Secret Player
Our f ormer pr o pr ovides a unique insight into the game
ALUN WYN JONES clearly cares about how many caps he has. Saying it’s all about the team and tidying up the pitch is all an image thing, but that’s what makes him a good rugby player and captain – he’s a driven individual who’s striving to be the best. That is inevitably rewarded and recognised.
Any player who joins an academy dreams of getting game time with the first team, or even just to train with them as much as you can. When you get in there properly, you then want as many minutes as possible.
Then it all comes down to stats. How many ball carries? Are you impressing with your tackling? How quickly can you get back to your feet? Everything is timed, it’s all done with you plugged into GPS like TheMatrix, and you’ll get live feedback at the end of every session. So you know exactly how much everybody’s running. You want to win every little battle and to be the most intensive worker.
Become a regular and with that comes status and all the other trimmings. That’s security for your family and protecting the mortgage but also, more importantly, a legacy. It’s really the ultimate for anybody: how many Test caps can you amass? Then you add on a win percentage. Richie McCaw has an almost 90% win ratio, which is freakish!
Test recognition is not dissimilar to all the trials and tribulations some well-off people go through to get an OBE or MBE after their name or even LLB as a lawyer. It shows credibility and is a stamp to quickly exhibit that you’re not some villager flailing around the pros.
The goalposts are being shifted because there are more Test matches each year than ever before. In the 1980s you had four or five Tests and that was your year. Get 30 or 40 caps back then and you would be a rock-star legend.
Now 100 is a barometer, if you’re half-decent. George North has reached that landmark by 28 and so 150 and upwards is not madness. Could we see players reach something bananas like
“At player level we have eyes on the record boards in the gym”
200 Test caps? The Centurion Club will be bursting with blokes soon enough.
Players are competitive as hell, so want to smash even the most mundane of records. I’m serious when I say guys will want to be the most hydrated when it comes to pee tests, as teams monitor general wellbeing. Then it’s conditioning. Who can deadlift the most or do the most chin-ups? Who has the best 40m sprint time? It’s the same for performance: we will agonise over who got through the most collisions in a game or the most lineout takes or how dominant you were in the scrum. Everything is marked.
Interestingly, so much of recruitment is down to the analysts now. In years gone by, it was fully down to a coach’s tastes. Today, an analyst has data from every single league across the world. They present that to a coach and say, “This player is what we’re looking for. We agreed we need a tackle-breaker who can offload. This guy can do all this.”
Specialists can also suggest that you add other aspects to that game.
At player level we have our eyes on the record boards in the gym, with the current PBs for certain exercises, or the all-time Legends records.
There will also be minimum standards expected. We all want our data to be at a place coaches find hard to ignore.
Of course, running after that you can step on a few rakes and smack yourself in the face. Once, I went for the bench record at my club for my position – and I got it! – but I also tore my pectoral. I’ve seen guys take on squats or finish a leg session, go outside for a Yo-Yo test and tear muscles. Guys have developed disc issues being superheroes at the squat rack. There’s also the obsession of trying to chase other people or certain stats that don’t translate onto the pitch.
If you stick to what works for you and it helps the team, everybody wins.
It really comes down to some good communication from coaches. You don’t always need to chase the
‘wow!’ stats – just the ones that drive performance.