By Will Greenwood
Bob Dwyer is a hell of a man. World Cup-winning coach, Australian to his core. He said what he liked and he liked what he said.
Dwyer had a turn of phrase like no other. When you ran with the ball he implored you to move "as if a tiger was chasing you. No! A man with a knife". But best of all was his description of how he wanted you to react when the ball went loose during a match. Bob would scream at you to fall on it as if it were a bomb and your family were in the room. "Smother the bloody thing quickly," he would shout.
 | |
Watching Italy play last weekend, you got the feeling that Nick Mallett had called for the same sense of urgency. It's no coincidence that England struggled as they lost the battle on the floor in the second half, with Mauro Bergamasco and Sergio Parisse everywhere.
But it wasn't just England who felt the impact of smart guys getting their hands on stray ball. Ireland were smashed on the floor in the first half, with Lionel Nallet stealing the pill for Vincent Clerc's first try. Wales' Martyn Williams pilfered anything that even looked like poking out of a Scottish ruck, thief extraordinaire.
In today's game much is made of keeping the ball in your hands, of running and offloading. But ignore the dirty work on the floor at your peril. Where it was once the realm of the No 7, who prided himself on the art of killing and nicking the ball, today it is the job of every player from one to 15.
This battle for 50/50 possession - a mix of honest Corinthian spirit, a determination to win and great technique - can swing a game.
The set-piece scrums and line-outs have retained their value. However, win the breakdown, snaffle loose ball, and a team can neutralise this threat. Don't knock on, keep the ball in the tackle, run straight, recycle rigorously and viciously, and why do you need to go to set-pieces? Space will appear, gaps come if you are patient and hungry.
For England's disheartened players, this weekend will give them a chance to steel their resolve, and what better way than getting right back into it in the Guinness Premiership.
Now I don't want to make out that there's no technique involved in winning the battle on the floor. It takes hard, painful graft to get it right. On the 1997 Lions tour, Jim Telfer had a stick he used to whack you with if your body position was too high as you practised rucking drills. He didn't just tap you either, especially when you were a 6ft 5in public school threequarter who had always thought rucking was something only forwards did.
When he was England forwards coach, John Mitchell was a nasty man in this area as well. His hard Kiwi edge came through. John used to get four players inside a 3 x 3-metre grid that had long tackle pads for their sides. Men with tackle shields and tackle suits would stand over the pads wanting to cause you as much pain as possible.
The drill was simple and it lasted a minute. The scrum-half put the ball in front of a pad and you had to ruck the men away from it, then you moved on to the next pad. But make any mistake, put a loose foot on the ball, commit an offence by losing your feet and it meant you went back to the start. The more tired you got, the more mistakes you made.
John would shout at us to "let the dog see the rabbit". I think I understood what he meant. Huge bodies were flying and it was chaos. Pad to pad, body position ever lower, aggression increasing rather than diminishing.
In 2005, Eddie O'Sullivan had a net placed over the rucking area in the old Commonwealth Stadium in Christchurch and the Lions midweek team went about whacking lumps out of each other at almost knee height.
The Argentinians in the World Cup were frenzied at the breakdown, while teams such as Munster have been creating havoc for years. For the All Blacks, the loose ball and rucking are almost a right of passage. Bravery is needed - it is a dangerous place to be.
Players have to commit and they have to do so 100 per cent, regardless of who they're playing for, be it Leicester at Welford Road or the local school on a back pitch. Unless that happens there will always be a man on the other team who will want it more.
A pack of hungry scavengers do not need much knowledge about the intricacies of rugby. They don't have to be able to pass off their left hand or have a turn of speed or a scything sidestep. All they need is to boss the breakdown and eat the scraps. This will rebalance power from the fancy player to the ugly player. It is why our game is so beautiful - people with no airs or graces can be almost impossible to beat because they do not mind having their nose rearranged for the seemingly thankless task of re-gathering a loose ball.
Today we will see if that hunger burns bright in many of this island's best.
No comments:
Post a Comment