that meant is that they played through numerous phases where they weren’t going anywhere – where they were being pushed backwards – and that means that the risk of having the ball is increasing all that time. It’s increasing every single phase because they might knock it on, they might get turned over, they might concede a penalty. So that risk is going up but the opportunity is really going down or at best staying level. Every phase you’re adding in attack, it is going to be harder to break down that opposition defence. So in those situations, Wales need to be kicking the ball early.
I completely understand what commentators like Shane Williams were saying as he was nervous about the fact that Wales had so little possession and questioned why they were kicking but, in Test rugby, all you are doing is racking up phases and you’re not actually doing anything that is going to increase your chances of winning.
Looking ahead to the Italy game, Wales need to look at what they are doing in those yellow and orange zones. If they can’t win those zones, and equally if they can’t stop the Azzurri, it’s going to be so difficult to score tries. They still haven’t got a point in this year’s Six Nations and this is a key battleground for them this weekend.
It’s not often we focus on the bits between the two 22s but they are really important to dictate and it often decides who wins the game.