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[2014 Mid-Year Tests] New Zealand vs England (2nd Test)

Patchey said:
June is the best chance most teams get to beat the All Black IMO. In the Rugby Championship and AIs they're a set of players and coaches who know each other very well, have worked out exactly how best to play and who are coming off the back of a season of Super Rugby. June is half way through the dommestic season(ish) and often sees new players and combinations being tested.

Conversely, and ignoring this years' cock up, the June tour is when England should be at their peak, having used the 6N to blood new players (or not, in our case) and with everyone firing on all cyclinders. I still hold out hope of a victory over the next two weeks.



That is putting it mildly. The basic handling skills of some of our players is woeful considering they spend all year playing the game. Theres no considence that the moment we gave Mike Brown, one the best broken field runnings in England, game time at full back we started to look much better in attack while the who 'second playmaker' fullback experiment with Goode was a flop.

I don't know how we sort it out. Poor hands and awareness is usually a more systematic thing that can't just be fixed in an international camp.
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well that was one of the things Henry said about Wales - their ball skills wwere shocking and the work he'd expect to be done at club level was being done at international level.

This is where the NZ and Australian teams are streaks ahead of us - they concentrate on ball skills and decision making ahead of tactical and game plan. Yes they do have game plans but they are a lot less rigid definition - it's more a case of:

"We want to play here. get thete how you want,a nd once there you make the deicisons"

wheras we'll tend to do:

"Breakdown one, here. Two, here and three...er... here. OK, now look up? nothing on, breakdown four here. You run here, here and here."
 
I think our major issue now is definately the ability to take chances, kill teams off...effectively to be efficient and clinical.

But as our team has improved one area at a time, i expect this to be another area we will improve. It has been a plan that Lancaster and his team have been working through and its beginning to take shape nicely.

They seem to have a system that new players can just slot into and know their role.

Maybe the correct personnel still need to be identified for a couple of positions but it will come good.

Is Farrell the right one...or will it be one of Burns, Cipriani or Ford.

I rate May very highly. His natural game is a bit kamekazi running through traffic...and i think he needs a bit of direction from Catty to become a bit more direct, and back his pace on the outside. He's also quite powerful for his light looking frame.

But Ashton is still quality and enjoying his rugby again, Wade will be back and Yarde looks good.

This is where the NZ and Australian teams are streaks ahead of us - they concentrate on ball skills and decision making ahead of tactical and game plan.
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Good 10,

I agree, but i think judging by the last couple of U20's England sides...and the current one, it is an area we are improving.
 
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At international and club level the basic handling skills from all NH sides in general, bar France in a broken game is atrocious. We see it year in, year out in the 6 nations and when we play the top SH sides.

I think it's because of a lack of exposure to fast paced, high intensity rugby. Most of our guys coming through the pathways have got the skills and they train them when they're at academy level, but it's what happens next that seems to be the problem.
My take is that in the Pro 12 you've got teams trying to play fast paced but it's pretty low intensity for the most part, Premiership you've got the middle ground, Top 14 is a slow grind but high intensity in collisions.

Although against NZ a lot of the time i think it is also a case of forcing things and being nervous. Plus the fast pace and high intensity means you will make more mistakes and not be able to clinically finish chances you would regularly.
 
Well in France they do a lot of ball and decision making conditioning in training as opposed to game plans - my friend was at stade francais and he ran a few training sessions for me... everything was reactive conditioning to match based scenarios - or games as we like to call them in the trade. :)

It was all about playing as opposed to structure.

(not sure that's making sense)

Geordiefalcon said:
I think our major issue now is definitely the ability to take chances, kill teams off...effectively to be efficient and clinical.
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We scored trys in the 6 Nations against teams that didn't play a drift defence like New Zealand do. The team that does play a drift is Ireland (not all the time) and we opened them up with sniping around the ruck - which is where Danny Care comes into it.

I expect Care to create more space for our backs on Saturday - if he starts.
 
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Handing and decision making can be be worked on at club and country level but IMO it only really become excellent if it is drilled from a very young age. I think the apparent rise in the ability of backs in the England age grade set up is link to the massive increase in the use of tag (as opposed to 'touch') rugby in schools and clubs about a decade ago.

Also, I've heard England academy staff speak a lot more about expecting guy to have great hands.
 
ratsapprentice said:
Why would tag rugby be more beneficial for handling skills than touch?
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In my experience if playing both as a youngster touch was always taken as a bit of a joke. Even when there was no full contact in games. The advantage of tag is that it's much easier to stop players from sneaking out of being tackled. Once you've got a tab belt on you know you can't just pretend you weren't tackled and therefor have to work harder in getting your handling and decision making right quickly, before the tackle.

Obviously that's all based on anecdotal evidence, but tag always seems to produce better passages of attacking play and more passing and awareness.
 
ratsapprentice said:
Why would tag rugby be more beneficial for handling skills than touch?
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They all have their place, but from memory a couple of reasons:

It promotes straight running and passing after contact, it's more regimented as peopel can't deny the tag has been made as people do itn touch.

Touch tends to bring more of people running sideways and a relcutcance to offload before contact: rolling drives and truck an trailer etc... means there is actually less creative passing.

I played international Touch rugby, it was one of the hardest sports I've ever been involved in.
 
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/...o-knee-jerk-reaction-from-the-All-Blacks-camp

Looks like Savea will definitely make it, who always seems to score against England.:( Dagg is a doubt (50:50 according to this article) and Read maybe saved for the 3rd test, which suggests that the ABs won't change their pack and shuffle the back 3 to include Savea on his favoured left wing and move Jane to right wing and Bin Smuth to fullback.
 
goodNumber10 said:
Well in France they do a lot of ball and decision making conditioning in training as opposed to game plans - my friend was at stade francais and he ran a few training sessions for me... everything was reactive conditioning to match based scenarios - or games as we like to call them in the trade. :)

It was all about playing as opposed to structure.

(not sure that's making sense)



We scored trys in the 6 Nations against teams that didn't play a drift defence like New Zealand do. The team that does play a drift is Ireland (not all the time) and we opened them up with sniping around the ruck - which is where Danny Care comes into it.

I expect Care to create more space for our backs on Saturday - if he starts.
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could you explain what "drift defense" refers to ?
 
mmkay...they could've been more demonstrative since they actually had to entire squads on the set...
Read a bit of your blog too. Cool stuff.

K so drift is making the attack drift wide as opposed to inside basically. A little bit passive but conservative. And blitz is a lot more active, confrontational, squeezing the life out of the attack and seems to happen at midfield more often, push the opponent inside.
 
there really isn't that much to explain as other than man on man it's the simplest form of defence.

Essentially, the basic of the drift is:

if we have a 10, 12, 13 and 11 defending they line up opposite their attacking counterparts.

The 10 will stay square to his man until his opposite number passes the ball or he tackles him, if his opposite number passes he then drifts out and supports the next man in the defensive line, so it effectively becomes a 2 vs 1 in favour of the defence, once the ball has left that channel they then drift again.

The 9 or flanker will usually run behind to nullify any breaks.

There are more complicated versions of it, such as on the drift call everyone moves out one channel and you keep it one on one, and also how you nullify the switch back but the basics are you drift towards the touchline hoping to tackle them low or push them into touch.

It's the first defensive system you learn really.

what you'll find is a lot of teams will run two, or three systems... drift in opposition half, blitz in their own half, and man on man in their own 22... most teams I've coached to use drift in opposition half, man on man in our own. Blitz at amateur level is very difficult to do well.
 
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