More tries are being scored in rugby union right now than at any other point in the sport's history. According to Squidge Rugby, whose latest deep dive landed this week, that record-shattering glut of attacking points has a deeply unfashionable engine: the box kick.
The analyst opens by acknowledging rugby fans rarely seem satisfied. Teams have won World Cups and been told they did not score enough tries. Grand Slams have been dismissed as not vintage. Yet the cold numbers tell a different story. This season has produced more tries than the record-breaking 2025 campaign before it. Italy beat England for the first time in their history. Germany beat Romania. Portugal toppled Georgia for the first time in two decades. Every Six Nations team picked up a win. Perennial strugglers Dragons, Zebre and Newcastle are all enjoying their best seasons in recent memory.
Squidge Rugby argues the margins between teams have never been tighter, but the points have never been higher, and crucially this is not coming at the expense of defence. The standard of work without the ball remains as high as ever. The conclusion is unambiguous: rugby union, on the field, has never been in a better, healthier or more exciting place.
To explain how the game arrived here, the analyst rewinds through three decades of tactical evolution. Sir Ian McGeechan's hiring of a defence specialist for the 1997 Lions tour is identified as the moment everything tipped. Within two years, the average score in Five Nations games dropped from 48 points to 31. Defence had become the most important part of the sport, and waves of innovation followed: Wayne Smith's New Zealand attacks, Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards's blitz, and finally the system that broke the game open for half a decade, the catch-up defender approach pioneered by South Africa physiotherapist-turned-defence-coach Jacques Nienaber.
The answer to that suffocating system, according to Squidge Rugby, was abandoning structure altogether. Eddie Jones's positionless rugby, refined by France and copied across the professional game, forced defenders to think on their feet rather than slot into pre-set roles. For 18 months, defences floundered. By last year they had begun to adapt, retraining forwards to defend like centres.
What keeps rugby in this attacking era, the analyst argues, is the contestable box kick. Far from being the negative play many fans accuse it of, the box kick has become the most reliable way of generating turnover ball without first having to defend. The chaos it produces around the catch zone tilts numbers out of the defensive line, opens up backfield space and sets up the kind of off-the-cuff moments fans say they want to see.
Squidge Rugby points to Tom Ramos's volleyed assist for Louis Bielle-Biarrey against Ireland in the 2026 Six Nations as the perfect case study. The whole try, the analyst notes, was a product of a single Antoine Dupont box kick that disorganised the Irish backfield and forced a split-second read no defender could execute cleanly.
Italy, the analyst observes, have become one of the best exponents of the tactic, attacking the line off contestable kicks and dummy box kicks alike. England's run through November and the Six Nations was built on the same principle, with their escort work around the catch so good that Lawrence Dallaglio reportedly considered coming out of retirement.
The upshot is a strategy that, paradoxically, democratises the game. A team like Uruguay, with a quality kicker at nine and tall back-three players, can leverage box kicking against South Africa or Scotland in 2027. Squidge Rugby's verdict is blunt: complaints about caterpillar rucks miss the point, because what follows the kick is exactly the chaotic, skilful rugby fans have been demanding for years.
