Beale to Tahs, where?

[WorkingClassRugger]

Tactical kicking reminds me of the military term tactical withdrawal. It is so often used when you are being routed!

I look at from a different perspective. Tactical kicking is a aggressive action to put the opposition on the back foot. But it needs to be executed very well in order for it to be so. Otherwise, its aimless which tends to be the majority of kicking options in Aus rugby at the moment.

 

[Lee Grant]

Agree - there's nothing wrong with tactical kicking; nothing wrong with exit kicking and there's nothing generically wrong with well-executed bombs, chips or grubber kicks either.

It's just that you don't want too much of that from your team in the game and—like passing, catching, scrums, lineouts, mauls etc—the kicks have to have a favourable result, or at least a strong likelihood of such.

It's getting away from my earlier point about running the ball out from one's own 22 to a fault, instead of having a good exit strategy, but we should be talking more about a fellow's ability to kick.

In particular we should be talking about who can perform exit kicks with their left foot.

And how many times do we see well-executed bombs by Aussie kickers and chasers except from the Brumbies?

Sometimes a fullback or acting fullback has to hoist the ball up because there is no other option. In the hands of the All Blacks such a kick can be effective, say, 60% of the time, because 1. it lands in the right place and 2. there is a challenger for the ball chasing the kick.

This is not part of the All Black tradition, but as they have done throughout their history, they have just adapted to the realities of rugby life and the effect of current laws and their interpretation.

If these change they will be the first to adapt in a Darwinian way: to get a comparative advantage over their competitors for survival.

If they are at 60% with bombs, most of our teams would be at 30% effectiveness, yet we bang on about running rugby.

I have digressed from the thread subject; but whatever Beale or his fellow Tahs do next year they have to improve their kicking, including chasing them, even if it is a smaller part of their game than it has been in recent years.

Running the ball back from their own red zone to a fault, like Forrest Gump, is as bad as kicking to a fault.

Mind you: Forrest didn't drop too much ball on contact.
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[Ado Tornado]

I can't see Chieka's game plan orientating too much around tactical kicking. Certainly not to the degree the Brumbies do it. It's just not in his Randwick/ running rugby DNA.

I can't help thinking that he might just move Folau to 12. With Foley and Beale he's got two great attacking play makers delivering the pill to a guy who can bust holes through anything. Add a dash of AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) finishing on the outside and Kapow! A backline that could shred the best in the comp.

Then there's the forwards. Retained the important ones, Skelton getting better by the day, the new Japie to add some starch and Grey hired to strengthen the D, the Tahs will do very very well next year.

As some one pointed out, the depth behind Polota Nau is probably the only potential weakness they have. However Cheika builds his side, it'll be a good year in 2014 to be wearing sky blue.

 

[Braveheart81]

I think it is important to have a solid tactical kicking game as part of your arsenal. It doesn't need to be used often but if a few times each game Foley or someone else notices the space and puts in a long kick to find touch or just space in the corner then the opposition will naturally start thinking about it and the response will be for the wingers to play a little deeper giving your backs more space.

You're taught from an early age to run with the ball in two hands to keep the defence guessing. The natural extrapolation of that is that if the defence is unsure what your backline is going to do, they will have to cover more options thus weaking their defence against each option.

The few games last year where Foley really struggled to unlock the opposition backline were highlighted by defences that rushed up and put pressure on the Tahs running game. If there is the thought that you might also kick, then you hopefully buy your backline a little more time and space.