Nah, I feel he chops and changes the backline all the time and people like dmac who have been picked back to back but didn't play the best
same with selections like bower, generally been pretty average but kept getting picked
his insistence on playing savea at 8 when he plays even better at 7 and Jacobson was great at 8 when given a shot
the general agreement in other groups/forums is people can't see what he's aiming for
he seems to think a good play is the same as a gameplan…
I dont know dude, this just sounds like perceptions rather than been fully thought out.
first you say you feel like he chops and changes the backline all the time, then in the same sentence you say dmac should have been changed instead of being stuck with.
three of the tests this year hes stuck with his top backline bar injuries (as far as i can remember), where most coaches would have chopped and changed a whole lot more against the minnows.
as for bower , again he is sticking with his man, and not many would be suggesting an even more inexperienced de groot shoild be starting. And the choice of bower over tuinukuafe he has been clear about too (clear in his game plan), that they want one of the two starting props to be mobile and the other to be a strong scrummager, and same on the bench except for opposite sides). No one else has been available, no moody or tu'ungafasi.
and I agree about savea and jacobson, but it's clear that he is just trying to have a consistent team, one where Sam cane can come back and slot in rather than making wholesale changes, and he clearly wants to build ardie in the 8 role where he was last year. He is very big in consistency of selections.
in terms of a general consensus being that people don't see what he is trying to do; that kind of judgement is so subjective that it is far more likely to be caused by biases than anything real, and the general public are all prone to the same biases; hes a small guy who sounds a bit dumb, he isn't Robertson or rennie or Joseph or brown or any of the people everyone hoped to see.
And he had been clear about his game plan: he doesn't have one. His game plan is for the players to learn to adapt to what's happening in front of them. So people aren't going to see 'oh look we attack all the time, thats out game plan', or 'oh look we kick all the time, thats our game plan', or 'oh look we grind away until we get a penalty then kick for the corner and use our driving maul that we spend all our time working on, thats our game plan', because the game plan is to do the right thing at the right time. You would have seen the highlanders under Joseph experimented with a number of extreme game plans that didn't work, and it was only when they brought balance and utilized their unique skill sets did they really flourish. Foster has said that our advantage is our ball skills, I think he is rightly recognizing that we might not have the same strength up front as we have had, and that the European players play organised rugby week in week out so we can't try and be the more organised team, we have to play to our strengths. But to build a team that can win using our skills we need to practice looking for space and looking for options, watching what each other are doing, anticipating, getting confident in each other. This is what he is trying to build.
I have doubts in how good his coaching is, but he seems strong in and committed to his vision (it's not an arrogant one as it is based on our specific competencies and is attempting to address prior failings), and he is relatively faithful to his top team.
Elaborate?
,
