PaarlBok
Rod McCall (65)
Love to read the experts view of the game and for whats it worth , the Bokke forwards coach views on the enemies.
http://coaching.blog.rugbyiq.com/?p=58
http://coaching.blog.rugbyiq.com/?p=58
Prospects for Australia and New Zealand
Hi again to all our RUGBYIQ friends.
Again may i start by saying a huge thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read our blogs on RUGBYIQ.COM and more importantly, have taken the time to offer opinions and give feedback. It has been amazing to see the amount of feedback we have received and the constructive comments have been insightful. Please feel free to email our blogs on to anyone whom you believe may be interested.
Remember we also have numerous other experts writing at RUGBYIQ.COM from doctors to mental coaches, so hopefully we can cover the full spectrum of this great game.
In today’s blog i would like to share some thoughts with you of our opponents Australia and New Zealand, and to offer an opinion of where I believe they are at the moment with there respective teams.I am not at all looking to “have a pop” at either of these two teams, in fact on the contrary, but i would like to offer my opinion, for your interest, of where we believe they fell short and areas we believed we should attempt to attack them or exploit, from a technical and tactical point of view.
New Zealand
As i have mentioned many times before I believe that one of the most important aspects in coaching is to always deal with facts, and steer clear of making decisions or big calls based on emotion. The same must apply, I believe, when we asses our opponents and we do a post-mortem, as we are doing here. I say this because before we even begin to asses the All Blacks, we must be aware of how many big name players they were without during this campaign. Obviously we know that Dan Carter only started the Tri-Nations late and didn’t even come on tour to S.A. when the All Blacks were here.
They also had other key players out, some for the entire competition, and others who got injured during the Tri-Nations, some in key positions such as Ali Williams,Conrad Smith, Luke McCalister etc.
Now i am fully aware that injuries are occupational hazard in the world of professional rugby, and i assure you their is nothing more frustrating and infuriating for a coach, to be stuck without a crop of his best players, but I thought I would mention it as it does play a significant role in a teams confidence and ultimately performance.
In saying that we also tried to base our game around aspects of them that we believed we could exploit, and in doing so, hopefully put them under enough pressure to either force them to make an error, cost them a penalty or score a try.
One area was our kicking game,as awesome Rockocoko and Sivivatu are, and they truly are, as broken field runners and try scorers, we thought they would not enjoy to be kicked on and pressurised. These could be box kicks on them or tactical kicks in behind them, where they had to turn and chase. So we used our kicking game, mostly from our own half, as an attacking weapon, especially seeing as we thought that with the wings and Mils Muliaina, they would regularly still like to look to try counterattack, and then we would be ready to defend them and hopefully turn them over, because they were down on numbers, or we had exerted sufficient pressure on them to make an error.
On attack, that is once we were in their half, we would look to play to our greatest strength, that being our direct physical approach.We primarily adopted a methodology where we would look to keep playing the same way, until we ran out of space, and to look to put numbers behind the ball, run hard, be direct and make the ALL Blacks use two or three tacklers at a time to stop us, ultimately hopefully running out of numbers hence creating space for us to play into.
Finally we also wanted to exert as much pressure on them when they had they ball, from a defensive point of view, because as mentioned earlier, we believed they would look to run the ball from almost everywhere, and in doing so could sometimes get themselves isolated from support.
Pressure is an amazing attribute and i could not encourage all young coaches out their to use this weapon with your team enough. It requires a team to have a great work ethic and to never stop looking for work whilst the ball is in play, but it can pay huge dividends.
Australia
Now here is something that i think you may find surprising for me to say, but i actually thought that Australia were a better team, technically, than the All Blacks. Certainly in my opinion, they were a much tougher team to prepare against, and certainly asked more questions of SA from a defencive point of view.
Now at the chance of being accused of contradicting myself, perhaps the fact that they have far more variation than the All Blacks could be to their detriment. The Boks for example are an unashamedly simple team. Our philosophy is not to be a jack of all trades and rather a master of one. We feel it doesn’t really matter if you think you know what we are going to do, you still have to try stop us, and hopefully because we have attempted to perfect one or two things, instead of having a full array of options, we are able to execute those few things well.
Anyway back to Australia, as mentioned they certainly have a complete game. They have great structure and hold onto the ball well through phases. They also have good variation of plays.
From full lineouts and scrums,they use the option to go wide instantly, also they can set it up in the midfield, with Asley-Cooper or Mortlock, before he was injured, and from their they can play same way or change direction.
They they also use a 4 and 5 man lineout, where interestingly they leave a loose forward and a prop out wide.(I am sure this is because they want another jumper in the lineout) and from this they also have a variation of plays.
They also have a very good kicking game and again if Ashley-Cooper is at fullback then between him Barnes and Giteau they have great kicking options, especially with Barnes being right footed and Giteau being left.
Then possibly the best aspect of Australia play is their defence. I think they have an awesome workrate and seem to be a very difficult team to break down. In fact most of they tries we were able to score against them in this years Tri-Nations, came from first phase moves, where obviously their is more space. It is quite an attribute to have when the more the phases progress the better ones defence gets, and i believe generally that is the case with Australia.
Why then, you must be asking, did they come last in this years Tri-Nations, and capitulate in the final game against the All Blacks??
Simply put, i think this team have very young or inexperienced players in key positions.Coupled with the fact that they had to mix up their centre pairing regularly due to injury. I dont believe they are a team who brim with confidence yet, and in tight close games, they haven’t yet acquired the mental toughness to believe they can hang on to win, especially in the first two tests against NZ.
Robbie Deans will however get this right, and the more time they spend playing against other nations, other than NZ ans SA, they will grow and build in confidence, and the more times they have performances,as they did against the Boks in Brisbane, they better they will become. Australia will be a very real threat by the time the next world cup is here and the fact that the tournament is only “down the road” in New Zealand will definitely make them one of the favorites.
Next week i will write to you from Buenos Aires where i will share some views of my time spent with a group of coaches from Argentina and Uruguay.
all the best
GG
