The classic example of the changes of the game is tied up with the skill of dribbling and the execution of the foot rush.

The reason for this skill was that, once the tackle was completed the ball had to be release. There was not only a tackle taking the ball carrier to the ground but there was also a standing tackle from which the ball had to be released as the maul wasn’t part of the game. So once held and stationary the ball carrier had to let the ball go or be penalised. Once the ball was on the ground it had to be played with the foot before it could be played with the hand.

The ball could do one of two things, be the focal point of the foot rush or rucked back to the waiting halfback.

The skill of the foot rush was for the dribbler to use the instep of both feet to dribble the ball down the field while not letting the ball get so far ahead to lose control. Teammates, usually forwards, flanked the dribbler in an arrowhead formation so that, if the ball spilled to the side, a flanking player could take over the pivotal role and the remaining players would adjust.

Now what I was good at was rush stopping. The ability to dive on the ball, usually coming from the side or running onto a ball as you ran back. You dived at the feet of the opposition, back on to them and gathered the ball. The next part was the courageous part. You were allowed to stay there until, if your team was good enough, they drove the opposition off the ball and you. What happened if they didn’t arrive was to be rucked with the ball, out of the opposition ruck. Some halfbacks kicked you back in for more treatment.

Our masseur/baggage man, Bill McKerrow, used to have the iodine out and, as you left the shower, he would swab your tag marks. The real reason was to get the score of tag marks on the opposition to set the benchmark for next week. Carisbrook had one set of communal showers.

But the game had something in this seemingly archaic option. This was not just an element of self-imposed retribution. Because the ball had to be played with the foot it could be won by either team depending on whether contact was made over the gain line or not.

If the attack got over the gain line the shorter distance to the ball gave the attack a 60:40 chance of winning the ball but if they didn’t the defence had the same odds in regaining possession. As a result it was worth committing to the post tackle. Because of this up to 7 forwards from each team formed a loose scrum to contest the ball.

Unlike the game today this commitment gave the team winning the ball space to attack.

But, and here is the irony, the risk of infringing and sustaining injury in the process of “jackalling” is resulting in coaches limiting commitment at the tackle to the tackle and perhaps one other. The aim these days especially at club rugby is to hang about limiting this commitment until a “dominant “ tackle can be made or the limited and delayed commitment by attacking support gives the defence a chance to counter ruck.

I first heard of the when Ellis Meachem had Tonga at the 2003 RWC. They went close to South Africa for this very reason. They noted that South Africa was over-committing to ensure possession so that their numbers were limited at the 3+ tackles and counter rucking, as it is now called, could reap a reward. Tonga went very close on this occasion.

Using the same philosophy and to eliminate the risk of injury at club level rucking is returning albeit by a new more groovy name. You see we can’t be seen to go back to the future.

The injury risk should not under-emphasised, as the jackalling position is dangerous if the players have not been professionally conditioned to its specificity.

I predict that the time won’t be long before teams get wise to the small numbers committed by the defence and take the ball forward by pick and go or by mauling. On the other hand the defence will seize on the attacks limited commitment and ruck with greater numbers driving and binding as one through and not just to the line of the ball.

Alert teams will base their commitment on the chances of a good return, which will be based on the numbers committed by the opposition.

The next step will be, to be sure, to be sure, both teams will commit.

The reward for the commitment will be space across the field because the opposition will have committed more to the contest.

Maybe we will get our game back and not rugby league with unlimited tackles. Let’s face it, currently it’s not hard to go to 10+ phases if the opposition doesn’t commit. 

Back to the past.

Now the kick into touch law which allowed the ball to be kicked into touch on the full and the offside law that made the ball the offside line, didn’t always result in scintillating attacking play. But let’s just for a moment imagine the current offside and kick into touch law in these circumstances.

All of this might take away the picket fence defences of greater numbers than the attack. Another aspect of the game regaining its identity.

Let’s move on.

After leaving hospital with yet another dose of concussion Dr. Symonds, the rugby union doctor and my father told me that broken legs mend as do broken arms but not broken brains, especially for someone who was doing a masters degree and who wanted a teaching career. It took 10 years for regular headaches to recede. There were times when I felt addicted to analgesics.

My next move was to dabble in coaching at the old club at age grade level. I found it hard to play second fiddle because “Dave’s boy Lee” must know it all.

 The easiest way to solve it was to make it part of teaching, developing a rapport with some decent kids after school, this having benefits in the classroom. To this were added basketball, cricket, volleyball and stage manager for school productions. Teaching is peculiar in this regard.

The going is really tough initially as there aren’t the hours in the day to prepare thoroughly and properly for each classroom lesson but you battle on and stuff outside the classroom helps a lot. This is something that is now lost unless it is prestigious and frequently payment is involved to bring in experts. Maybe teachers now lead more balanced lives. Life is not the school and the family an appendage.

On the other hand there appears to be assessment for its own sake and the time spent doing this is the killer. Also the flair seems to have gone out of teaching as getting to the outcome of a prescriptive lesson removes opportunities to be imaginative at the chalk face.

 

Now the Southern club and the University of Otago club had this bond through the Cavanagh’s that I have written about. Given the parochialism of Dunedin club rugby a move from Southern to Varsity was the only one that could be made and even then Laurie Mains labelled me a traitor, not directly but from his stooges.

Anyway it was late March, I had coached school rugby for about 7 years and, on the promise that I would still “help out” I was appointed to Varsity “B”, the club having 2 teams in the Dunedin club competition. Often the coaching positions were the preserve of academics from the UK, who the students took to, as they were often very intelligent humorously eccentrics from the UK and Ireland.

Getting the position was no great achievement as coaches were always in short supply at the club. The main requirement for some of the coaches was that they had an accessible watering hole available after hours, before the abolition of 6 o’clock closing, usually Bill Mercer at the Criterion or Bill Hogg at the City Hotel.

The other notable coach the club had was Duncan Laing, the professional swimming coach of Danien Loader, the double Olympic medallist. Duncan was from Taranaki. I remember going down to see what the University “A” team were doing at their Wednesday practice when I was playing. Not much was the answer but they won and won well.

Some years later I asked Earle Kirton about it, he was the All Black first five-eight with fellow club mate, Chris Laidlaw, the best player produced by King’s High School, playing inside him.

The Kirton’s had a farm, in Whiteman’s Valley just outside Wellington, and they made hay, literally, during the day and practiced rugby after work during the university vacation. This built a sound fitness platform for international rugby, let alone club rugby. Other players did something of the same.

A good friend Evan “Bugs” Tailor, had the “A’s”, a brilliant attacking fullback who I had played with at school.

The final trials were held and the teams’ named. I think there were 4 open grade teams two with coaches yet to be named.

With enthusiasm I called a practice the next morning to find around eight players turning up. No the rest were not at church. All the rest were trialling for senior clubs elsewhere in Dunedin. By Tuesday practice the numbers had swollen to 13 and by the end of practice on Thursday we had 7 forwards, no open side, and 6 backs no halfback.

The players in halls of residence and flats said they would ask around but come Saturday, kick off at 1:15; the status quo remained at 1:00. Someone who forgot to ask returned to the flat and came back with 2 players Mike Ross a flanker and Roger Barley, a halfback, both of whom not only played out the season but for many season and at times for the “A’s”.

Practices moulded a bunch of midgets in the forwards into a pack that won enough ball to lose all their games in the first round and win all their games when the bottom half of the competition played off for the Gallaway Trophy.

When I started coaching Otago in 1981 I was too young for the job, 35 to be exact. I got there on the back of coaching Varsity “B’s” to the Gallaway trophy win.

The final was played on the back ground at Tahuna Park, the A and P show grounds over by the beach. Sand made the surface good but the game was hardly a crowd gatherer. More importantly we won. 

The team was small, you couldn’t tell the forwards from the backs, well you could, they were smaller. They played with heart and the joyous ability of students to not give a stuff and really give it a go.

A good friend Peter Shanks managed the team and his passion for rugby and disgust at poor performances was part of our informal motivation. That and his stories about how good Green Island were especially “Merv” and “Lyn”, the Jaffray boys. Ben Smith has given Peter someone else to hang his rugby hat on these days.

My first assistance coach was a top referee Roger Dodds who brought a pleasant and balanced view to the game. Roger was calm and considerate. A marked contrast to me at this stage in my coaching career.

 After him it was Keith Williamson, who came from Green Island because he couldn’t get past the incumbent to coach the seniors.

Keith went on to coach the “A’s” after beating them for 2 years in the round robin with the “B’s”.

After Otago I joined him with the “A’s” and we won 2 championships. On his own he won a number.

Keith’s success lay in his nom de plume, T.O.Fox (The Old Fox) and in the rapport he developed with the players who have become life-long friends.

Being an under-graduate club Varsity was young and talented with many achieving notable success once they left town upon graduation.

The list goes something like this – David Kirk, Kevin Putt, Dave Halligan, Tony Lewis Warwick Taylor, Dirk Williams, Mike Brewer, “Buck” Anderson, Mike Gibson, Brent Pope, Tom Coventry, Paul Turner, the late Mike Gibson, Brent Pope, Matt Peters who has gone far in refereeing and the duo of doctors at lock Garth Poole and Stu Walsh – I could go on. And many were those who were just as good but their professions played a greater part in their lives.

The camaraderie still remains. I remember at a reunion we were in a bar in Wellington. Kirky’s All Black colleagues gave his long time mates “evils” when they used his Varsity nickname “schoolboy”.

I remember playing Kaikorai at Tahuna Park in a game that, if lost, wasn’t going to affect our championship hopes. The students just buggered around. Shanks was beside himself with disgust and I wasn’t much better. Even Keith was losing faith. We scored on time to win and the response was.

”What were you worried about we won didn’t we.”

Kirk had returned from an All Black camp or something similar and was getting crap ball as it was bashed back vaguely in his direction. The Kaikorai forwards were getting into him.

Came the voice “ The forwards in this team lack an appreciation of the fundamentals of forwards play.”

Came the captain’s call at the next line-out – “Short” but the numbers remained.

As the ball was thrown in the entire pack sink to their knees and David grinned realising he was back in his own backyard where “we used to laugh a lot.”  

Nicknames were a part of the scene and they were nearly as good as the Australian ones.

Simon Tyler, a prop, was ‘tin foil” when he played poorly and “iron man” when he didn’t. He’s now high up in the Reserve Bank.

Others were “filth – I won’t tell you who but all teams need an enforcer”, “jaws – 2 broken jaws”, “chook feeder – a wing who was a wanker”, “Waka- ethnicity unsure”, “hooligan – a liking for the ladies” and one “t – Otley spelt that way”.

Dealing with students is always enjoyable and always a challenge. It is where I learned as a coach to be able to justify what you say and to guide but more important “tailor” the pre-match preparation to that of the player and not of the coach. Being an undergraduate club the saving grace was that you had new talent to mould coming through all the time and they never seemed to get sick of you as a coach, the exposure was reasonably brief. The expectation was to win and this we did.

In coaching you never have done enough and a “hell, fire and brimstone” tirade before the game doesn’t mean you have even approached it. It is just an excuse for the inadequate coach to try to avoid responsibility.

“I did all I could,” tells you that all you have done is reach the limit of your current ability and need to look at yourself even more. The “man in the mirror” poem comes to mind.

The second reason I got the Otago team was taking Otago “B” to the national final in Wellington after winning the South Island section of the competition. We lost the final to Wellington on a Monday afternoon 2 days after both finalists had played the regional final. I thought I was cunning in selecting a bunch of old hard heads but their heads were not hard enough but alarmingly sore the next morning. Not from the game.

I got Varsity “B” and Otago “A” and “B” because no one wanted the job.

The same thing happened in 1996 when I took on University Collidge Dublin in the 4^th Division of the All-Ireland league having moved there to work for the IRB.

Syd Millar and Tommy Kiernan came to me as IRB Board members and advised me that it would be bad for my image in my IRB position to coach such a lowly team. We got by.

On election night at the ORFU three of us were voted in as selectors and the committee asked us to work out who is going to coach the team.

So here I was, with two other people who were going to work together for the glory of Otago rugby, all wanting to coach the team. The issue was resolved too late for the Otago Daily Times morning edition. We all were able to go home at 1:30am after Eion Sheath said he would back me if I let him coach the forwards. You can imagine what this did to the third member, Muru Walters, and his tangata whenua in the team. The next year he dropped out and Duncan Laing the swimming coach got the job. Both Duncan and Ian Sheath were loyal and great support.

To explain, Otago rugby is a union based on forwards from the farms and backs from the university, an unlikely mix. Under “Young” Vic Cavanagh they had a golden era exemplified by the union having 11 players in the 1949 All Blacks to South Africa. Like most test series against South Africa there was the feeling that this was the world cup of Rugby. The team went to South Africa without Cavanagh and he stopped coaching soon after. They lost the test series 4-0 thanks to the goal kicking of prop Okkie Geffin. How they were unable to maim a goal-kicking prop to remove the goal kicking threat is a mystery.

 

Otago was probably the first of the many unions that has had trouble rekindling a glorious past. Others more recently are Manawatu, Hawke’s Bay and, maybe Taranaki. Auckland and Canterbury just seemed to keep reproducing talent with Wellington and Waikato close behind.

The more rural provinces have been affected by rural depopulation. Otago was affected to a greater degree by university faculties being spread to universities throughout the country so the playing talent was hit on two fronts.

Sitting in the grandstand on a cold Wednesday with a crowd in the hundreds and the PR side of the union trying to kindle the passion that resulted in a great performance against South Africa a week earlier was hollow. At 30-0 at half time I am convinced Griz Wylie told Canterbury to take the foot off the pedal as there was not the need to waste a full-on performance on “a bunch of mugs” – Griz’s words not mine.

The South African Tour forced me to come clean on my feelings about apartheid and I coached the team and that was it.

We played well triggered by the captain, the late Ken Bloxham – a domestic All Black, taking the feet from under “Flippie” van der Merwe from the kick off. Carisbrook exploded. We lost when a kick at goal by South Africa, hit the flag at the top of the goal posts and fell, perpendicular, 10cms from the post. We muffed the catch and Wynand Claasens forced the ball against the bottom of the post to secure the win. The flag was straightened only when the posts were brought down for the cricket season.

After the game I went over to the Southern Club at Bathgate Park for a beer only to be told to go as I was against the Tour. Mr Mains had much to do with this as he did when Chris Laidlaw came in after a club game.

I walked over to the Dunedin Club where I was well received and my wife collected my early in the evening.

What made me realise that numbers equals talent was when we went north and the “B” teams of the major unions playing in the curtain raiser had talent we would very much like to have. I remember playing Auckland in a shield challenge. The curtain raiser was a secondary school provincial final – Auckland “A” Vs. Auckland “B”  – the Otago forward pack was the smallest on Eden park that day.

What did I learn from this?

 I learned to solve all and any on-field problems by analysis and options. My rugby knowledge expanded hugely which has stood me in good stead ever since. But what I also learned on reflection is that if you solve problems for a player and, if the solution fails, you are to blame not him. This was a harsh lesson and maybe one generated from lack of choice in selection and making do with what you have got.

I have to say it, and it is something that I have lived with ever since, but things weren’t helped by Laurie Mains being the comments man on the radio as he had ambitions to coach the team. I had played with him in club rugby and at school. When I got the Otago job he asked me to go over to Bathgate and do a session with the Southern forwards as he was coaching the senior team at the time. I heard say, soon after, that he let it be known that I was panicking and had come for advice. But this is minor given the casualties he created as he drove himself towards the top coaching job in New Zealand Rugby about 14 years later. Provincial success took some time but the savvy to retain players from the university and recruit from outside the province served provincial aspirations well. Coaching need not have an ethical basis.

The irony is that no matter how average the provincial team performance was time blurs the downs and, in an unusual way, having been there done that, you seem to be able to adopt the record of not only superior Otago teams but also the Highlanders by assumption. More latterly it has been a sympathy vote but perhaps not in 2014. No matter how good they were, recruiting players past their sell by date isn’t the way to go.

What is? Early scouting, have a look at the Crusaders.

The divisions in the Otago union in an era run by Laurie were reflected in a sterile ORFU reunion I attended. This was in marked contrast to the club reunions both at Southern and Otago University the previous year.

Southern was like coming home again, little seemed to change. It was very comfortable. University reunions usher in wealth, ability and a roguish sense of humour that never leaves them. It is good to know that our community leaders have a healthy disregard for authority just below the surface.

This was reflected at the auction for memorabilia at the Otago University dinner. The prize purchase was a club jersey signed by all 19 living All Blacks. David Kirk outbid everyone and then immediately presented it back to the club.

The jersey with the signatures of the 3 Rhodes scholars was equally valued – Matheson, Laidlaw and Kirk.

Compared to Otago coaching University, a big fish in a small pond, allowed you to be inventive but more importantly allowed me to coach the way I would have liked to be coached – by empowering those who had to do the business with the right to do so. Having said this these players would have it no other way and would have been much lesser players under authoritarian rule.

How David Kirk must have ground his teeth when he was forced to play on the wing for Otago while Dean Kenny played at halfback under Laurie.

 

WELLINGTON

Teaching then took me to Wellington in a senior position at Naenae College where rugby was still recovering from the principled stand teachers made in 1981 – the Springbok Tour. One wonders what the state of the New Zealand game might be if the 1987 RWC victory hadn’t papered over the cracks. I remember Denis Pyatt, who coached the first fifteen with me, talking about what happened when the club coaches came in to fill the gap in 1981.

“Thanks Mr Pyatt. Right you little bastards around the ground 6 fucking times.”

It almost made him forget principle and tell them:

“It doesn’t matter thanks.”

  Coaching senior rugby in Upper Hutt was hard going although the team made the final the year I had to leave.

The standard of Wellington club rugby was high and this was still an era in which All Blacks played club rugby.

 Even though I was now a professional, director of coaching for the NZRU I like to think I had a part in this.

As Dame Edna says “Upper Hutt” had as much culture as a cheese factory. The players were similar to the Southern ones in the earlier years. The team was talented and if the MSP / Petone clique had not continued to dictate Wellington selections they may have had greater representation.

When I took over the team there was going to be a problem with the aging captain and hooker, Wayne Guppy, so I made him assistant coach. While he has had his ups and downs since his eye for a player enabled him to put together successful Wellington “B” teams with talent the MSP/ Petone clique didn’t know existed. The “ups” have resulted in Wayne now being mayor of the cultural centre of New Zealand. 

Looking back I had little in common with the players socially but this didn’t take away from my respect for their toughness and commitment.

As a teacher at this time I also coached the Wellington Secondary Schools and the Central Region Schools that was a real pleasure. While I coached Upper Hutt two long-term friends and fellow teachers Trevor McKinlay and Murray Campbell did the scouting and became assistant coaches/ managers. It worked brilliantly.

 

NZRU

Coming from the sheltered environment of teaching into Rugby I soon realised that it is one thing to be full of righteous indignation and shock horror about the real world and another to accept the real world for what it is, for its degrees of honesty, self interest, pettiness and politics so you can function.

Coming from the “oh so” moral cloisters of teaching where you may hide away with your righteous indignation, getting paid your market value, a reflection of job security and the value society puts on teaching was a bit of a shock.

I had to realise that the real world is the majority and that we should get used to individual self-interest.  Such was the case when I started with the NZRU, assuming the game was for the greater good in a democratically run organisation.

Prior to the AGM it was dangerous and embarrassing to wander the floors of the James Cook Hotel looking for the venue of one of the innumerable meetings you had to attend. As you turned a corner you would find icons of the game talking in hushed tones plotting the demise of a “very good friend, a rugby great and a good mate.” Why were meetings held here at this time when the union offices were perfectly adequate during the rest of the year? Maybe it was because you were closer to the complimentary watering hole and to the partner who was in town for the night.

And if you waited long enough and could maintain the pace you could be part of the conspicuous consumption of the most expensive bottle of port or whisky demanded in the wee small hours of the morning, to be taken to Room 306.  I always thought the AGM was about deals already done as the state of intoxication meant that it was not a forum for enlightened discussion but one of false camaraderie as the old dogs bit the dust some well before their sell by date, as was the case with J. J. Stewart.

I remember Eddie Tonks hurrying back from London having been made Chairman of the IRB. My office was a bit of a haven as it was as far away from everything as you could get. He came in and I had heard rumours.

“Have you got the votes?”

“What do you mean the vote has already been taken and I’m the Chairman?”

“No not the IRB but the NZRU?”

“Don’t worry about that Richie always thinks he has the votes but never does.”

 

An hour later Eddie was gone and New Zealand lost its opportunity to Chair the IRB into the professional age, as Vernon Pugh became the Chairman.

Mind you earlier Eddie had come in with a different message when he had replaced Russell Thomas.

“That was on of the most difficult things I have ever had to do,” he said.

Live by the sword ___ __ __ _____.

There were prejudices to.

The major icon didn’t like Ross Cooper because he was a teacher and had a “stash”, maybe a beard. 

“You can’t trust liberal pricks like that. “

The same icon when he wasn’t getting his own way at meetings would hover over the lesser beings, usually they would agree.

After all rugby is a physical game.

 

JJ

Thank goodness for J. J. Stewart, who became my mentor in the initial development of the most comprehensive coaching programme, still a work in progress and now worldwide in ten languages via the IRB.

J. J. stopped drinking for one year just to prove he could and then started again to the day. He could be both philosophical and a stirrer in the twinkling of an eye.

His main value to me and to world rugby was that he knew his rugby and knew how to develop a syllabus for the game so that New Zealand had a template superior to the rest of the rugby world.

It was a proud day for me when he told me I was on my own as what I was now doing was up to his high standards.

In between our editing, especially in the gaps created by the committee chairman and secretary having distractions, J. J. became a raconteur.

The story of the Chairman being asked why a Mr so-and-so, the manager of a working man’s club was wearing the most exclusive tie of the NZRU. All knew the story of his wife’s liaison with a council member. JJ put it succinctly

“He probably got it off the end of the bed.”

Taranaki teams met in Stratford for a summer cricket game, past and present players in attendance.

If it rains off to the pub. 

What games to play? 

The best All Black team ever? 

The worst All Black team ever?

 Colin Farrell always got the #15 slot. 

The dirtiest team ever?

 The dirtiest player ever?

 Believe it or not, this was invariably Ralph Carroll, a primary schoolteacher and long standing Taranaki forward.

Then there were the games won during the shield era, won by very small margins.

The selection of a back line of club number 10’s, with the exception of Lane Penn on one wing and the two All Black halfbacks Urban and Briscoe.  This was done so they could all kick the ball.

 

McCulloch at #12 writing down 100 times if Brown, at #10, doesn’t kick the ball, I will.

Another 5 – 3 win and Ross Brown says to J. J,

“ You know, JJ I don’t think I passed the ball today.”

  “Neither you did Pascoe, but take a close look at the scoreboard?

And the same next week and so on.

Playing King Country, just before the 1970 South African Tour, “Legs” Ellison, a lock, was schooled up by JJ to tell “Pinetree” if he goes near the ball he won’t see the republic.  Their rehearsal apparently worked only to have Meads play as second fullback during the game and to hang J. J. on the coat pegs in the changing room after the game.

And then there was J. J.’s work with the All Blacks. The move used in the Australian outback in which the ball carrying halfback was picked up by the largest forwards at a goal-line ruck and thrown over the ruck to score.

The most inventive was when the backline from a lineout “attacked” the near touchline leaving only the open-side wing on the far side of the field. The defence chased them towards the touchline only to have the last receiver either kick the ball or make an American football pass to the wing who hadn’t moved. He was unmarked and had enough space to do considerable damage.  I think Brian Williams was the thrower and Grant Batty the receiver.

The most poignant story was what happened when the All Blacks were robbed of the Third Test win and the series in South Africa in 1976 by a refereeing decision. Bruce Robertson scored with daylight between him and the next player. The ball was left where it was forced. When a South African picked it up the local ref ordered a 5m scrum.

After the game JJ asked the ref why he did it. The simple answer was that the ref had to continue to live in South Africa and the All Blacks were going home the next day.

JJ gave the ref his blazer as a show of understanding.

The ref burst into tears.

This wasn’t all one sided. In 1965 the Springboks had a test win in Christchurch. Years later I asked Colin Meads about how it happened as they were up 16-3. 

The answer:

“We lost our best player”

“No players left the field?”

“Pat Murphy the ref did, replaced by Alan Taylor.”

Such was the intensity of the game in those days and such are the benefits of where the game has moved to now.

The times in that edit committee were good fun and at the same time provided the foundation for the coaching programme.

 

 

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