But what I don't get is; the coach says he didn't coach them to play like that, he apparently gave them a blast at half time telling them to stop but they came out in the 2nd half and kept doing it, surely they could see themselves that it wasn't working and they still kept doing it
.
All of these guys have been in elite coaching programmes since their teenage years, so you'd expect them to:
(a) know what they were doing was dumb
(b) work it out on the field
(c) take on board the blast from the coach and stop
but none of those things happened.
Does this identify a major deficiency in our youth player development programmes at the elite level?
It's not as if they were playing the top team - the Blues were coming 11th at the time.
BTW We've had years and years listening to these mournful press conferences after losses like that by the Waratahs, they must have a script for it by now.