The International Rugby Player’s Association have put up their shortlist for the try of the the year. You can see them all here
The nominees are:
Which is your favourite and why?
I like the Johnny May one, his turn of speed was incredible!
Yeah a great bit of individual brilliance there.
I went with Hougaard in the end (even though the pass from Hendricks looks a bit suspect) though, I prefer team tries with lots of passes. And it was instrumental in giving the All Blacks their first defeat in almost 20 games as well.
Tough call. Some really good tries there. I’m leaning towards the Welsh effort against Scotland. Hendricks’ try for South Africa was good, but the last pass was a yard or so forward, i think.
Jonny May and Magali Harvey both showed great speed. The way that May just accelerated around his man and then kept going to beat the second defender on the outside was amazing.
Let me be clear at the outset. All these tries are very, very good - in different ways but very good nonetheless. As a result, picking the best one is hard and, for me, relies on some serious nitpickery.
The Roberts try stems from a Scottish error - the overthrow at the lineout - and occurred with Scotland on the end of a fearful thrashing and down to 14 men due to Stuart Hogg being sent off. They had a man over and made it pay but the side they were up against was already down at that point and, for me, in this sort of competition, you get marks off for the opposition “helping” you by making the error that sets up the ball on the front foot at the start of the move.
The Magali Harvey try also relies on the French winger needlessly coming off her wing when the players inside her are covering across and will probably stop that move dead. She takes herself out of the game giving Harvey lots of space to run.
The Hendricks try sure as hell looks like it’s got a forward pass in it.
The May try relies on Dagg getting his angles wrong and failing to take May into touch.
The only try which I would regard as basically unstoppable is the Hougaard try. Every All Black defender does his job to just about the best of his ability - there’s a slip by one in the 22 but is covered by his mate, the outside backs rush up on the ensuing move that goes to the right and close the space well and essentially give De Villiers the option of the chip or the end of the move (the chip is just very well executed), the covering defender chops down the chaser well and at the point where the pass is made off the floor, I would argue that the full back has to come up ASAP to try and get Hougaard ball and all, as sitting back will give Hougaard too much room to operate, with an offload resulting in a try anyway.
As a result of this incredibly harsh nitpickery, Hougaard’s is the one for me.
As a former winger I like the Jonny May try. I’ll agree with Cumbrian that it looks bad that Dagg didn’t show May the sideline but I think he was outsmarted. He calls for cover to the outside, I think because May has a good left foot step and he thinks he’s going to use it, but May goes the other way and just burns him. I really like the arrogance of thinking you can do it.
That’s a good analysis, Cumbrian, and i think it’s a pretty good way of voting for the best one: Ask yourself which try probably couldn’t have been stopped by any defence.
I would quibble a little bit with you regarding the Welsh try. Yes, it began from an error at the lineout, but i’ve seen plenty of bad lineout throws that didn’t lead to 90-meter tries. If the bad throw had been 30 meters out or something, i’d consider docking points from the try, but it takes a pretty good effort to go almost the length of the field. I didn’t realize, though, that the Scots only had 14 men on the field; that does change the equation a bit.
François Hougaard, without hesitation. Not that I know much about rugby, but I found the coordination between the team members amazing.
Disclaimer: Almost everything I know about rugby I learned from American football.
To me the critical error on this try comes much later. Watch the throw that springs the 2-on-1 on the outside. Two Welsh players are converging on the one man with the ball at this point, leaving the 2-on-1 wide open. The fact that the
This mistake was so bad that even I, a total novice, picked it up on my first viewing. (Of course, the principle is very similar in American football.)
Is it common for the ball to bounce like it did on the Hougaard try? It looks like a really lucky bounce to me.
Do you mean the way the ball popped up after the kick through at around 2:02? That’s pretty common; you can see a bunch more examples in this compilation.. By getting the ball to tumble along the ground sooner or later it’ll bounce up like that.