Wallabies 2024

[barbarian]

I reckon guys like George Smith are not common.

When people talk about the greats in sports - guys like Jordan, Kobe, Messi, Tiger etc - you often hear about their work ethic and how hard they pushed themselves (and often their teammates) in training.

A friend of mine once met Michael Hooper and he asked him if had any advice for a young player wanting to pursue a rugby career and Hooper told him that exact line - train the way you want to play.

That's true, though it's worth pointing out none of those guys play a physical contact sport like rugby.

With various changes to player safety rules, player union demands and high performance data professional rugby teams do way less contact training than they might have in the past.

Again it doesn't dispute the overall point, but the 'train like you play' applies perhaps in a different way to an ultra-physical forward like Tupou or LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) than it might to a Tom Wright or Corey Toole.

 

[Bullrush]

That's true, though it's worth pointing out none of those guys play a physical contact sport like rugby.

With various changes to player safety rules, player union demands and high performance data professional rugby teams do way less contact training than they might have in the past.

Again it doesn't dispute the overall point, but the 'train like you play' applies perhaps in a different way to an ultra-physical forward like Tupou or LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) than it might to a Tom Wright or Corey Toole.

I coached an U16s team this year for the first time so I talked to a few guys I know who are either coaching themselves or have been involved in fairly high-level environments and the advice I got was that a training session should have max 12-20mins of high intensity contact work.

For me, it seems so strange that a guy like Wright wouldn't have been training with this kind of 'train the way you play' mind-set. But it also speaks to what I see as a problem in Australian Rugby. Hopefully it is changing and we can see Super Rugby teams (and then the Wallabies) return to Top 5 status.

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

High intensity contact work is one thing but and can be understandable at times. It's the phoning it in skills work I think can be where the top training is lost. Some of these guys that are so naturally gifted can cruise through this training. We then come unstuck when under fatigue and pressure in a game and they haven't been exposed to executing fine skills in this situation.

Can also defend them and say they only rise to level of the team mates and there is a lack of depth across the board.

 

[LeCheese]

Again it doesn't dispute the overall point, but the 'train like you play' applies perhaps in a different way to an ultra-physical forward like Tupou or LSL (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) (Lukhan Salakaia-Loto) than it might to a Tom Wright or Corey Toole.

Agreed - and that's where some common sense and management needs to come in.

For Wright, it sounds as though the biggest change was increasing the tempo at which he was doing drills, as opposed to the physicality - which makes sense given speed, agility, and decision making are all central to his role in the team. For those doing more grunt work, where physicality is key, it's understandably less sustainable.

 

[LeCheese]

High intensity contact work is one thing but and can be understandable at times. It's the phoning it in skills work I think can be where the top training is lost. Some of these guys that are so naturally gifted can cruise through this training. We then come unstuck when under fatigue and pressure in a game and they haven't been exposed to executing fine skills in this situation.

Can also defend them and say they only rise to level of the team mates and there is a lack of depth across the board.

To be honest, all you need to do is look at some of the training footage coming out of camps. It's pretty easy to see quite a few going through the motions at a reasonably low intensity - particularly in backs drills (yes I was a forward, why do you ask?)

 

[The Ghost of Raelene]

After playing a long time (nowhere near this level but high enough) the teams I was in that were successful had hard training and you were generally flogged for the first half of training and then did skill work/team runs whilst fatigued and not thinking as sharp as you are when fresh, not covered in sweat and have the shits with half your team mates.

 

[Braveheart81]

Any news on Gibbon? Injured? I'm surprised by his absence.

Pone should be called up, surely we can call on him from MP (Moana Pasifika) (Moana Pasifika).

I saw this photo on the Wallabies facebook page a couple of weeks ago and my first thought was the aggressive head shaving was a bad idea heading into Summer in Queensland.

Out with heat stroke and sunburn?