A great initiative and obviously desperately needed. The devil will of course be in the detail though.
The Irish method seems fair. Only start 6 out of 8 games, off the bench in 1 and rested for 1. In an 18 game season it really only equates to rested for two games and off the bench for two. For the top teams, they will be able to target the games against lower teams to rest their stars. For the bottom teams it won't be so critical. The only time I can see it being a big issue will be for the middle of the pack teams at the pointy end of the season, fighting to make the finals and if they haven't rested their players yet.
A massive positive for me in the article is the likelihood of increasing the EPS to compensate the teams. Any measure which creates more spaces in the professional squads can only be a good thing for identifying and developing talent.
Read the article
here.
This supposedly new initiative is just way, way too late. The problem has been evident at international level for at least 12 months and if you look at the Waratah history 2-3 years. Only now are the ARU starting to consider what might be done. As with all bad management, they are constantly chasing answers to last year's problems. Good management identifies problems early and sets up systems to deal with them. NZ have been rotating and resting players for at least two years (eg the Crusaders have been rotating their props for two years now) and they have significantly lower attrition rates. The Crusaders props example is only one of many. Had Deans still been coach there the Franks Bros would have played till they dropped and only then would Crockett have had significant game time.
The two teams with the highest attrition rate internationally are SA and Oz. They are also the two teams who have a "pick the best team and play till you're injured" mentality. You'll note that this proposal doesn't seem to affect the Wallabies - play till you drop will certainly continue unabated, but the Super teams will have to rotate. And if "resting" means you don't play but you still have to train then it will be no use at all. You can't play 16-19 Super games plus trials and 15 internationals with all the associated training plus maybe some club games and not suffer burnout.
No one seems to know why Australian hamstrings are so much weaker than New Zealanders; and no one seems to have given the issue much thought. Maybe its over-training, maybe its too much gym work, maybe its undertraining. But why can I list at least half a dozen Aussie top line players with dodgy hamstrings, but not one Kiwi? Without any evidence to the contrary, I suggest it might have something to do with the quantity and intensity of workload we impose on test level players.
Kudos to Link and the Reds who are starting their own academy. The best managements are always in front of the game.
And now the situation for the Rebels, Force and Brumbies will be dire. By forcing international players to be rested and then boosting EPS squads to compensate those three teams, without a local competition to resource from, will have to get quality replacements. But all the best players are already committed to the various squads, academies and EPS's. Where do they get the replacements from at the last minute, with the pre-season already underway?
I believe this is a problem made by the ARU! They reduced squad sizes and injuries went up. There is a direct link.
The problem existed before they reduced squad sizes. Waratahs 2011 should have been the wake up call. But nobody did anything about it. The ARU failing is not that they caused the injury/burnout problem but that they did not put in place structures to deal with it and then they restricted the squad sizes so that teams which were "unlucky" had no effective back-ups. Two players for each position plus five floaters is ridiculous for teams playing up to 19 Super games with three or four internationals in the mix as well. Each franchise needs a minimum of 40 players and no player should be allowed to start in more than 12 Super games. Super team thinking has to go! Super squad thinking has to take over.
Same at international level. You need squads of 35 playes, with injury replacement coming from a cover squad of 15 or so. Players should
not play every game unless injured, players need to be rotated to allow rest and recovery to happen properly. If you don't do this, then you are forced by injury to do it anyway. When you are forced to do it by injury, you then bring in new players and try to bring them up to speed in a week. And we wonder why our backline is so disfunctional. When you plan to do it, everyone has trained together, knows the playbook and knows each others' play. The players seamlessly move into and out of the team with little apparent impact on overall performance. Think of the way Messam, Vito and Thompson work seamlessly at 6, or Carter and Cruden at 10. You get this not by luck but by careful planning and implimentation.
But with JON, the Board, Nucifora and Deans at the helm we will always be playing catch-up.
