His general play and work rate is really good, which saves him, but you're right about his tackling technique.
Hemopo will be knocking on the door.
Hemopo has gone overseas I believe.
@Old Hooker ,
@RedruthRFC @Zapphod
first, surely japan beating Ireland, demolishing Scotland and Samoa is an achievement? I get the point about turning a tier 3 into a tier 2 not being relevant, but were they not more like tier 1 in the World Cup? Sure they got smashed by South Africa, but they were exhausted after playing for the 5th week in a row, having played fast rugby in hot and humid conditions, not to mention having developed a style to beat Scotland and push Ireland (those were their World Cup aims). If they had more and better players to choose from they could then have switched to a different game plan to play the Boks.
second, what Joseph and brown have done is tried a lot of different things across their years of coaching. This is valuable experience as they already know what does and doesn't work. More importantly it shows they have the minds to think of new things, and this will be important given how coaching is evolving.
for the highlanders they started with a set of below par players. They tried importing top players, it failed, so they learnt the importance of buliding a culture where where everyone are equals and respect the leaders. They tried a run it from everywhere approach. a kick it from everywhere approachable rely on defence, that became the all blacks go to for a long time. A drive over the ruck with several players approach (they pretty much brought this innovation to world rugby. this was a big thing in rugby if you think a few years back, after refs made tacklers release the tackled player hence the fetcher became less effective. Then it stopped being such a big thing because refs started ruling against cleaning out passed the ball and started allowing the attacking Rucker's to not support their own body weight). They found If they attacked too many rucks their players got exhausted by the end of the season, so they became more targeted with their counter rucking. They pioneered offloading from everywhere. Joseph tried being tough on players, then tried being softer.
Third...They took players who were rejected from nzs worst team, the blues, and turned them into all blacks (naholo, fekitoa). They took average players and turned them into all blacks (hoeata, sopoaga, Dixon, Franklin, Luke whitelock, their 7 who I can picture but can't remember, Patrick Osborne was in a training camp).
they made Ben Smith.
a lot of changes to the game that we have seen internationally came from these coaches, with everyone else following.
not only did they develop players, they also worked out how best to play with the skill set they had. They had two superstars, Ben and Aaron Smith, and a bunch of nobodies, and they utilised their stars to perfection as well as their nobodies. They did a similar thing with japan, but with a different set of players hence a different game plan.