Our former pro provides a unique insight into the game
ONLY IN
RUGBY
WORLD“You’re just so excited you get
sucked into the World Cup myth”
THE
SECRET
PLAYER
RECENTLY, I bumped into a guy I
used to play with who’s now part of the
national coaching set-up. He was always
that way inclined; loved his rugger.
Even during matches you could sense
his little brain analysing the flow of the
game and adapting his approach. In
stark contrast to those of us who stick
resolutely to the pure graft, ‘head down
and plenty chalk’ approach. Anyway,
stickler for social norms that I am, I
asked him how the family was,
what he was up to and how
work was going. By chance the
next day was the very start of
World Cup camp. Which of
course meant fitness testing.
Judging by the nick of the
guys playing Six Nations rugby
these days, and the intensity
they can sustain, I’m amazed
they still bother checking on
them, and I suggested to him
that the conclusion after these
first couple of days might be,
“Well done guys, you’re all still
ridiculously fit and incredibly
strong. As you were, now.”
Yes, I realise that fitness coaches need
a baseline, and that there’s always room
for improvement (“gains”, in today’s
parlance). But my old chum was feeling
similarly flippant, as he felt it would be,
“Okay, great stuff, you’re quite a bit
fitter than that other guy, but we’re still
ultimately going to pick him because
he’s just much better at rugby than you.”
There lies the problem with the
build-up to a World Cup. Most teams
will have at least 13 starters inked in,
yet at the start of camp there might be
45 players asked to destroy themselves
daily in the gym and on the paddock.The coaches’ job is to somehow
manufacture a situation where everyone
believes they have the same chance of
getting on the plane. Who’d be a coach,
eh? You’re like a cult leader, creating a
collective delusion that each player is
vital to the project. Yes, loosehead from
Sale whose surname I always forget, I
value you as much as I do Owen Farrell.
Weirdly though, it kind of works. As
players, you’re just so excited to beinvolved that you get sucked into the
myth that posting the best score in a
Yoyo or Mo Farah test might actually
advance your case for a squad place.
Conversely, no matter how established
you are, you could have 80 caps in the
bag, but you still get irrationally anxious
when you see a young pretender
meeting your squat PB for reps.
In normal Test windows, it’s a bit more
binary. You’re in; magic, you can get on
with preparing for the upcoming match.
It is only in the build-up to a World Cup
that you have so much daily contact
with your direct competition. That guywho was nailed-on 28th man in the Six
Nations can look a bit tasty when he’s
actually allowed to drop the hit shield
and, you know, touch the ball in a bit of
live scrimmage. Yes, I said scrimmage.
However, after the first phase of
muscle-building and, if your coach
is that way inclined, team-building
comes the cull. Much as you may have
come to admire the orienteering or
kayaking abilities of the newcomers,
normal order is resumed,
with the same old gnarled
warriors getting tuned up for
the upcoming campaign.
At this point comes a new
set of worries: avoiding the
undercook or overcook.
Whilst the southern
hemisphere teams have
spent the summer knocking
each other into shape in
competitive rugby (as
competitive as the Rugby
Championship gets), up here
we have to work out a way of
hitting the ground running in
some of the biggest games
of our careers. It’s never seemed fair.
We can all think of examples of
northern teams reaching a World Cup
looking bizarrely sluggish, despite
having had some of the world’s finest
sports-science minds honing their
preparation. We had one S&C guy who
was all about weights and sprinting, so
we never once ran a distance over
100m in our three months of
build-up. I would love to say
that he revolutionised rugby
fitness and we went on to
lift the Webb Ellis but, well...
Clearly we didn’t. n
PICGetty ImagesChucking it away
France’s camps in 2015 were
picturesque – but ineffectual