Prescribed or Playing what is in front of you?

By | September 26, 2011

Some seasons ago the Brumbies left their play sheets in the changing room at Carisbrook. At the time there was suspicion that it was intentional to throw confusion into not just the Highlanders but also rumours spread like a rash through New Zealand rugby.

There were 4 sheets and each line on them seemed to be a coded play. Surely Stephen Larkem didn’t have all this in his top 2 inches or was there an ear piece in that head gear? No matter what it ushered sequenced play into New Zealand rugby, sequenced play in great detail.That old phrase that an expert is someone from out of town and the insecurity of New Zealand rugby at the time led to the bait being taken and sequenced play became the vogue.

And for good reason. Assuming competency in each position vis-a-vis your opponent the pattern reduced reaction time and increased the speed of play.

I am unsure how many phases play went to prescriptively but results at the time showed the value.

The flaw lies in not having the players who can do it and the ability of the opposition to organise the defence if the attack is proactive.

To meet this challenge this situation has to be reversed so that the attack is reactive to the behaviour of the defence, playing what is in front of you. If the attack is reacting to the defence then the defence will have trouble analysing the attack. What they can do is play to a pattern that offers opportunities to the attack, a trap that is deliberately set. It becomes a matter of relative abilities. Such a situation would probably exist only at the highest level. Coaching at other levels seldom has time to use a double bluff.

If players are playing what is in front of them the coach must identify the cues and create practices that allows the players to identify and respond to them.

Do we have a compromise here? Can we use the time efficiency of prescribed play to provide the bigger picture and, within this frame, play what is in front of you.

Some years ago Mark Ella spoke to a course I attended at Narrabeen. As the Waratahs backs coach he had just analysed the season’s play. The team had 14 moves. Upon analysis they had used 4. But from each of these, based on the behaviour of the defence, each move created 3-4 options, reading what is in front of you was the key.

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