BACK TO BASICS
IT CAN LOOK LIKE THE ALL BLACKS HAVE CONJURED AN INTRICATE WAY TO PLAY THE GAME, BUT IT IS A TRICK. WHAT THEY DO IS EXECUTE THE BASIC SKILLS BETTER THAN ANY OTHER TEAM AND THAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF THEIR SUCCESS.
There’s nothing fancy about the way the All Blacks play. They just rely on their incredible ability to execute the basic skills.
To the untrained eye, even to those who think they have a good handle on the game, it often appears as if the All Blacks are capable of extreme magic.
It can look like they have conjured the most intricate plan and have equipped themselves with the most cunning tricks.
Looks can be deceiving, though. So much of what the All Blacks do is not driven by or founded on intricacy or elaborate thinking. Rarely, if ever, do they spend much time formulating fancy moves or super clever ploys. It might look like they do, but that’s all an illusion.
What their game is built on – what is at the core of their success – is their stunning ability to execute basic skills. It is not just a few players, or most of the players – it is all of them. No one makes it to the All Blacks without being super proficient in the execution of the basics.
In the All Blacks, expectations around basic skill execution are consistent regardless of what position someone plays. The basic tenets of the game are pass, catch, tackle and run and these foundation skills have to be mastered by everyone. There is no exemption for big men. Being a 2.04m lock is not a disclaimer for poor passing or handling.
As former All Blacks captain Sean Fitzpatrick said in late 2016: “Whatever the results may say, the All Blacks’ gameplan is not fancy – they just pass, kick, tackle, defend and attack better than anyone else. Just by honing their skills-set, they turn good players into great players. The keys to the All Blacks’ success are preparation and sacrifice.”
For the gameplan to work, all 15 players on the field have to be able to give and take a pass. Everyone has to be able to support the ball carrier and everyone has to be able to tackle.
More than that, though, everyone has to be able to do it under pressure. Everyone has to be able to do it when the defence is in their face. Everyone has to be able to find a way to let their basic skills shine.
So many times it has been the quality execution of the basic skills that has set the All Blacks apart. It is the defining facet of their game and who they are. That attention to detail; that relentless ability to throw an accurate pass that makes the difference between a try being scored or bombed...that’s the secret to much of what the All Blacks do.
Rugby is a game of momentum – it is effectively all about the team with the ball manipulating the team without it to create space into which they can run. To be able to do that, the team with the ball has to be able to hold on to it; to move defenders with either brute force, the impact of a collision, the speed and accuracy of their passing or a combination of all.
It sounds simple, but it rarely is – because the opposition will be just as determined to defend resolutely. No international team is able to stress a defence the way the All Blacks do.
They are the masters at it because their accuracy is so good. They make good
Whatever the results may say, the All Blacks’ gameplan is not fancy – they just pass, kick, tackle, defend and attack better than anyone else. Just by honing their skillsset, they turn good players into great players. The keys to the All Blacks’ success are preparation and sacrifice.’ SEAN FITZPATRICK
passes. The receiver has his hands out waiting for the ball and is running a good line. It operates so smoothly and it is that constant accuracy that enables them to create space inch by inch to suddenly open a big hole.
It’s imperceptible at times. Sometimes it is not easy to tell that the speed of an earlier pass was the point where an opposition defence was actually put on the back foot. But other times it is obvious that the All
Blacks are in possession of superior basic skills.
In 2013, there were several moments on their quest for a perfect season when they cracked a tough game with the most exquisite execution of basic skills.
At Ellis Park they were in the midst of an epic encounter with the Boks and twice it was Kieran Read’s ability to offload out of contact that enabled the All Blacks to score critical tries.
When they headed to England a few weeks later, the game was deadlocked until Ma’a Nonu decided to let two English defenders hit him before he slipped an impossible pass to Aaron Cruden.
And then there was what may have been the greatest prolonged execution of basic skills the world has ever seen when they managed to score their match-winning injury-time try against Ireland. There were only 40 seconds left when they won a penalty inside their own half and 25 phases later they scored. It was magical.
There were props handling multiple times, backs interchanging roles with forwards and this insane ability to keep the ball moving through the hands with everyone running the perfect lines to allow Ryan Crotty to score in the corner.
“That great try,” former coach Graham Henry said to the Guardian in 2015. “I don’t know how many passes it took to make it. 25? Catch-pass. Catch-pass. Catch-pass. If one pass had been misplaced, if one catch had been fumbled, the ball would have gone dead and the game would have been over. A simple skill, perfected.”
There was more of the same when the All Blacks played France in the 2015 World Cup quarterfinal. They ran rampant that night and it was all about their pass and catch.
Towards the end of the game it was almost exhibition stuff – props throwing incredible passes to locks who were able to get it away to loose forwards. France didn’t stand a chance – they couldn’t live with the speed of movement. They couldn’t close the All Blacks down because the New Zealanders were so good at moving the ball and keeping it alive. It was a sobering night for the French, the gulf in basic skills quite alarming.
“They are the Brazilians of rugby,” France coach Philippe Saint-André said. “They go fast and they won 80 per cent of the game. Every time we lost the ball there was a punishment. There were six players around our one every time we had the ball. They played with so much flair and skill.”
The typical New Zealand upbringing provides something of a headstart. Kiwi kids are likely to have had a ball in their hands for significantly more hours than say a typical youngster growing up in England or Ireland.
What the All Blacks do, though, is make their environment an extension of that upbringing. The focus never deviates from mastering the basics.
Training is not an elaborate business at all – it is constant repetition of the same basic skills. People may not believe it, but most 12-year-olds could, in theory, turn up at All Blacks training and be capable of doing all the drills. It is relentless pass, catch and run.
The difference is the speed, accuracy and intensity. The drills are not complex, but they are done at a blinding speed. They also break down the basic skills to truly understand the actions involved in good technique.
They can often be seen walking, passing the ball in the most exaggerated fashion to build the muscle memory of the right movements.
The kickers will stand on one leg and gently swing the other and punt the ball just a few metres to start. They will build on that until 10 minutes later they are kicking the ball 40 metres but their action is still the same.
They take this approach across all of their skills: be it tackling, passing, kicking, lineout throwing or whatever. The All Blacks never assume they don’t need to work on those basics. They respect those skills enormously and devote enormous amounts of time to refining them.
In 2012, when the All Blacks were in Italy, the backs spent one session running across the field for more than 45 minutes – back and forth they would go, varying their speed and distance apart...passing the ball down the line, before turning and repeating. On and on it would go and not once was the ball dropped. Barely, if ever, was there a weak pass or a moment when someone would have to pause to collect the ball.
It was a breathtaking example of their defining qualities and an insight into what they are all about. It showed an incredible level of patience to stick at the same skill for so long. No one gave any hint they were bored or frustrated with the task with which they had been presented.
There was only this desire to keep doing it again and again, suggesting that everyone bought into the idea that simple tasks can never be mastered.
In that regard the All Blacks share a philosophy similar to the shokunin concept from Japan. The word shokunin has a literal translation of artisan but it means so much more: it is a way of life. It is a compulsion within someone to master their art through years of repetition and acceptance that it can take a lifetime to learn, properly, even the most basic skill.
As to why the All Blacks are convinced this is the right thing to do… “If you get fit enough and skilled enough you can play
They are the Brazilians of rugby. They go fast and they won 80 per cent of the game. Every time we lost the ball there was a punishment. There were six players around our one every time we had the ball. They played with so much flair and skill.’ PHILIPPE SAINT-ANDRÉ
with a bit of intensity,” head coach Steve Hansen believes. “Our job is to make the complex simple. The simpler you can make it for somebody, the easier it is to do it.”
Tied into that is his belief that if players are confident in their skill execution, they will back themselves in a game and not overthink things. One of the more inhibiting factors for the modern player is uncertainty – too much clutter in the brain, which prevents them from having a clear sense of what they are trying to do.
Hansen likes to remove the doubt from his players and tell them to do nothing more than their core roles. It certainly works and the players relish the chance to do simple things well.
And by having players with such good individual skills, the All Blacks can build their gameplan around it. “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 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.
“I know we train under pressure a lot. We have a massive emphasis on doing the basic skills right. You’re always monitoring that right through the week. For me there is a process and then there is an outcome. The process is all about getting the best outcome from a skill point of view, but at the end of the day does it matter how you pass the ball from there to there as long as it gets there?”
This obsession with the basics pervades across the All Blacks. The endless practising of the component parts connects to individual expectation.
The All Blacks coaches don’t expect players to do amazing things with their basics skills portfolio. They actually just expect players to do the things that relate to their position. That’s it.
That’s all they really care about. Players are sent out to battle with the clearest instructions – know your core jobs and do them. It’s all about keeping things as simple as possible – to get rid of clutter that can be in players’ minds and paralysing them to some extent. All they have to remember is to do the things that defines their position – so props have to focus on scrummaging and lifting at the lineout; locks are about pushing and jumping; and halfbacks focus on nothing more than clearing the ball quickly and accurately.
It’s a big no-no to start worrying about doing someone’s else’s job: the system works entirely on trust. Every player has to do their own job and trust that those around them will do theirs.
The simplicity of it all is breathtaking because it often produces performances that appear to be littered with intricacy and complexities that go way beyond doing the basics well.
But it’s maybe a little like Italian cuisine – the recipes tend to be truly simple and it is the quality of the raw ingredients that bring the wow factor to the dish.
One of the other benefits of having such a narrow and simplistic set of expectations is that new players can come into the team and quickly settle.
“They [All Blacks coaches] just talk about do your job,” said halfback Aaron Smith. “I definitely feel that I got into knowing what I need to do for this team very quickly. It’s a very simple role for me – just to clear the ball as quick as I could and anything else I could do was a bonus.
“I have been trying to add communication and energy and that was how simple it was for me and that’s how simple I think it is for me still to this day. I know that it affects my game when I try doing too much so Steve [Hansen] just says to me get there, clear the ball and do what you see.
“I have played a lot of rugby that when it says to run, you run; when it says to pass a short ball, you pass a short ball. Let your body go, don’t go looking for it and I think I’m at my best when I pass quickly and when the obvious comes I do it.”
I got into knowing what I need to do for this team very quickly. It’s a very simple role for me – just to clear the ball as quick as I could and anything else I could do was a bonus.’ AARON SMITH