In last week’s column, I spoke extensively about attack. After round one of Vodacom Super Rugby, readers can now understand why coaches are afraid of spending so much time and effort on offence, because every single team that kept the ball in hand came off second best. It was by no means an anomaly – the stats simply don’t lie.
You seldom get a weekend of rugby where something is so accentuated. To offer an example, drawing from the Vodacom Stats App, the Cell C Sharks enjoyed 60 percent possession against the Toyota Cheetahs and kicked the ball 22 times, as opposed to the visitors’ 29 kicks. The Sharks carried the ball 121 times and the Cheetahs carried on 64 occasions. The Cheetahs made 79 more tackles than the Sharks, yet scored four tries to two.
Those are the cold, hard facts but what is the solution?
The quick-fix solution is to do what the ‘winning’ teams did this past weekend – not play any rugby and kick the ball in order to feed off opposition error.
We’ve all been there as professional coaches, and have gone down that route whereby we’ve been successful with a very conservative style of play. But as I impressed upon the Sharks players on Monday, if we stuck to what we were doing we would have ‘lost’ even if we won games because the support base were discontent, as that is not the Sharks’ brand.
I’m well aware it’s one thing winning games and another winning them while entertaining your crowds. However, everywhere there are examples of teams that have achieved that in certain eras. For instance, the magnificent Barcelona team of five years ago and the Spanish national side are prime case studies. They were brilliant defensively and played some cracking attacking football. And Chelsea today are so sound defensively and also score goals.
TAKING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
The path we have decided to venture down at the Sharks is going to prove more challenging, and is definitely the road less travelled, but it’s a route which could eventually reap huge rewards. As a collective, we must ask ourselves: Are we prepared to go down this path, dare to be different, and keep the faith in our processes?
At the Sharks, we’ve spent an unbelievable amount of time on implementing an attacking brand of rugby, and by no means has that time gone to waste. As I said to the players, “It’s skill and decision-making in the bank and in the long run, you’ll be better players owing to the experience.”
The 10 000 hour rule states that the more time you spend at something, the more you improve. As a mentor, the biggest ally you’ve got in order to attack well is to improve your players’ decision-making and skill-set, and that takes time. There is no substitute, as a cyclist would say, for time in the saddle. And that is down to repetition in training.
As a rugby coach, I have never travelled down this road before but it’s important to note that I don’t just examine a singular performance or one-off result to inform my outlook. It’s actually about taking one step back in order to take two steps forward. This is a challenge facing coaches everywhere in the world and our sport is not the exception.
When you start working on a blend it takes a little while to find the ideal balance between a kicking and running game – the holy grail of rugby. The fact of the matter is that we got the blend wrong and the Cheetahs got it right, it’s as simple as that. As a team, we understand the risks involved in changing to a more attack-minded approach, and, as I alluded to earlier in the piece, I believe the result of an ultra-conservative style of play is any way a failure.
To put the six away victories into context, all of the home teams played too much rugby, because I believe they felt an obligation to their home support to play a better brand of rugby. However, when teams travel away from home, they have less of a responsibility to their supporters to play an attractive brand. As such, they will always kick the ball more.
The above is a principle that ostensibly emanates from football. For argument’s sake, when Jose Mourinho takes Chelsea to Liverpool, he has no obligation to the Anfield faithful to put on a spectacle even with the 5 000 travelling Blues supporters in tow.
From a supporter’s viewpoint, how much satisfaction is derived from your team ‘winning ugly’ and what premium is placed on winning by means of an exciting brand of rugby?
