Canes turn to drones to get edge

Officially, Dan Cron is the Hurricanes’ scrum coach. It’s just that, to do his job as well as he wants to, Cron’s had to become the Super Rugby champions’ drone operator as well.

Cron’s been flying the device for two weeks now (crashing twice), as the team look to add a bird’s eye view of training to complement the static cameras stationed side and end-on.

In time he hopes to add a ‘‘follow me’’ drone to the mix that, with the aid of GPS, will go everywhere a player such as Beauden Barrett goes, without the aid of a pilot.

Initially sourced to provide footage of scrums, mauls and lineouts, the drone now shoots every minute of the team’s practice sessions, proving particularly useful to backs coach Jason Holland. But it’s the footage of scrums that’s keeping Cron most enthused.

‘‘We have a saying: we don’t want to see any grass. So when the boys bind up and we hit, we want to be all nice and tight with no gaps,’’ Cron said.

‘‘The biggest issue with scrums at the moment is that tightheads can actually do a lot of damage now and looseheads will swing their arse out and, watching it live or from the side, you can’t actually see that.

‘‘Now you can see exactly which angle they’re pushing on and you can see where the weak spots are and you can literally see grass pointing through gaps, where before we were guessing. It’s awesome.’’ Wellington’s not renowned for its calm weather. That means Cron has to exercise some commonsense, otherwise the drone would ‘‘end up in Nelson.’

The Hurricanes’ analyst, Jason Ross, then edits the footage from the three cameras and it’s sent to the players’ iPads and MacBooks, enabling them to watch training when they get home. That’s in addition to the stuff the players are shown during the day by Cron and company.

‘‘We’ve got a meeting today for example and we’re showing six clips out of [a stockpile of] about 150,’’ he said.

It’s not compulsory for the players to watch footage in their own time. But it’s soon apparent if they don’t.

‘‘So lineouts, which Watty [Richard Watt] runs, are a good example. On a Monday we work out the calls, Monday night they go to the players’ iPads and Tuesday they turn up and can’t get anything wrong. We log on and see who’s looked at it for how long and catch a few boys out sometimes,’’ said Cron.

Gameplan tweaks, new backline moves; they all make their way onto the players’ electronic devices and all have to become second nature. The same goes for match footage, with the days of waiting until Monday to review a performance long gone.

‘‘Some players, the last thing they want to do after a game is watch it again. Other boys are actually in the shed on the iPad straight away,’’ Cron said.

‘‘We don’t care what they do, as long as they learn it.’’