How defence is coached in NZ

For those who don't get the fact that defence is 50% of the game, maybe this extract from Mallett's column will help: .......... ‘In New Zealand, they actually do measure effort. They have a statistician who takes every single player, when he makes a tackle or cleans a ruck, and measures the time he takes to get back on his feet. It has to be less than three seconds and every player has to have 85% of incidents when he is back on his feet in less than three seconds. So you can measure effort. It is how quickly you get back into the game on attack and defence. The Lions do it well as well. There is a spirit in this team where the Lions work very hard for each other, but the Crusaders are masters of it. ‘At the breakdown, Marx was so efficient in the quarter- and semi-finals, but I don’t think he made a single turnover today because the quality of the cleans by the Crusaders was so good that he didn’t get the opportunities he normally gets. COMMENT: Mo’unga fires, Jantjies flops ‘There was a counter-attack from [George] Bridge when Kwagga Smith came up too quickly and he managed to beat him. It is when the Crusaders get the opportunity, they finish it. Immediately they seem to up the pace of the game by 20 or 30%, players are running on to the ball, the scrumhalf is desperately getting to the ruck to speed up the delivery of the ball so that the defence can’t get into position. ‘I went down to New Zealand for a week at an academy. [Former All Blacks assistant] Wayne Smith was coaching the youngsters there. It was quite extraordinary, he was standing behind the backline and he would instruct the defence with signals, with coloured codes. So red was a press defence, orange was shift defence, green was three defenders up while two stay back, and they did the same move about 10 times. Each time he would ask the flyhalf what his teammates said to him from the outside, what information were you given about the defence. So they teach the attacking team to look and pass information inside, so the decision makers make better decisions. We need to do that more in this country.

A few Bools offloads were enough for these fools to declare Mitchell a genius. In the meantime they lost everything that made the Bools our only Super Rugby champions. Play to your strengths, not their strengths.