In the last two weeks I have been reminded of how important forward dominance is to the overall team’s performance. The key to forward ascendancy isn’t any magic trick, special formula or silver bullet. It is based on attitude, technique and hours of training so the players understand their roles and responsibilities.
Firstly the forward pack needs to work as an eight in everything they do. At scrum time we find that timing and body height will often beat size and strength. In fact this is also the case in all forward driving situations be it a line out maul, a counter ruck or even a breakdown.
How do we get forward domination and where does it come from, where does it start? It starts with the hours of training drills that the players complete in pre-season. The understanding of the team’s systems continues here and grows during the competition. These systems will give the players the roles and responsibilities needed for each position in both attack and defence. The players need clarity in the areas of the field they are to defend, the communication used in defence, attack patterns from set piece and counter attack. Each player must understand their responsibilities in any given situation, who are they to cover in defence, where they are meant to be in attack and what they are to do at a breakdown? Once a system for both defence and attack is bedded in, and that is no small task – often taking more than a season for a new system to have total comprehension, the team can look at the smaller details.
Hard work builds TRUST
With the Singer Schools’ Rugby League season 2017 just twelve weeks away.
Generally getting to the ball first and having a lower body position than your opponent will win you contestable ball. Sometimes getting lower than the opposition means putting your head under their chest and using a leg drive to clear them out but generally a player will need to have a strong, immovable body shape. To put your head in to those situations takes courage and also an attitude.
An attitude that states, ‘I will do what it takes to do my job for the team’. It’s this attitude that counts for so much on match day. We saw that attitude two weeks ago when Ceylonese Rugby and Football Club played Air Force Sports Club in front of their members at Longdon Place. We saw a version of that attitude at the Naval base in Welisara when Kandy Sports Club visited the Sailors on the weekend.
The mental attitude the CR and FC members saw a couple of weeks ago saw the forwards make yards up the middle of the ground and around the rucks. This gave the backs time and space to showcase their considerable skills with Tarinda Ratwatte and Bhanuka Nanayakkara combining superbly to take advantage of a retreating defence.
The sailor’s attitude, or edge as the New Zealand All Blacks call it, that Navy’s flag waving fans witnessed on Sunday was something else again. It was not so much that they got over the gain line with their ball carrying, it was more the defensive pressure that their attitude brought that won the day. So fierce was Navy’s advancing defensive line that Kandy’s Galácticos were forced into mistakes that led to points for Navy. It is this very attitude that brought about a charge down try for man of the match Supun Peiris. The sailors stood like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings stating, “You cannot pass! You shall not pass!”, seeing off the Kandy attack that continued until the 80th minute. The longer the Sailors held their line, the narrower the Kandy attack become until all 15 attackers were positioned within 10 metres either side of the ruck. Kandy will see in their video analysis that their players will need to realign quicker after four or five phases as it is out wide where they have the pace and skill to be able to punish teams.
If the players arrive with the correct attitude it takes a massive effort to continue in that vein for the whole game. That is because the levels of concentration required to carry out a plan and also physically smash yourself into contact is beyond most humans. That attitude can come from the team on the bottom of the table as easily as it does from the competition leaders. It is often what wins players momentum in contact situations and it paves the way for others in the team to shine.
Keep an eye on the games this weekend to see who has the right attitude and who has forward dominance.
