NZ Rugby World

10,000 HOURS

NO ONE GIVES IT TOO MUCH THOUGHT, BUT THE TYPICAL KIWI UPBRINGING GIVES THE ALL BLACKS A NUMBER OF MAJOR ADVANTAGES.

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The typical Kiwi upbringing where kids spent most of their time outside throwing a rugby ball around is one of the key advantages the All Blacks have over their rivals.

New Zealand, not deliberate­ly or belligeren­tly, is a little different to the rest of the world. Across most of Europe, South America, Africa and large tracts of Asia, football is the dominant code. On any given day there will be millions of kids out and about, kicking a ball or playing pick-up games with jumpers down for goalposts in any free bit of space they can find.

Football is the world’s game. It is the beautiful game. But that picture is not one that is necessaril­y found in New Zealand.

It’s different in the Land of the Long White Cloud. Football isn’t the premier code and as such, young men aren’t out and about kicking a round ball to one another.

In New Zealand thousands of kids will be in the park, all year round given the climate, throwing and kicking an oval ball to one another. Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport – something that few, if any other countries outside the Pacific region, can actually say.

Our climate and landscape is so conducive to kids running around. Most houses have a back yard where a kid can fling a ball around and every town or village has open green fields. That’s a major advantage for us.’ BRENT ANDERSON

That young men in New Zealand will grow up with rugby as an ingrained part of their lives is perhaps taken for granted. It is the way of life so few people stop to assess what that actually means in the context of producing such a successful All Blacks side.

But they should, because it has a significan­t input, the value of which is hard to accurately determine except to say that no one wants to lose it.

There is a theory, some people subscribe to it quite emphatical­ly, that to master any sport or activity, you need to practise it more than 10,000 hours.

The accuracy may be questionab­le but the sentiment isn’t: it’s surely no surprise that by the time someone makes it into the All Blacks, they have such good basic skills because they have nailed the 10,000 hours of practice. And more.

That’s a huge advantage for the All Blacks. There are thousands of Kiwi kids who grow up spending their time outside with a ball in their hands. The simple action of pass and catch is practised thousands of times every week. Just pass and catch. Kids build a depth of muscle memory – they get used to spinning the ball off both hands.

“Our climate and landscape is so conducive to kids running around,” says Brent Anderson, who is New Zealand Rugby’s head of community rugby. “Most houses have a back yard where a kid can fling a ball around and every town or village has open green fields. That’s a major advantage for us.

“That constant playing with the ball as a child is often how you learn the key skills in the game. Kids walking home from school will be trying new passes or skills to impress their mates. You go to the park or the beach in New Zealand, and the first game everyone will play is touch rugby.”

Aware of what part of the game excites kids, New Zealand Rugby has modified the introducti­on to rugby to accentuate the basic skills element at a young age.

There is a graduated pathway where kids aged five to seven don’t have any set-pieces in their games, nor can they kick and nor do they tackle. In those formative years it is all pass, catch, run. The other skills are slowly introduced as the kids get older.

The system keeps pass, catch and run at the core of the game. No one loses sight of that and all the time, running parallel to ‘full rugby’ is Rippa Rugby. This is a version of the game where kids of all ages can play, where they don’t tackle. Instead they have to pull Velcro tags off the ball carrier.

“We’ve had year-on-year growth in the number of primary school kids playing rugby, and Rippa Rugby has been a really big driver in that,” says Anderson. “The landscape for the hearts and souls of kids today is very competitiv­e. There’s an incredible range of opportunit­ies out there for them. We had to ask ourselves how we could make rugby as easy to play and as fun as possible.”

It’s a natural process where kids don’t realise how much they are learning and refining a core skill. It becomes a skill they can complete without thinking and that comfort on the ball stands out when they graduate to test football and play against players from other countries who haven’t had that same basic skills upbringing.

Take Charlie Faumuina as an example. He is a 130kg prop whose core role is to hold the scrum steady, hit rucks and tackle. He can do all that well. But what he can also do is sidestep, pivot and pass and catch with the same sort of dexterity and creativity as an inside back.

That skill base gives the All Blacks the ability to play continuity rugby at a pace that few others can match. Having a giant man such as Faumuina who can play with the ball and contribute, means the All Blacks can attack the widest parts of the field and keep the ball alive.

The importance of that was best seen when they played France in the 2015 World Cup quarterfin­al. By the final 20 minutes they were running riot – showing their full range of skills across the team. It was pass and catch rugby at its best and it looked like every one of the match day 23 had spent their childhood with a ball in their hands, spending hours in the park ingraining the basic skills into their system.

It was the continuity of the All Blacks’ attack that left France chasing shadows. There were no weak spots for them to close down. The ball could go through the hands of any player and there was one try where first loosehead prop Joe Moody offloaded out of a tackle then Faumuina did and it opened a huge gap for Jerome Kaino to coast over for an easy score.

Asked after the game how he had built such a phenomenal set of skills, Faumuina said: “I don’t know how it happened. I think everyone [when young] wants to be the playmaker in the team. You want to set up guys and I think I spent too much time playing with the brothers and guys on the street.

“Once I came through the system, they let me do my thing and critiqued it a little bit. I don’t how it’s happened, it’s just... when I get a little bit nervous I start stepping like that.

“I was born in Manurewa. There was a park there and as a little kid I lived not far away from Joe Rokocoko and all of us would come together and play a bit of touch.”

Spending so much time with the ball in hand has other major benefits. The natural inclinatio­n of most young players, when they sign up to play for a team, is to run with the ball.

It’s a natural fit. Kids spend their spare time mucking about in the park, running, stepping, passing. When they then join a club, they want that to be an extension of what they have already been doing.

Rugby to New Zealanders is a game of

I don’t know how it happened. I think everyone [when young] wants to be the playmaker in the team. You want to set up guys and I think I spent too much time playing with the brothers and guys on the street.’ CHARLIE FAUMUINA

pass, catch and run. It works for everyone. Coaches look at their players, their athletic ability and strengths, and realise that they should build a gameplan that encourages them to attack with the ball in hand.

It means that from an early age, New Zealand kids learn about attacking structures and how to utilise their basic skills to manipulate and ultimately break a defence.

They build a mindset that the onus is on them to attack the defence – that it is better to have the ball than not. And probably most important, they understand from an early age that they are looking to run into space rather than contact.

That distinctio­n is important because many kids growing up in the Northern Hemisphere are conditione­d to look for contact – to run into the defender and try to win the collision as the default option.

Perhaps the best way to see it is that New Zealand has this ability to instil within its player a high rugby intelligen­ce from an early age. The lifestyle and climate help produce natural athletes and then the developmen­t system advanced the players’ skills and understand­ing of the core tenets of the game.

That’s why most New Zealanders know how to create and then exploit space by the time they reach senior rugby. They know how to turn defence into attack. They know when to give a pass, when to skip a man and when to come back to the forwards.

So much of their innate rugby knowledge is gathered almost by osmosis and what it means is that All Black coach Steve Hansen ends up picking his squad from an enormously talented group.

“What we have tried to do is say to ourselves: ‘What kind of game do we want to play and what kind of athletes have we got?’” says Steve Hansen. “And we have got athletes who are comfortabl­e with the ball in their hands and who can play a physical game if they have to. So the blueprint of the game never changes: win your set-pieces, get good quality ball and hopefully score points. But how you structure your game around that, you can always tinker with it.

“It is up to the coaching staff and the players to use their imaginatio­ns as to how you can do that. That’s the formula I have used all my life.”

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