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Rugby Comments

     Modern Rugby is an evolution of the old French medieval game "La Soule", where villagers where competing and fighting to carry a craft made "ball" from one church to the next village church, leaving along the pathway many injured bodies...It went into oblivion, until a certain William Webb Ellis picked up a football and ran with it on a very special Sunday in Rugby, England in 1823.
     The "esprit de clocher" is certainly not dead in the modern game, which kept its aspect of codified collective combat sport, making rugby a unique and paradoxical game, where players have to constantly readjust themselves tactically to fit the simple rule of scoring ahead with an opposition in front of them, yet being allowed to pass the ball only backwards!
     Rugby is seen by many sport educators as one of the most clever team sports, where players' skills, although important, are not everything. Game analysis, adaptation to one and opponent's strength and weaknesses, team spirit and cohesion, fitness, decision making, speed, power, agility, and tactical senses are paramount to the build up of a successful team.
     In 1908, rugby divided into two different games: League Rugby and Union Rugby, both keeping fundamental rules of play, but League rugby creation purposes being to satisfy the demand for professionalism as purist wished to keep Rugby as a purely amateur game. Rugby League became the first professional rugby game of the history and evolved with its own rules and regulations until today, where it is most represented in Australia, New Zealand and England.
     Rugby Union, remained an amateur game until 1995, where the need for professionalism was too obvious to be ignored any longer. Therefore, the International Rugby Board (IRB), the world ruling body of Rugby Union allowed the transition to professional rugby, under the control of local rugby governing bodies in respective countries.

     Rugby is certainly one of the most fascinating and interesting team sports to play, and a great human and cultural development for individuals and groups alike, no matter what age it is practiced.
     Rugby will bring physical abilities, fitness, mental strength, cohesion, coordination, communication, sense of responsibility, decision making, friendship, strategic and tactical skills to adult and children alike. Rugby is a fantastic development school for life, and rugby players are known for they great life abilities. Sport in general and rugby in particular has the magical power to transform us into better human beings, full of love, compassion, mental strength with the results and effects of our development through the game lasting our life time, and passed on to next generation as for an "added gene".
     We are encouraging responsible parents to get their kids into life development through their local Rugby Club. Human interaction, spiritual development, in an healthy sport environment will be invaluable assets for the grown up child, who through the simple, yet complex, game of rugby will develop as a strong, fit, responsible human being for the benefit of the community.

     Rugby is a contact, combat, collective game which was once described as "...a brat game played by gentlemen!..." where participants have to constantly solve the paradox of going ahead carrying the ball, yet being allowed to pass it to team mates only backwards, making this awkward situation one of the head breaker jigsaw puzzle to solve in a reduced space-time frame, while opposition players keep coming at the ball carrier to deprive him/her of the joy of scoring, and moreover to repossess the ball.
     For the ball carrier, being caught is a quasi certainty, therefore shifting the focus on how his/her team mates could organize their position to retain ball possession and keep trying scoring by deceiving a defensive opposition.
     Unlike American Football, which is an American evolution of Rugby League game, where the goal is to protect the ball carrier, and gain field, therefore progressing from set play to set play and trying to fulfill a contract of field gaining for scoring, much like rugby League, Rugby Union rules stipulate clearly that the ball must be kept alive at all time. The recycling of the ball after set plays when the ball was out of play or foul play was sanctioned, is of paramount importance and the modern game of rugby shifted considerably the point of focus from the ball carrier towards the support players, the offensive and defensive organizational and tactical abilities of teams, organized in coherent units.
     The best teams of the last half decade in our opinion, are the one who understood that simple concept, and are able to win the game without the ball first, defensively and offensively.

     Best teams today are the one who have the capacity to apply the fundamentals of the game at high speed, with an adaptation to the reduction of the space-time window the higher level the game is plaid. Although rules are complex somehow, the game by itself follow a very simple sequence of concepts, whose are the very fundamentals of the game of Rugby:
     Go forward, protect the ball in contact, support the team ball carrier in all circumstances, recycle clean ball going forward, gain possession with clear set pieces of play (kick offs, scrums and lineouts), retain or regain possession through tackles. These could be considered as the very fundamentals of the game, all other defensive or offensive motions having their purpose in one or more of these key points of the game. Some role models of this simple way of playing the modern game of rugby today are the New Zealand All Blacks, England and Australia National Teams.
     Modern rugby also put a strong emphasis on the defensive aspect of the game, and most teams adopted a variation of the League defensive system, which process through a defense line moving synchronically up and down the field, and where players have a specific role to play.
     This strong feature of modern game reinforced the basic concept of offensive defense, and winning the game without the ball. One of the key of today's rugby is certainly the breakdown point, where the tackle takes place on the ball carrier. Best teams are master in repossess the ball from the tackle in what is today the very key of success: quick turnover balls in the breakdown allowing the regaining team to counter attack and bringing quickly the opponent on the "back foot" when the team is not suddenly reorganized from offense to defense mode...Swift decision making in this process is key to success.
     Key players in the tackle zone are flankers, centres and wingers, from who quick turnover balls can be quickly recycled into scoring opportunities.

     Beating the new system of organized defense line has become a major concern in the game, and tactics to deceive organized defenses use decoy runners, blind side players supporting in open side, whereas years ago, blind side players were mainly considered as cover players if not used in attacking the blind side itself.
     Today's rugby is fast, demanding, intense, sharp and need extremely fit players fully trained in all aspects of the game: tackling, running, passing, clearing rucks, kicking, supporting, and also rounded up to what is increasingly becoming the key to pass defense systems: running angles to create space either for the running players or his/her team mates.

     It is our understanding that the key of success today remain in these fundamentals:

Go Forward
Gain and Maintain Possession through set pieces, rucks and mauls
Recycle the ball through as many phases necessary to desorganize the defense
Support Players in depth, if possible in "diamond shape" pattern
Use decoy runners and running angles to deceive defenses
Tackler stand up quick and wrestle the ball for quick turnover
Clean rucks efficiently in committing as few players as possible
Communicate throughout the entire game
Make proper decision through correct game analysis
Adapt, be flexible, and...
Have Fun!

     It is therefore the goal of the coaching staff to develop these fundamental qualities for individual players, and mould them smoothly into units and team training and game framework.
     Each player should be as technically complete as possible, ready to serve the team with the 100% understanding that a team will not success if made of 15 individuals playing together...
     A Team is a unit, which function smoothly without Ego, and where players should even not debate anymore as for what is their function and to who they belong. Only then, players will achieve a very unique and rarely experienced thing, which has been called "playing in the zone" by various coaches in different team sports...It is this incredible and rare moment when not 15 players play together a game of rugby for their team, but when the symbiosis is so perfect, that they are playing as one, when there is not the "thickness of a hair" between the individual and collective actions and decision making...It is like playing in a dream!...with no goals, only the unification and effort of all members of the team to communicate an instant and melted love and passion for the game, no matter what the result will be.
     Then all become possible, and such a team will be invincible. It is not training players to become robots, fitness monsters without a soul which will create a team. A team is patiently built upon sweat, failures, injuries, support, loss, success, pain, joy, commitment and love, with this imperceptible loss of individual egocentrism so negative to team development.
     To players, we say this: fitness and skills alone will not make you a Rugby Great, what will get you into the legend of the game over your exceptional skills and abilities for the game is love, commitment, compassion, and respect for anything within and surrounding the game. Also, never forget one thing: as it is the purpose of any game: Have Fun!...
     To coaches we say this: be as committed to team development as your players are, respect your athletes if you wish to be respected, and do what you wish your players to do: drop personal agenda, ego, and work together as an unit, like if there will never be a tomorrow.
     We are strong believers that successful team building is based on quality human interaction, among unified skilled individuals, accepting a common goal of self detachment for the good of the micro community, which constitutes the Team.
     Players are the actors, coaching staff are the facilitators through mainly the mental process of transforming 15 individual players into a solid unit called: a Team.

Safe Playing and Safe Coaching

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