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“We are in hell right now, gentlemen, believe me. And we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell.
One inch, at a time…
You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small.
I mean one half step too late or too early you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second.
On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our finger nails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that’s going to make the fucking difference between winning and losing. Between living and dying.
I’ll tell you this – in any fight it is the guy who is willing to die who is going to win that inch. And I know if I am going to have any life anymore, it is because I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch, because that is what living is. The six inches in front of your face.”
C’mon Ewen, roll out this speech pre-game on Saturday night.
Because, like Al Pacino’s Miami Sharks in Any Given Sunday, it’s where the Wallabies are right now. They’re in the game, but they can’t get across the line. They’re just holding on doing the basics, when they need to be able to go up a gear in the big moments.
It’s experience in the Test match crucible that cost the Wallabies in the first two games of the Rugby Championship.
Can the coaching staff do anything to speed up this process, and get them performing to their ability in the big moments?
Or do we need to wait until they all have 50 Tests under their belt to get some wins?
The Waratahs in 2012, who were largely also the Wallabies, concluded in their season review that they were just not fit enough and did not work hard enough when they didn’t have the ball.
They were being destroyed, inch by inch.
For the 2013 season, new coach Michael Cheika took a hard line to stop the rot. More specifically, he put a big focus on fitness and efforts off the ball, as the building blocks to playing an effective “ball in hand” game.
The coaching staff had to find a way of defining and measuring that most nebulous of concepts – effort. After much thought, they came up with three keys indicators of “effort”:
1. BIG (Back In Game)
2. LOG (Lying On Ground)
3. FOT (Finish On Top)
“Back In Game” measured the percentage of time that a player got himself off the ground and was immediately involved in the next phase of play as a decoy, support player, passer, clean out, or ball carrier.
They set a benchmark of 80% as being acceptable. On 2012 games, only six starters achieved the pass mark in retrospect. In 2013, apparently, all but Cliff Palu, Dave Dennis, and one other forward were below 80%.
When you start measuring something, players respond.
With “Lying On Ground”, if a Waratah got off the ground quicker than the opponent who came down with him, this was recorded as +1, and if he was beaten off the ground it was -1.
Obviously the aim is to finish as far as possible in positive territory. A pretty simple measure of desire and additional effort, vis-a-vis your opponent.
“Finishing On Top” was about being efficient in cleanouts, so that they could commit less numbers to the tackle area, particularly in attack, while achieving quick, clean ball.
Quite simply, it measured the percentage of cleanouts where the player finished on top of the guy he cleaned out, rather than rolling them over and ending up underneath them.
They actually measured both “finishing on top” and “finishing on bottom” in ruck contests. Finishing on top not only allows clean ball for the halfback, it also allows you to get “BIG” faster, and improves your “LOG” score.
These additional efforts all add up over the course of 80 minutes.
What does this mean for the Wallabies?
This weekend, when you are watching the game against the Springboks and wondering if we are “up” for the game, keep an eye on who is doing the extra work off the ball. Who gets up quickest and works hard to reset in attack and defence?
Who hits a ruck with violence and precision and finishes on top of a Springbok with his forearm across the throat? It has little to do with skill, but it will tell you all you need to know about plain “want”.
I didn’t do any stats on it, but I have no doubt that the All Blacks would have finished all over their Wallaby counterparts on these measures in the first two games. And, in game two, it was the absolute difference.
Lets hope the Wallabies find the inches they need this Saturday night.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.