Dobson taking leaf out of Kiwi book
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Western Province coach John Dobson plans to emulate the New Zealand Super Rugby teams' breakdown approach as one of many new coaching strategies.
Dobson, addressing the media at the team's training base in Cape Town, highlighted the breakdown as a key area of concern for not only Western Province but for South Africa as a whole.
He labelled rucking as the "biggest thing to work on", adding that four of the five worst rucking teams in Super Rugby were from South Africa.
According to Dobson, Australian and New Zealand teams have two different approaches to the breakdown.
"There are two different philosophies – the New Zealanders blast it right open and the Australian way is to go park on it [the ruck]," said Dobson.
"New Zealand sides take everything around the ball away and get two metres past the ball so you cant fold on defence.
"Sometimes it is incredible, they tackle the tackler by hitting them from the side – the Chiefs were almost illegal with it."
Analysing the Australian approach to rucking Dobson said: "Their way is to go park on the breakdown. The Brumbies, for example, just stop on the breakdown. They are really low and their technique is really good, but it's slow ball."
The Western Province mentor stated that they will be adopting a New Zealand approach.
"We want to go the way of opening up the breakdown by blasting through it."
Looking statistically deeper into rucks Dobson crunched some numbers on South African breakdowns in Super Rugby and New Zealand breakdowns.
"The Hurricanes are averaging about two cleaners per breakdown and two second rucks. In South Africa we have three cleaners and three second rucks – that has an impact on your attack."
Dobson also noted the average number of rucks per game, saying SA teams don't work hard enough on their breakdown technique – when it is such an enormous feature of the game.
"We [South African teams] are taking the ball into 150 breakdowns and our training doesn't reflect that and it is reflecting how we play. We [the Stormers] got beaten by the Brumbies badly at the breakdown."
"The speed of the breakdown is so much faster with the New Zealand teams than what we [SA teams] are getting. They work so much more on it at training," explained Dobson.
It is one thing identifying the problem, but rectifying it is the issue.
Dobson believes it's a combination of technical training and establishing a clear policy on what to do come ruck time.
"It's a technical issue, our guys spirits are willing and you never going to say Eben Etzebeth doesn't want to clean a breakdown, but we haven't implemented a clear policy whether to stop on it or blast through it and we haven't practiced it enough or been technical enough about it."
"We can go on forever about not scoring tries or evolving our attack but without quick front-foot ball it's never going to happen so we need to work on it.
"Super Rugby is long and tiring and people start cutting breakdown work, but the Currie Cup gives us an opportunity to create a breakdown culture.
"We built a great scrum culture here and one of my focuses here is going to be the breakdown culture.
Of course while breakdown training is paramount to the game, having the right players to do the work is also crucial. The Stormers have lacked an out-and-out fetcher over the past few seasons but Dobson believes it is not necessarily imperative to have a Heinrich Brussow or David Pocock kind of player.
"If your breakdown is right I don't feel that position is as essential as we might think," he explained.
"Having said that there are two guys we can look at – Rynhardt Elstadt at No.6, but he is not going to do a David Pocock job, but he will still slow their ball down because of his strength and physicality.
"Then there is Josh Katzen who was captain of the Under-21 side. He is the classic stealer, very good at the breakdown but he has been out for some time with injury so he will take a while to come through.
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