I wonder how much influence the fact that kiwi's live and breath rugby comes into play.
For example the under 15 team I coach starts training 12 weeks before our first preseason game.
The players have often done their own preseason fitness training so that 12 weeks I can focus on building skills.
For example my 15 year old nephew (played for me this year but will go up a grade next year) is currently on a weights and cardio program for a season that starts in June next year.
I should also add that we're not a big rugby School but a small (350 co-ed) School that only has 2 rugby teams.
During the season I had 2 parents that have played senior club rugby come in and do some sessions with the players (one a forward and one a back).
I also had a current NPC player come in and do 4-5 sessions.
I also had a former Ranfurly shield winning coach come to one of our games and watch. He then put together a training session and came and took a training, working on areas he noticed we weren't doing so well in.
All this support and for just a small School's under 15 team, you can imagine the support the big School's can get.
This grassroots support is the reason why NZ has a conveyor belt of good players, so many of our kids want to be pro rugby players and a lot are willing to put in the work from a young age.
The hardest thing about coaching over here is convincing them that kicking has a part in the game and you shouldn't just run from everywhere (my tip for that is start with attacking kicks as they see the try scoring opportunities, then once you have them kicking you can look at other areas kicks are useful).
My disappointment with England, seeing as I knew in the first place that the coaching team was just not good enough and we'd not come anywhere near winning the World Cup, is actually in their so-called review because it has none of the great thinkers that I reckon could, if their heads were put together, make England the All Blacks of the Northern Hemisphere, men like Woodward, Greenwood, Moore, Johnson, Guscott, Wilkinson, and Dallaglio. I'd never imagine the All Blacks, if they needed to review their set-up, ignoring players and thinkers of that calibre and class. Your words are interesting because they show how the thinking is ingrained into the minds of your players, and I'd see the people I've mentioned wanting that to happen at the real grass root levels of the sport in England, even at English schools. I remember reading quite a few years ago now, an All-Black talking about how, when they were under the cosh and even well near their try line, that if they turned over the ball the immediate thinking was to attack, not in a gung-ho or foolhardy way, though, but as a mind-set. Every time since then when I've seen the All Blacks suddenly score late on and either escape defeat or run further away with a game, like against France in the quarter final, I've thought of that comment, and it still puzzles me that other teams don't seem to have cottoned on to it, in terms of their own play, I mean, not yours.
And like with all due respect to Robshaw - he seems a decent enough man - but as a captain, I've never seen McCaw approach the referee in that whining way Robshaw seemed to do, just as with Johnson where we had a captain who was as inspirational as your McCaw is.
I mean, even with our review, much as I admired Ian McGeechan as a fly half when he played for Scotland and the Lions, but without any disrespect to him, his being included in the review group, given he's Scottish while those English ex-players I've mentioned aren't, makes absolutely no sense to me.
