Many Different Things or The Same Thing Many Times

Revisiting the article on critical incidents for a moment I have thought that, one day, resources permitting we should see where the high correlations exist between the various aspects of play and the final score.

The statistics on TV often bear little relationship to the difference in scores. Even the tackle count shows little correlation and, in some circumstances the team making the most tackles wins.

So what are the significant correlations between the outcome goals/the score and the performance goals, the successful or unsuccessful performance of the skills of the game? The skills are numerous and you would need a bank of information to make the assessment and, in the end, you may be no better off.  And yet this is the only verifiable way that we can be sure that what we are doing is objectively what is needed. This is not to bely the subjective analysis of the game that comes from years of analysing and coaching the game. We must back our judgement and intuition as experienced coaches so long as the process is sound.

Last week-end Korea played Hong Kong and spent long periods of play defending their goal line as Hong Kong showed patience and grit attacking the goal-line from between 5-10metres out. Their technique and quick support enabled them to apply pressure that resulted in 2 tries. In a tighter game this is significant. To be fair Korea defended well but, if their back play had not been as good as it was 2 tries could have been a winning score.

For me the real pint of analysis was to figure out how Hong Kong got there in possession in the first place. As a result I took time to analyse the play leading up to these attacks.

The things that conceded field position were turnovers. None of them occurred individually many times but collectively they amounted to the loss of a lot of possession.

The reasons for Korea putting itself in this defensive position were:

1. Line-out throwing that was not straight when under pressure on about 3 occasions..
2. Kicking to touch on the full. This happened twice.
3. Relieving kicks not finding touch – 3 times.
4. Being held up in the tackle – 3 times.
5. Kick offs not contestable – 4 times.
6. Panicking and throwing the ball forward on a quick throw in when the ball went into touch — once.
7. Reloading slow at times, other times very good. When you are slow reloading it is difficult to know who is tackling who. 5 times
8. Infringing the Law:
   1. At the tackle – 5 times and 2 players sin binned.
   2. Get off-side – 4 times especially from phase play in the red zone.
9. Trying to pass the ball on our territory from kick offs with each tackle offering something to the opposition inside goal kicking range along with the referee.
10. Our back Three – 11,14 and 15 – were not in position to catch a number of their kicks – 4 times. T
11. Playing in our half of the field when the team pattern that was drummed in was to play in their half. When one player does his own thing those focussed on playing to the pattern become disoriented and their support is delayed.
12. As you can see there was no one factor that we would practice intensively this week to get things right and yet if we spent time on each one the time spent would be insufficient to make any appreciable progress.
13. So what is the way ahead.
14. A suggestion is to play with varying degrees of opposition and, at the very least, the intensity of continuous play so that the players play to what is in front of them based on the team’s broadly based patterns of play in attack and to the fine-tuned game plan for this game.
15. You need 2 teams although the defence can be fewer on the basis that it is an easier skill than attack, but not too many fewer.
16. Initially they would play based on field position. I divide up the field into red, orange and green  zones for simplicity but you may have your own way.
17. Basically we are looking at gaining stable possession with the maximum range of options available and secondly attack with a range of options to take advantage of the positioning of the defence.
18. To improve decision making you would then do the old Villepreux thing and have the team move from one ball to another on the coach’s call. They would have to adjust to the situation once again based on field position plus the positioning of the defence. If Pierre had his way the variable would only be the position of the defence and we would adapt in a “dynamic way”.
19. At the heart of this is the role of myelin that I became aware of in the book by Dan Coyle called “The Talent Code”.
20. Myelin coats the transmitters from brain to body in the nervous system. The thicker the coating, the fewer the leaks and the faster the transmission of the messages. This has particular the case in sports where a limited number of skills are repeated. Football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, golf and rugby league all come to mind.
21. The problem with rugby is that you not only don’t get to do the same thing many times at once, the number of opportunities you get to do it is too few to become any good. Being any good has 2 elements, the ability to make the successful choice of skill and the second the successful performance of that skill having just doe something different and, in all probability, being about to do something different after completion.
22. So the repeated skill is decision making which can only be enhanced by simulating game play as explained above.
23. In addition coaches may be able to simulate situations either from video clips, listing what happens next, prioritizing these and then comparing these with what in fact did happen. They would then note the change, compare the return from each approach and the functional roles and skill performance of the players to identify success or otherwise.
24. Most of all we need discipline to keep within the pattern and the concentration that, if we are under pressure to take the least risk option based on possession and field position before threatening our skill set.

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