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Waratahs playing Cheika-Ball, but what is it?

Michael Cheika has to go back to the drawing board. (Source: AAP Image/Theron Kirkman)
Roar Pro
1st June, 2014
17

The Waratahs have created an entertaining attacking game style with a twist – it’s built on blue-collar grunt work.

It doesn’t rely on trick shots, lightning-quick backs, or Rod Macqueen-style intellect and players in motion.

The attack is built on three planks: winning collisions; taking on the defence directly and offloading after the collision; then supporting, getting up off the ground quickly, and supporting again.

Its elegance is in its simplicity, its beauty is in its directness, and its excitement is in its risk. It takes skill, courage, and fitness to pull it off. And a coach willing to push it and commit to it.

Winning collisions
The Tahs have a big pack, but are not really big in the backs, so they can’t rely solely on power to win collisions. It doesn’t matter though. Bernard Foley, one of the smaller guys in rugby, routinely wins his collisions. So too Michael Hooper.

The Tahs win collisions with fast recycling, direct running lines and footwork just before the collision. Both backs and forwards avoid the dominant shoulder of the defender by stepping at the line, and get through the line even if tackled.

The offload
The offload in the tackle is their weapon. They coach it, practise it, and execute it in both the forwards and the backs. It is the perfect weapon for modern rugby, because defences are so well organised that playing the ball before the line, a traditional Australian specialty, is now more easily read.

On the other hand, offloads are very hard to stop if the ball runner runs straight, uses footwork to suck in more than one defender and free his arms, and the support runner hits the correct tight line straight into the gap vacated by the falling tackler.

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If you run straight into guys and drop to the ground, like the Reds in 2014, you are easy meat for decent teams.

Support
The final piece of the puzzle is support play. Support players are required to run into the gaps created and receive the offload, but they also run decoy lines to hold up the defence, or clean out defenders in attacking rucks to keep the attack rolling.

Doing this well for multiple phases requires supreme fitness, correct support technique (understanding how to read the ball runner and change your running angles at the right time to hit the hole they created for you), and the mental toughness to keep getting up and doing it time after time.

The Tahs under Michael Cheika have famously put in the work to raise their fitness levels and mental toughness, and now the method in the madness is becoming apparent.

Influence on the Wallabies
The Wallabies deliberately introduced elements of this attack into their play on the 2013 end-of-year tour.

Tries involving the likes of Scott Fardy, Stephen Moore and Ben Mowen (yes, I know they are all Brumbies!) running direct lines a few passes wide of the ruck and combining with each other and the backs to punch holes and offload wonderfully to eager support are evidence of this.

I would expect (and hope) to see more of this in 2014.

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The French are equally capable of playing this style of game, as evidenced brutally when they used this tactic on us in our last loss to them.

I can’t wait to see how the Wallabies attack the French, but I expect we will see a lot more Cheika-ball on display if all goes to plan.

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