Just switching radio frequencies over to the Wallaby-related station no one really cares about (except a tiny little group).
'The total coaching team that matters most' - 2TCT FM
>> B Foley on Rugby HQ last week, in discussing his kicking issues, referred to the fact that Cheika has just now brought in Chris Malone (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Malone) to assist with his kicking.
(Chek has clearly sacked the hapless Hill whose kicking coach improvement stats just about matched up with A Blades' equivalent in his forwards and set piece coaching of 2012-14. As an aside: the ARU's recent history in choosing Assistant Coaches at Wallaby level is dire - I can think of only P Blake, who did excellent work with Wallaby defence in his period - that has made a demonstrably positive contribution - have there been others?)
Chris Malone has his talents, but a seasoned, specialist kicking coach he is not. This is clearly an 'emergency ring-in' band-aid style appointment.
Highly dangerous to be going into a RWC with no credentialed kicking and catching coach the equivalent of the AB's Mick Byrne.
>> To the best of my knowledge, we still have no Wallaby Forwards Coach.
V the Boks, the poor quality of our breakdown work was hugely exposed and the Boks:Wallaby turnovers won ratio was embarrassing. This dimension v Argentina was better, but that team was in IMO weaker than the 2014 version and their forwards skills in broken play were way below what we will see in the RWC v the likes of England, Boks again, and of course the ABs. (Note that the Boks in recent years have invested in a specialised breakdown-focussed coaching program under Richie Gray.)
Chek is valiantly coaching the forwards himself, but history shows just as Deans foolishly insisted on coaching the backs/attack himself, that, at this highly demanding and competitive level, you just cannot combine total team overnight as HC with also trying to optimise performance directly yourself in a key specialised function of the team. Something has to give, or be compromised, in one or the other.
The NZRU figured this out long ago - indeed weak thinking on his potential ABs coaching team as a whole was one of the major reasons Deans lost out to Henry in the context re the appointment of AB HC in late 2007.
It wil be fascinating - I hope not in yet another painful way - to see how our forwards deal with those of the ABs on Saturday night. This is just the area where time and time again the ABs have shown us the forwards playing standards and 'correctly applied intensity' (especially in broken play) to which we could only aspire. We observe all this, but little really gets done about it, in a genuine coaching upgrade action plan.
Our approach to dealing with this obvious gap seems to principally be to attempt to forge 'new cultures', 'deposits in belief' and 'identities and passion' and, that vastly over-used term that no one quite knows what it means anymore, 'up the physicality'. The complex, precise technical work in terms of breakdown timing, numbers to allocate, technique over the loose ball, assembling-in-pods skills, etc seem to be considered secondary, but this is what a crack forwards coach works on day and night.
