You are are ahead of the rest in at least you DO try to teach them.

1) Make absolutely sure that they stay in their feet during the tackle. They must wrap and lift the heavy bag up off the ground.

2) The defender must stand behind the heavy bag, providing resistance all the way through the tackle. He must not just let it fall to the ground. Tackler must keep “Pounding his feet”. NO DIVING. Head UP

3) The reason that your tackling technique collapses in the game is that you are not teaching them “Breakdown”. We call this error “overpursuit”. To find out a detailed explanation of “Breakdown” Read the article on my site http://www.ironrugby.com

Teach any amatuer team the concept of explode acrsoss a 5 m distance and break down so that they are in the right position to hit – they become devastating.

Teach a womens team to actually tackle and they will be unbeatable.

4) Chopping

Start with this – they line in the Hitting position, Lordotiv arch, hands up high, head up. Feet wide – pounding. on the wistle they burst forward 5 meters and take up the hitting position again. Blow the whistle they go backwards 5 meters and take up the hitting position.

A fit team can’t keep this up for much more than a minute.

5) Great tackling will only be taught in Kit. Each set cost about R 2000 so its a bti expensive. Ideally each player needs his/her own set, but you can make do with about 10 sets.

6) Spend 5o% of you time on Defense. In the game we have the ball only half the time (sometimes less !)

Before you start thinking that we have too much common ground, read what I say about which shoulder you should use in the tackle!

Are you still coaching at Primrose ?

Cheers

You certainly kept that under your hat, Ollie.

Since when did you start coaching the Stormers?

I put the team through various tackling exercises, from the tackling bags to various 1 on 1 scenario’s forming the basis. What is starting to become very apparent is that I end up with 3 distinct results:

1. Everything goes well on the tackle bags, but with the 1-on-1 a number of players make the mistake of hitting with the wrong shoulder and end up with their head under the tackled player. I repeatedly explain the errors only to have it popping it’s head up a tackle or 2 later.

2. The 1-on-1 goes well, but as soon as they hit the field in a match their tehnique goes for a ball of the proverbial.

3. A very small percentage of the players tackle well throughout, and these players picked it up from the get go. Not much coaching required.

The point I am trying to make, is that teaching somebody to tackle correctly is an excercise in extremes, either the player is a natural or their is a long process ahead of you.

For a Super 14 coach, teaching somebody who is not a natural tackler to tackle has a fine balance of time management when you consider how much actually has to be covered by coaching in general.

Granted my experience lately has been with a womans team, but from my playing days it was not much different.

It sort of makes you think why Saffas feel they are a strong Rugby nation. These figures tell a whole different story.

Do we change our players to easily? How can we have so few most capped players…
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“Poor talent identification in the first place, KSA, followed up by a lack of investment (not necessarily money) in the chosen individuals in terms of building upon their skills and identifying and eradicating weaknesses.

Essentially we’ve cheapened the honour of representing your franchise.”

“Of the 100 Most Capped players in S12/14 only 16 are SA players and of those 16, 7 are in the last 10.

Ergo, of the 90 most capped S12/14 players only 9 (10%) are Saffas.”

I am conditioning bevok. Football is a game of contact and simply put, the strongest player with the best technique – wins. Even a game that requires you “outrunning” the opposition has to be done with forcing contact and forcing them to run to the breakdown. Avoid this and you loose.

Our coaches don’t lead from the front. What you want from a coach is someone who can mix it with you, not a “selector” who stands at a distance in his tracksuit and points fingers. You want to show a player how to tackle you can’t tell him, you have to hit him – “punch it in” so to speak. This means that the coaches themsleves should be up to it. How many of our Super 14 coaches can Squat 180Kgs or Bench 140? How the hell would they then know what to do about conditioning for contact?

Lets go to tackling – how many Super 14 coaches could actually show you how to tackle. Can you see Frans or Kobus going out and pancaking Wikus or De Wet? Well if you can’t show them, how the hell do you ever expect them to get it?

Conditioning is a start not an end. Case in point being England, best conditioned team in the world, yet their contact technique and lack of structure both in Offense and Defense leaves them unable to capitalise on this advantage.

I agree with Nick, tackling Low is more dangerous. Keep the Head up and take any impact on the forehead. Problems start when you get hit on the back of the head with your chin on your chest – ouch.

Equipment – when we go here, a vast chasm is going to open between us. I have played hundreds of games of Rugby and hundreds of Games of Gridiron. Gridiron equipment lifts the intensity of the cometition. Much less emphasis on cuts and grazes and more empahsis on hits and bangs.

I have watched Boxing and bare fisted Cage fighting. Boxing (with all their padding) is a much harder game. We would all be better off off we started to protect our players from silly avoidable injuries and let them focus on developing the athletic side of the sport.

The better conditioned athletes have the advantage and it sticks. Nonu will always beat Jean de Villies, Baxter will always beat Os. Richie MCCaw will alwasy beat Burger. Fix it or fail.

On individual coaching, Its a crazy number. Coaching at Primrose, whenever I took a player aside to show him specifics, he felt I was “picking on him”. Players here feel that coaching is criticism. – its ridiculous. One on one coachign is standard in Gridiron.

The way you fix the Cats or the Stormers is one on one. They each have their own problems. The answer is not to go out and a have a group koppestamp.

Cheers