My recent opinions on loose-forward play has prompted me to dig a little deeper in sharing with you where South Africa and the Springboks need to improve their play at rucks to lead the way in world rugby.
Yesterday’s discussions on openside play centered quite a bit around the role of the fetcher, and the importance of this player in modern rugby.
Where there is no doubt is that fetching as a skill, given the amount of rucks, that is absolutely necessity – the only question remains is whether a coach would look to employ specialists do this, or upskill his whole team in this vital area of the game.
One of my main concerns in employing the deck game or fetcher game in South African rugby is that we are not adapt or have not successfully adopted the multi-phased playbook to successfully challenge the top sides in the world today.
This could be because for one thing I believe we do not have dominating flyhalf’s that can control a game from first receiver to successfully build phases – but that’s a theory for another time. For now, let’s concentrate on rucks.
The ruck or tackled area is arguably one of the most contentious areas of the modern game.
So much is left to interpretation by the referees but equally, players are their own worst enemies.
South African rugby in particular sucks on the hind-tit in this department in my view simply because we get it wrong technically. Our skills are not adopted to suit the modern game in the ruck situation, or to compete with the deck players in modern rugby.
This is not because we lack the necessary skills in my belief, but more to the fact that we do not appreciate the ruck for what it is intended for.
Rucks are the foundation of multiple phased play, and if done correctly will create space for opposition to attack. How effective, and importantly, quickly, we set up and clear these rucks will determine how successful you are.
Defence in rugby is arguably one of the areas of the game that has evolved the most. It is a lot more organised and even believed to win you games!
Logically that in itself is an absurd statement because I am yet to see a defence score you tries but let’s leave it at that other than to add one thing, and that is our defensive mindsets is what probably contributes most to our mindsets when it comes to rucks.
Technically I cannot define or explain rucks any simpler than to point out that it is supposed to be a ‘dynamic’ phase or area of the game. However, in South African rugby, rucks more often than not is a static phase of our game, where we lose momentum and let opposition teams into the game by giving their fetchers or deck players every opportunity in the world to spoil our ball.
The main reason for this is South African rugby players will rather tend to go to ground at a ruck situation, than stay on their feet. Once this happens the ball becomes static, hence the phase or area of the game becomes static.
This directly results in movement of play stopping and depending on the time it takes to clear the ruck, momentum has to be built up from scratch again because your defenders had time to re-align.
I therefore find it amusing how we put so much emphasis on the fact how teams go through 5 to 10 phases of play thinking they are actually in control and ‘building’. The fact remains, if you become static, no matter if you are in phase 1 or 10, you are not building on anything, you are starting from scratch.
This is also why the attacking team sometimes looks clueless after more than 3 phases. Simple fact is because they have becomes static, defenders have much more time to re-align and truth be told, it is easier to organise defences and defensive lines than it is to organise good attacking platforms – the time needed is much less.
The idea of a ruck as a dynamic phase or area should be to continually have your ball carrier with his support runners cross the advantage line and drive defenders back getting the opposition deck players or fetchers to retreat all the time – we all know, any fetcher, even the best going backwards all the time becomes useless. Then we require cleaning effectively from there and continue to do this through 3 or 4 phases.
But for that, the mindset and skills of the attacking side has to be to stay on their feet for as long as possible driving through tackles supported by his ‘drivers’ (players supporting the player to stay in his feet, protect the ball or eliminate potential poachers off the ball or ball carrier) who then become cleaners as soon as the ‘mini-maul’ goes down.
Legally defenders are constantly retreating and when the ball goes to ground and having ‘drivers’/cleaners already supporting the ball carrier, they can and must only enter through the ‘gate’ giving the ball carrier more time to protect and place the ball effectively.
In the South African game two things stop us from doing this.
Firstly as mentioned, our players simply go to ground too quickly and too easily and when doing so, struggles to place the ball correctly with opposition defenders hands and feet all over them.
Secondly, in multiple phased play the tendency for specifically backline players is not to engage in rucks but rather fall out and into the backline again waiting for the next play. These players are more often than not the closest support players to the ball carrier and should commit to supporting them first before anything else.
Smaller things include cleaners over extending in the ruck, meaning they clean too far off the ball (taking players out way beyond the ruck) and exposing the ball as well as player not presenting the ball correctly at the ruck.
But for rucks in our game to become dynamic and set up attacking platforms we will need to realise that we need to avoid becoming static too often and allowing defences to set and deck players being allowed to get their paws all over the ball. Your success rate on bridging and breaking defences is simply too low. And for that we need to realise that a ball on the ground is anyone’s ball, but a ball in the air is the possession of the team carrying it.
29@Sasquatch – Welcome !
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I love this site 😎 I am learning so much. I even had a lively discussion/debate/argument with our butcher this morning and he loved it and wanted to know where i am getting all this information from and told him, says he is going to have a gawk when he has the time.
Treehugger, I agree 100%. Some great insights here.
Morne, getting back to your z-axis theory: do you believe that Jake was a disciple of this theory of keeping the ball off the floor? I know he also believed all players should be “fetcher” much a what you propose.
Then how do we explain his reliance on Schalk, someone we also know goes to ground quickly, making the ball static and playing into the gameplan of OZ/NZ with their specialised fetchers?
Some inconsistency then?
@fender – Hi fender, i would also like an answer to your question
@fender –
In my opinion (and it is only my opinion) I reckon Jake recognised this (yesterday’s discussion) either through analysis and perhaps even by fault!! Who knows?
Point is he was always a prophet of SA playing to their traditional strengths, also remembering he was part of the coaching team under Mallet…
I believe our forwards including loosies where primarily picked as ball carriers, not fetchers or classic 7’s or 8’s, but all strong ball carriers to support this theory of the z-axis.
Obviously, we were not that great in execution always as you suggest with one of Schalk’s faults but the fact that we had 5 to 6 ball carriers in the forwards rather than just to 2 to 4 you would have normally playing a specialist fetcher gives you an idea of what he tried to accomplish.
For this whole theory to work as well you needed guys with exceptional work rates, something Schalk definately brought to the part in his prime.
For your z-axis to be effective you had to always try and break the advantage line, i.e. try and get their deck players to turn constantly and keep them out of the game – a deck player going backwards is useless.
So you sacrifice the one, to help you achieve the other. That is why Jake I believed subscribed to big loosies (ball carriers) and then tasked the whole team to ‘fetch’.
@fender –
And more to the point, I think we never had a 10 to play this game effectively and to dictate proceedings, but that is a whole new debate and something I will perhaps highlight next week.
@Morné – I have to thankyou Morne, you have taught so much that i didnt know in a few articles. My husband reckons this site has created a monster in me now and says he is not prepared to get into it with me when i argue with him 😆
@Treehugger –
Hehehe, great stuff and always just a pleasure.
I love sharing all this in any event.
As I am not currently actively involved on the pitch with players this is the only way I can share and I love it.
Next week I will post some more stuff which might interest you guys!
Thanks Morne – I follow. And I’d forgotten about the Jake/Mallet link!
And I agree – a plan is only as good as its execution and maybe if we assume Jake was trying to implement the Z-theory, he clearly had only half-finished the job by the time SARFU bid him a fond farewell.
The ‘traditional strengths of SA rugby’ concept is one that is open to contention though, especially those of us who can still vividly remember the great player of our past. I have referred to a tradition of great fetchers from an earlier era e.g. Boland Coetzee, Piet Veldsman (OK, I’m from the Cape, but I’m sure other provinces also had them!!)Another example was Bill Beaumont, the skipper of the 1980 Lions, who had limited respect for our pack at the time, but huge respect for our creative backline. So, a limitation of traditional strengths to one one area of the game will depend on the era you choose to work from.
Traditions also shift, don’t they?
@fender –
Abolutely it shifts.
In addition to that I mentioned yesterday that all of what we see and discuss/debate today is not that new. Guys just give it fancy names!
Next week I will touch on attacking/running rugby and the skills involved in that and also share with you theories of Pierre Villepreux who is regarded as the ‘father’ of this concept.
All respect to the man but that is utter crap, you look at some of our players like Danie Gerber of the past and you will see he employed all these skills already!
@fender –
I think the toughest thing to figure out is where your team/nation is in the rugby cycle and what our strengths are at any given time and enhance that.
I mentioned when Peter took over as coach we might well be moving away from the z-axis game in time and with the inclusion of guys like Brussow this might just well be the case.
Good afternoon all, my first comments here, good article enjoyed reading it
I agree that traditions change, take cricket for example and see what players like Warne and Murali have done for it, rugby is the same all it takes is a couple of exceptionally gifted players and the style of play is adapted to suit them
Morne,
“I think the toughest thing to figure out is where your team/nation is in the rugby cycle and what our strengths are at any given time and enhance that.”
That is so true – recognising and enhancing what you have is the key. I actually believe – ok maybe I’m just an old romantic – that we have always been blessed with an array of strengths, but are yet to uncover all them. I think we have favoured certain strengths at the expense of others and yet have remained successful.
Like I said previously, a new gameplan buys you a grace period of maybe two tests. I believe its imperitive that we start enhancing all strenghts that have been invested in our rugby playing public and broaden that player base, in order that we stay ahead (and others copy us like Snor would say!).
Some very fascinating rugby thoughts expressed these past two days. It becomes interesting to view matters in terms of “deck play & “arial play”. I’ve always felt that rucks are more important than set pieces like scrums & lineouts. Primarily because the outcome is more predictable with set pieces. The defense is set & better organised. The key to avoiding static play, whether it is “deck” or arial” play, is forward momentum. One must keep crossing the advantage line thus forcing the defense on the back foot. Much easier to run on to the play rather than backtrack & try to regroup going backwards.
It has been mentioned that the ABs excel at “deck play” & can sustain multi-phase attacks. But that style degraded into static play when they lost the QF against the French at the RWC. Despite the amount of possession they had it didn’t produce the desired result, irrespective of Wayne Barnes. 🙂
On the other hand when the ABs were at their peak 2005/2006 IMO they were superb at offloading, maintaining forward momentum & scoring tries as a consequence. I guess one would consider that style as “arial” as opposed to “deck play”.
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