Monday 29 June 2015 08:44, UK
Every week Phil Clarke has to sift through around 50 tries for his top five of the round, but what makes the perfect try?
What makes the perfect try? Well, it probably doesn’t exist as nothing is perfect, but you may have seen recently that I've started to select the top five tries from each round of Super League.
We typically get about 50 tries in each round, so selecting a top five isn’t easy and I’m sure many of you disagree with my choices. It just comes down to opinion.
I suppose a length-of-the-field try in the 79th minute of the Grand Final, with your favourite team trailing by three points, would be as close to perfect as you’ll ever get, but what else makes a great try?
One of the greatest things about modern day rugby league is the skill that the players demonstrate to put points on the scoreboard. Accurate, well-timed passes are something that we take for granted. It’s great when a team are able to put a number of these together, passing the ball quickly from one side of the field to the other.
The best tries often start with an offload, when a player is able to keep the ball alive late in the tackle and with several defenders around him. For a long time, teams were discouraged by coaches from taking such a risk in case they lost possession, but Leeds are doing their best at making it popular again and it adds to the excitement massively.
We also see more and more tries from kicks now that teams defend with greater organisation. About one quarter of all the tries in Super League have come directly from a kick, or have a kick in the play that leads to the try.
Spectacular
I’ve met fans who don’t like them as much as ones scored from passing plays, but you can’t deny that they tend to be spectacular. Some teams rely on this more than others. The Giants have scored almost 40 per cent of their tries directly or indirectly from kicks, with Widnes at just 15 per cent.
The second thing that makes a great try for me is the speed. The game is now faster than it’s ever been and it doesn’t allow you to take your eyes off it for a second. Getting the ball to a player in space hasn’t changed; it’s still the basic principle of the sport after 100 years of tweaks to the rules.
One of the greatest things about modern day rugby league is the skill that the players demonstrate to put points on the scoreboard.
Rugby league combines the thrill and power of a 100-metre race with a team sport involving a ball. It’s even better when players use evasion to escape a covering tackle. A side-step and swerve at speed makes it look like an overtaking manoeuvre in F1.
The significance of the score (i.e. the time the try was recorded, the score of the match at that time, the position of the teams in the league table and the round of the season) has to be taken into consideration when you select your favourite try.
I also prefer to see long-range tries, when the team take risks in their own half of the field and display a level of creativity above and beyond one pass from the man behind the ‘play-the-ball’. I know the aim of the game is to win the match but the reason people pay to watch is for the entertainment it provides.
The strength of the players and the strategy of the team often contributes to some of the best tries in Super League. There aren’t really any new moves or plays that haven’t already been tried in one form or another; they just tend to get recycled and done much quicker. When it’s well executed, the set-pattern play leads to some of my favourite tries.
Some are scored as a result of a defensive error, dropped ball or simple missed tackles. I guess that this will always happen and although they don’t give the same sense of exhilaration they still put four more points on the scoreboard.
Every week it’s my responsibility to select what I think are the top five tries in Super League. What do you think makes the greatest try?
