Delaying the revival is a gamble and most benches take it blind

Being reduced to three players is survivable. The decision that turns it into an all out is usually made two raids earlier.

A side drops to three on the mat and the whole rhythm of the match tilts. What happens next is decided less by heroics than by a series of small choices about who raids, how hard, and whether the team is trying to score or trying to breathe.

Revival is the mechanism. Every point you take brings a player back. So a team at three has two ways to climb out. Raid aggressively and bring bodies back through touches, or defend well and bring them back through tackles. Aggression is faster and riskier. Defence is slower and depends on the opposition raider making a mistake, which a good one will not do while he is holding a big numerical edge.

Most benches split the difference, which is the worst of it. They send in a raider with vague instructions to get something, he takes a bonus, one man comes back, and the team is at four against seven with the same problem and less time. Meanwhile the opposition has worked out that the next two raids will also be cautious and can set its defence accordingly.

I think the correct call at three is almost always to attack, and to attack with your second raider rather than your best one. That sounds wrong so let me explain it. Your best raider is the man you need after the all out, when you are rebuilding and every point matters and the opposition defence has been on the mat a while. Spending him on a low probability raid into a full seven, purely to avoid an all out that costs two points, is bad accounting. Two points is two points. Losing your primary scorer's legs for the rest of the half is worse.

The all out gets treated as a catastrophe partly because of the noise. The crowd erupts, the graphic fills the screen, the commentators change tone. On the scoreboard it is a two point event with a reset attached, and the reset is not always bad for you. Seven fresh players on the mat against a defence that has been chasing for four minutes is a genuinely playable position.

Panic is expensive. The all out is not.