McCaw’s quick-fix for rugby
All Blacks great Richie McCaw would like to see a stop-clock govern scrums to stop the time wasting that blights rugby.
The double World Cup winning skipper has done a quick question and answer session with fans for World Rugby and was asked what rule change the governing body could implement to help the game.
‘‘One of the things I get a bit frustrated by is the way a scrum can eat up a lot of time in the game,’’ McCaw said.
‘‘If I was going to change something it would be to stop the clock when awarding a scrum and it starts again when the ball comes in. You’d get quite a bit more rugby.’’
As the All Blacks get set to operate under new coach Ian Foster, McCaw says he has no serious coaching ambitions at the top level.
‘‘I think I’d just get too frustrated,’’ he said. ‘‘As a player I could get out there and do something about it. But when you are a coach I think you have to have a different
And I am afraid the appointment of Taumaunu, in that context, looks like tokenism. Hey, let’s get a Maori woman from outside rugby to sit on the panel as well. She’ll tick all the other boxes. It would be interesting to know what percentage of time each voice was heard from during the discussion.
When he was appointed Foster said: ‘‘I’m extremely passionate about adding a new touch to it and to get some mana back on the field which we felt
way of looking at it. But I’d like to coach young kids one day.’’
Asked who the most inspiring and hard-working All Black he had played alongside was, McCaw didn’t hesitate to nominate his good friend Dan Carter.
‘‘The amount of work he used to put in to make sure he was right to play on Saturday meant everyone around him made sure they were doing their little bits.’’
In terms of his most respected opponent, McCaw opted for Wallabies flanker George Smith.
‘‘He was pretty tough,’’ McCaw said, adding that his favourite back row combination was playing alongside Kieran Read and Jerome Kaino.
we’ve lost a little.’’
Sorry, bro, but where’s the mana? Don’t make Sonny Bill laugh. If the coaching group of Foster, Brad Mooar, John Plumtree, Greg Feek and Scott McLeod is confirmed, then it’s more white bread. Plumtree has considerable overseas experience and is married to a South African, but the projected coaching group desperately lacks diversity in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and specialisation.
The opposite is true of the coaching group that turned South Africa from a shambles into World Cup winners. Rassie Erasmus served in the army with Jacques Nienaber who is a former physio. Matthew Proudfoot is a former Scotland international married to an international netballer. Mzwandile Stick is black,
35-years-old, and a former captain of the sevens team. Felix Jones is 32 and a former Ireland fullback who worked with Joe Schmidt.
It is clearly a more diverse group, something that was also true of England and Japan, two of the other success stories of the World Cup. (Four years earlier England had lacked diversity and failed miserably at their own World Cup).
South Africa also incorporated youth into its coaching group. It is one more perspective that Syed touches on in his book. Certain modern companies have brought in shadow boards of young people. Gucci was one such company and it grew 136 per cent from
2014-17. In the same period Prada diminished by 11.5 per cent.
So is it any wonder that many in the country are worried about the new Foster parent of the All Blacks. He has to defy his own history and he is promising to do it with a method that modern business and research has proved to be inferior. That’s a hell of a lot to put on the players, however great some of them are.
But we genuinely wish the new coach all the luck in the world, because he will need it.