BY MARK CASHMAN

Around The Traps always gets some amazing insights when we patch in a call to Ben Darwin at Gain Line Analytics.

There’s a lot to like about ‘Door’ – after all he’s a prop, he played for my club Northern Suburbs, the Brumbies and the Wallabies and his sports analysis is first rate.

Gain Line do a lot of work in the rugby world, helping the Crusaders to their position of dominance as well as projects in the NRL, the English Premier League and Formula One.

So the question that I put to Darwin was who, of the four clubs left in the race for the Shute Shield, has the best chance of holding the premiership “slab” up on grand final day on September 5.

What he told me was that in 19 of the past 23 seasons the winner of the competition has been the top ranked defensive side.

Contrastingly the side with the best attacking record has got the chocolates on 11 occasions during that period. The minor premiers won 13 times.

Incredibly nine of the last 10 premiership winners have been the side with the best defensive record.

And that draws a thick line and an asterisks under the Beasties who have a points differential of 420, a number settled on the 759 points they scored and the 339 they conceded.

That means they have conceded only 18.83 points per game, the Rats sit on 23.16, Gordon on 27.33 and Uni with 31.44.

The Rats are next in line with a points differential of 212, made up of 629 points for and conceding 417.

Next comes Gordon on 139 (631 for and 492 against) and Sydney Uni on 96 (662 for to 566 against).

“Yes in the Shute Shield it seems that a good defence has won titles more than any other component,” Darwin told Around The Traps.

“We speak a lot about cohesion in our work and the defensive part of the game underlines that

“Good defence is all about working together, sticking to a plan and executing.

But before we get to that there is the not so small matter of Easts getting through their qualifying final this weekend against Sydney Uni at Woollahra Oval.

The Students have beaten the Beasties twice this season – the first at Uni in Round 8 (a 33-10 win) and the second a couple of weeks back at Woollahra (a 46-44 Round 17 victory).

The Rats share the spoils with their opponents Gordon this weekend having beaten the Highlanders 24-17 in Round 2 and then falling to them 35-24 in Round 17 at Chatswood.

I also asked Darwin about the effect that playing finals at home has and he opined that it was significant.

“We see this time and again in competitions like the NRL and the English Premier League,” he added.

“A study in European football has shown that the home advantage does not come from familiar surroundings but the impact on the the players and in particular the referee.

“The larger the crowd the more the penalties to the home team. During the COVID epidemic home advantage disappeared in almost every sport.

Yes those 50-50s at home will be important!

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Darwin also has strong views about the “open borders” idea couched in a revamp of the Super Rugby Pacific competition.

He believes that the cohesion that the Aussie and Kiwi Super sides push through to their national teams will evaporate.

“It would be a disaster,” he told this column.

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The field for the Next Prop Model race on grand final day is starting to flesh out so to speak.

The Beasties have nominated young front ranker Will Foxton as their man and he’s already taken the high ground with some “smack talk”.

In vision that Around The Traps has seen Foxton declares that he is already the “fastest prop in Sydney” from the Murray Tate Hill at Woollahra.

And there is the claim that the $1000 prize money for the 50m sprint dressed only in Budgie Smugglers is his.

Stay tuned as field fills out in coming days.

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You need a rock in the midfield and as this season has ground on for Warringah, Tyson Davis has been that man for the Rats.

The 30-year-old Davis will run on for his 200th grade game (174 in first grade) for the Rats on the weekend and in this column’s humble opinion he’s been one of the reasons why the Rats have come back into form.

Changes in backline personnel and the Wes Thomas injury have contributed to that dip in form but when you need someone to run that hard angle close to the line Davis puts his hand up.

He did spend some time in reserve grade earlier this year but that seems to have given him an edge – the edge you play with when you know the end is closer than the start.

Enjoy it Tyson!

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Things just keep getting better for Catchpole Medal winner Isaac Kneepkens.

The 27-year-old has been drafted into the Fiji national squad for the upcoming Pacific Nations Cup which will kick off on September 12 with a game against Canada in Osako, Japan.

Around The Traps was told of his pending selection on the morning after the Catchpole Medal dinner last week.

After the match against Canada the series switches to finals mode with a third place playoff and a final in Tokyo.

It involves Japan, the USA as well as Fiji and Canada and is an important development tool for Test players all around the Pacific Rim.

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Now this one is sure to draw a crowd.

The funeral and celebration of the life of Tim ‘Guru’ Wedlock will be held on Sunday August 30 in the Great Hall at Knox Grammar school from noon.

It’s sure to be an uplifting experience as his family, club and wider rugby community remember a unique and giving character.

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It hasn’t got much traction but Sydney Rugby Union president Grahame O’Donnell paid tribute to a couple of our coaching family last week.

Someone once said to me that there are two sorts of coaches – the ones who have been sacked, and the ones who are waiting to be sacked.

Now that in some ways is a bit harsh but it’s a reality in a results driven business that coaching in the Shute Shield has become.

O’Donnell singled out Brian ‘Billy’ Melrose and Darren ‘DC’ Coleman for their extended years of service.

For Melrose it’s 25 consecutive seasons and “DC’ has notched up 21 years of hard labour.

They’ve both for the most part specialised in turning clubs around and this column tips its lid to their considerable body of work.