As the Six Nations takes a breather for a weekend the Rabodirect Pro 12 will take centre stage in Irish rugby minds with the battle for the Irish fly-half position playing a lead role. Jonathan Sexton’s hamstring has introduced a sense of intrigue into Munster’s, Leinster’s and Ulster’s matches that would otherwise have been mostly absent.

Ronan O’Gara, Irish rugby legend, has been a permanent fixture as one of Ireland’s top two fly-halves for thirteen years and the undisputed number one for over half of that. After a shaky couple of cameos in the Autumn tests and, most recently, a terrible performance against England in the Six Nations when both the situation and conditions would have appeared to suit the tactical master down to the ground, there are growing calls for a younger man to be given the responsibility of backing up Jonathan Sexton.

The three younger men most often mentioned – Paddy Jackson, Ian Keatley and Ian Madigan – have various qualities over O’Gara, not least of all the advantage of youth.

For this weekend’s games, Ian Keatley has been chosen at full back for Munster while Ronan O’Gara will slip on his familiar outhalf jersey. Madigan and Jackson both get to line out in their preferred positions against Treviso and Zebre respectively.

Kicking

Out of interest, let’s look at the 2011-12 season…

Over the past couple of seasons when filling in for Jonathan Sexton in the Leinster fly-half shirt Ian Madigan has had to fight off both Fergus McFadden and Isa Nacewa for the right to kick goals. By and large has has now done so successfully. He’s always had a decent range from the placed ball and has now added the necessary accuracy to make him a place-kicker of genuine class. He’s landed his last ten consecutive place-kick attempts, second only in the league to Ronan O’Gara’s current streak of 11.

Keatley was the first choice Connacht kicker and during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons he kicked at a 69% success rate on both occasions. If there were a statistic in rugby to gauge a rugby ground’s average level of kicking difficulty, I’d venture to say that the Sportsgrounds might be up there as being one of the hardest places to kick in European rugby. So that 69% might be better than first appears.

Keatley’s 88% this season is a trifle more worthy than O’Gara’s as it has been done over 40 attempts as opposed to O’Gara’s 25. If O’Gara had kicked one fewer goal of those 25 attempts, he’d be sitting on exactly 84% like Madigan. In fact, if both O’Gara and Keatley had both missed one more kick and Madigan one fewer, the top three would read: 

86% Madigan
85% Keatley
84% O’Gara

The point here isn’t to create a new reality, it’s to illustrate just how small the differences can be. It’s one ball off a post that bounces the wrong way; one piece of soft ground under the standing foot; a winger who on a windy day touches down at the corner flag instead of trying to go around under the posts. The gap between the three in league games is negligible to the point of non-existence.

All kicks, however, are not created the same.

In a fascinating recent study the relationship between kicking accuracy and distance was examined using data from various rugby competitions. As part of this study Mark Taylor, who used data from Opta to feed the analysis, performed a direct comparison between Jonathan Sexton and Ronan O’Gara using International, World Cup and Heineken Cup games*. Taylor found that while O’Gara was still an excellent kicker on attempts within 40 metres of the posts, kicking 10% more goals than the average outhalf would be expected to make, since 2010 when he moves outside that range he becomes just an average outhalf. In comparison, in short range kicks Sexton was just 2% better than average while from beyond 40 metres the Leinster man was a colossal 27% better than average. 

*The study did not include data for the Rabodirect/Magners league.

Defence

Jonathan Sexton is a superb defensive fly-half and it’s interesting to look at how the four candidates to replace him might stack up from that perspective.

Looking at games the four have started in the fly-half position for their provinces this season, they divide into two distinct groups: Jackson/Madigan and Keatley/O’Gara.

Jackson and Madigan both have a tackle rate of around 10% better than their Munster rivals. Not only that, they make more tackles too; Jackson makes a full tackle per game more than the Munster tens while Madigan makes another tackle again, and more.

Try-Scoring

Try-scoring puts Madigan in centre stage having run in six tries this season compared to Keatley’s two and zero from both O’Gara and Jackson. The Leinster outhalf runs by far the most ball of the four, choosing the running option twice as often as O’Gara who chooses to do so the least. That nose for the line is no short-term fluke; Madigan scored eight tries in the 2011-12 season. In comparison Keatley scored two, Jackson three and O’Gara none.

When dealing with a half season of games and, in the cases of both Keatley and Madigan, games started at a particular position, it’s important to note that these are relatively small sample sizes. It’s up to the reader to decide whether they pass the sniff test. Your own personal mileage may vary.

Father Time

O’Gara is ten years older than Keatley, twelve years older than Madigan and almost fifteen years older than the redheaded Jackson who started both a Heineken Cup semi-final and final just nine short months ago. He is now 35 years old and by the time the first World Cup game kicks off in 2015 Old Father Time will have carried out another two and a half years of his relentless work. 

But of the four, only O’Gara is a legend. 

It takes guts to drop a legend. It’s rare when both team and player know it’s time to call it a day, but that time has now come for Ireland. If it’s debatable whether he’s the best player to see Ireland to a win now, he almost certainly won’t be the best option by the time the next World Cup comes around.

If O’Gara had been brought up in the Southern Hemisphere in a country that didn’t have the sportspersons’ tax rebate upon retirement his national coach wouldn’t have this problem. That parallel-dimension O’Gara would likely have long retired from the international game and have gone looking for the big paycheck in the Northern half of the rugby-playing globe with a younger model introduced to replace him at both club and international level. Keatley would be the Munster out half and not shunted to full back to accommodate the aging legend. This is one reason why Sexton moving to France can be such a positive for the Irish national team. Ian Madigan can finally get those starts in big games, games that Paddy Jackson has already started at such a very tender age.

Ronan O’Gara is a national treasure, a true servant to the national jersey, a name that will live long in the memory and be first on the lips whenever great Irish rugby wins and kicking feats are discussed. 

It’s now time to declare a new Irish fly-half battle, one that for the first time in thirteen long years should not involve Ronan O’Gara. Unfortunately the likelihood of that happening in the next week are slim. A source within a respected online bookmaker offered some informal direction on what the odds might be on Ireland’s starting fly-half to face Scotland were a price to be offered:

Sadly, he’s probably right.

Stats Notes: 
* Kicking percentage stats past and present are courtesy of SFMS.
** Appearance data does not include one game at fly-half apiece for Madigan (Dragons 08/09/12) and Keatley (Treviso 07/09/12) for which match data was unavailable.