Get your questions in for Issue 11 of Coach's Corner

Bennett played for Australia twice. Robot played for Australia 9 times.

It won't be easy for the next coach to turn it all around by any means Billy. He'll need money and full control of recruitment, and even if he has those he'll need to persuade good players that NSW is a better place to be. We are talking about experienced guys who will have a choice of options, and would like to win silverware in their careers. It's quite a tall order!

The follow through is important, but what his whole body does is more important. It was hard to find a video of him kicking in game but... small stride to the ball, but a goodish rotation. The short leg follow through could be due to him bending his knee after contact, this alleviates a lot of momentum; however, he does skip through his kick well as part of his follow through. The one kick I found seemed to draw to the left, his follow through looked to pull a little left, with his plant (non-kicking foot) possibly too close to the ball, making him lean away from the ball, fall off to the left slightly and drag the ball slightly left... to my eye, his “lack” of distance could be traced back to that final stride (the kick I watched was from 40m out). Compare BB final stride and follow through to Francois Steyn. Both have short follow through in terms of their legs, but both skip through the ball well, whats different is the final strides, FS has a long aggressive final stride...

BB also seems to stab at the ball with very little follow through.

A long approach stride to the ball, and good hip rotation. This allows the leg to be longer / move further, which generates more speed. If you play golf think of it as a driver with and without body rotation

I agree with almost everything except the counter rucks. The defending team is penalised if they push past the ball then collapse / fall over an attacking player. Where the attacking player has lost their feet first... but even that is inconsistent! If they get well past the ball and fall over that is ok, if they get 30cm past the ball then fall over an opposition player that’s a penalty...

Thanks Nic, interesting response. My take on your response is that immediate positive results are necessary to be seen as successful. It also demonstrates the terrible position the Tahs find themselves in, a bunch of barely turned 20 year olds with heaps of promise with little or no experience around them.

I turned on a small tape recorder yesterday morning as I awoke and it said "Thugby, your mission, if you choose to accept it, will be to strive to make Rugby Union a fairer game so its millions of fans won't die early of apoplexy". I clicked YES. :stoked: My question to you was rather "do you think that the above two changes to the governance of mauls would make the game fairer and more entertaining"?

Under the 2007 ELVs, the most controversial law variation was to make it legal to collapse the maul - this was to even up the contest - the stats demonstrated the number of injuries from collapsed mauls was negligible. Anyway, I think the contest for the ball has become a bit of a myth in rugby. As soon as a contest starts a penalty is given. Counter rucks excepted you can no longer compete at the breakdown for example. A defender with hands on the ball wins a penalty, not possession. If they touch a blade of grass in the process of getting hands on the ball they are penalised instead- either way no contest ensures. A dominant scrum wins a penalty not possession. So the law makers are saying we don’t want players competing for the ball - it’s too messy. Reminds me of league in the mid 80s when all the messy bits were removed- competitive scrums, striking for the ball, tap and go when there was no marker, stripping etc

And no accident that the biggest professional background for successful rugby coaches is .... Teaching!

I was thinking that. My old man played with Bennett and Ribot. It's almost like the best Sales Managers in business aren't always the people who are the best sales people. Best consultants IT are not the best coders. I look at my business we define things by the thinkers, the implementers and the doers. Sounds crude but it seems to work

They'd take the Rebs first without hesitation - going to the Tahs right now will not do anything for your coaching resume!

Thugby, these two posts sounds far more like your own mission statement than a real question! :laughing:

Maybe keep this til next week, as this week's stats will be focused on second row! Can you drop the Q in again next Tuesday? :thumbup:

The best coaches are very often not top players. Graham Henry, Steve Hansen. Bill Belichick in the NFL never played Football above High School level, but became the greatest coach in the game. Playing intelligence very diff to coaching intelligence!

So how do we develop coaches in the right way. Both league and union seem to have an underlying philosophy of you have to played at the level to coach. But the best coaches in many circumstances didn't. With the cry for quality coaches in oz. How do we solve the problem? Is it keep appointing ex players at the level or something else?

Statistically, who were SRAU's best hookers this year?

G'day KH, I'm not against mauls per se, especially if its MY team destroying the opposition with a great drive forward. :stoked: I'm also fine that you cannot sack a maul (far too dangerous) nor come around the side to get at the ball carrier. Your suggestion it should simply be that players aren’t able to position themselves between the ball carrier and the opposition in a maul? won't work as already once the ball is passed back then there are multiple players (and rows) between the ball carrier and opposition. I just think new interpretations (which are not written anywhere in the Laws of the game) have crept in giving too much protection to the team with the ball. tbh watching some teams is getting boring with their one-trick play of force penalty-kick for lineout-MAUL-penalty or try-REPEAT ad nauseum. Let me explain it this way. Many proponents of mauls say Mauls are just like a scrum. The team that wins the hook can push the ball back (with feet) or push forward hiding the ball behind their front row. The #8 can pick the ball up and charge forward with ball or pass it. Its up to the opposition to stop them legally.. And all this is correct! BUT: (a) You are not allowed to wheel a scrum and play sideways manoeuvres to upset the opposing scrum. You get penalised if you do that, yet watch most mauls as the ball team push sideways one direction then the other in order to create uneven defence on one side. Law 16.3 says “Once formed, a maul must move towards a goal line” so why are they they allowed to push sideways? Stick to the law of the game, if your maul can't move forward then its a scrum and you lose the feed. You can't wheel a scrum because it would give teams doing it a massive advantage so the contest for the ball would NOT be fair. Yet somehow you are allowed to do so in a maul. Its wrong! (b) ANY pod hiving off a maul is obstruction. No ifs or buts they were part of the maul, they have broken off from the original ball carrier so they cannot be part of the original maul of 3 people. It is OBSTRUCTION and again gives an unfair advantage. Again you can't do that off a scrum. What if the #8 picks the ball up and he and a flanker and a 2nd rower hived off in a pod from the scrum, all bound but with the other two in front of him so protecting him from tacklers. Would you cop that if an opposing team did that off a 5m scrum in a final and won the game with a try in the 82nd minute? I bet you would scream blue bl004y murder about obstruction! Then why should people in a maul be allowed to do it? UNFAIR advantage! Kill it now. My suggested change puts this into the rugby law as it says for any pod to remain a maul the original ball carrier (which started the maul in the first place) must be part of the pod. I guess that would be too much for the old farts in the NH WR set-up to cop. So an alternative suggestion might be the pod cannot move forward unless the ball carrier is in the front of the pod, which is what law 16 says anyway. So again pods hiving off and charging forward are illegal. :stoked:

Who would you pick for our Wallaby starting 15 and why?

Nic, in Australia both Tahs & Rebels are looking for a new head coach. Based on their current squads what would a potential HC be thinking and where would they see the upside in taking over either of these 2 sides