All Blacks superboot Dan Carter plans to continue tormenting the Wallabies with probing kick-offs in a ploy to starve Australia of possession in Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup crunch match in Christchurch.
Carter’s revolutionary low trajectory kick-offs – which limits the time the opposing team has to lift teammates up high to secure the ball – caused Australia no end of trouble in last Saturday’s 49-28 loss in Melbourne.
In a sport where possession is key, Carter said the All Blacks always worked hard to gain every edge possible over their rivals.
“It’s always been a mentality that you kick off and you’ll work out how you’re going to defend from it, rather than having that attacking ability and looking at getting the ball back,” he said on Thursday.
“The fact that we’re competing for a lot more ball rather than just kicking it long and looking to really stamp some territory shows we’re looking to be a bit more attacking with our kicks.
“We’re really trying to mix it up.”
The pinpoint lower trajectory restarts are designed to land just over the 10m line in time for the likes of tall timbers Kieran Read, Jerome Kaino and Tom Donnelly to take AFL-style overhead marks.
“It makes it more of a one-on-one contest for those flat ones,” Carter said.
“They’re probably not as high to give them less time to get under the ball.
“What you try and do is manipulate the catchers.
“If they start standing flat, then you start kicking it long and just working them around the field.
“So it has been a switch in focus for us and we’re pretty happy that it paid off.”
Lock Donnelly said the All Blacks were now treating restarts as equally as important as scrums and lineouts and praised Carter for his ability to continually land the ball on a five cent piece.
“It’s a pretty special skill to be able to do that kick,” Donnelly said.
“It gives an opportunity of a 50-50 chance to get the ball back and we just want to make it a competition as opposed to kicking it long and giving them easy ball.”
Carter said if the All Blacks want to maintain their world No.1 ranking they needed to continue thinking outside the square.
“With our game plan, we like to keep things pretty fresh by tweaking little things,” he said.
“They’re only minor changes so the guys don’t have to think too much, but we work on that and it seems to have a pretty influence and make a big difference out on the paddock, which is good.”
Securing possession from restarts has been Australia’s Achilles heel for the past year or more and coach Robbie Deans said the Wallabies had worked extra hard this week on addressing the issue.
“Clearly if we are that inaccurate again, then the experience will be similar because you just can’t give the All Blacks that amount of possession and also deny yourself the opportunity to build pressure,” Deans said.
“It was very evident that restarts contributed to our circumstance on Saturday.”
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