Had a chance to get off the desk today (yes, my usual spot is in the newsroom) to check out Canada practice at the Burnaby Lake Rugby Club today for a couple interviews (that story later this week), a press conference and some general this and that.
So, in no particular order:
– Canada looks set to change up most of the lineup from Saturday’s dull 20-6 loss to Japan in San Jose. From the lineup that was getting the bulk of the work in training, only DTH van der Merwe, Tyler Ardron, Richard Thorpe and Hubert Buydens look to have retained their place. Forwards getting starts look likely to be Aaron Carpenter, Djustice Sears-Duru, Evan Olmstead and Callum Morrison. Sevens stars Phil Mack, Nathan Hirayama, Harry Jones (at fullback) and Conor Trainor get their first starts of the summer, as do Phil Mackenzie on the wing and Nick Blevins at inside centre.
– Jeff Hassler, who started last weekend but who may only feature on the bench vs. Tonga, has grown quite the mane. He said he’s gotten more heat about his long hair from his mother, not so much his dad. How much longer will he go? We’ll see, he said.
DTH van der Merwe and his Canadian teammates had some moments, but couldn’t find the final touch for a try vs. Japan (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
– A lot of the talk from players and coach Kieran Crowley in the first two-plus weeks of the summer campaign has been about a “Canadian style.” Getting a long period with his players is “great, you get to do some real coaching,” he commented during the press conference after practice. Crowley said he and his staff had looked a lot at the patterns the coaching staff has tried to instill in players the past two years and he felt they’d landed on an approach that would be possible to put into place before the team kicks off vs. Ireland on September 19. Playing a style with an element of risk remains in his philosophy, he said.
“I don’t believe you can win games if you don’t have an element of risk in it,” he responded. “Canada probably had a reputation a fair few years ago of a ten-man team – or a nine-man team – then rugby went professional and suddenly we weren’t as big as everyone else. I think we got left behind a little bit. Then we went probably too far the other way in some respects; we tried to run the ball a fair bit, we’ve brought it back not to a bit more of a ‘Canadian way’ of playing and hopefully over the next three or four games and then going into the world cup, we can get that Canadian way out there, which is a combination of both ways, really.”
That sounds a lot like “look for more kicking.” It’s clear Crowley values the strength of his outside backs too much to deprive them of ball, like you would in an old-school kicking-heavy approach – that’s 10-man rugby, which Canada mostly made its oats from until sometime about 10 years ago – but the modern game has also seen a resurgence in kicking from open play, as teams look to gain territorial advantage and force penalties and turnovers from downfield pressure.
It may hurt our eyes and our hearts, but the truth is, teams that kick more have a higher tendency to win. In the modern age of energy-sapping, space-clogging defence, as The Guardian’s Sean Ingle put it: territory matters. Smart kicking, to push play away from your line and to force the other team closer to theirs is a simple calculus.
– The absences of players like Jake Ilnicki, Jebb Sinclair, Jamie Cudmore and Nanyak Dala mean there’s a chance for players on the edge of the squad like Olmstead, Sears-Duru, Morrison, Thyssen de Goede and Kyle Gilmour to make their mark. Crowley has until the end of August to declare his squad of 31. Much of his squad seems obvious already, so the final spots are at a premium. We’ll have another post on that later. The head coach acknowledged a major lesson from 2011 was the need for squad depth. “I think we were the team that had the least changes,” Crowley said. “The impact in starting our same group all the time probably told in the last game. Emotionally we were buggered as well.”
“We need to manage our players a little bit differently,” he said. “Something else we have to build on is the players have to go there and enjoy it, they have to embrace the World Cup.”
The last game in 2011 was against New Zealand. Canada had drawn with Japan 23-23 in the previous game, which wasn’t ideal but still had them positioned to finish third in the group, securing automatic qualification for 2015. All they needed to confirm their spot was for France to defeat Tonga. In one of the great all-time Rugby World Cup upsets, Tonga pulled the reversal, playing stout defence and defeating France 19-14. Tonga finished third and Canada was set for fourth. The Tongan upset shattered his group, Crowley suggested.
– Building the game plan is everything at this point. CP’s Josh Clipperton asked if assembling a game plan, given that players come from disparate backgrounds, takes a piece-meal approach or getting to the whole package right away:
“You’ve got to chuck it all in at once and then, as Tyler (Ardron) said, you’ve got to play a game,” Crowley said. “Japan were in camp for 108 days before the game and it showed.
“We dropped a lot of balls.”
– Penalties are also a concern, he acknowledged. One can look at the losses to Romania in each of the past two November tours as well as last Saturday against Japan to see how Canadian carelessness has cost games.
Ayumu Goromaru was again deadly with the boot vs. Canada. Canada must cut down on penalties, their coach said. (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
“We lost the bloody game,” he said of the penalty problem last weekend. “It won’t just iron itself out. We’ve got to pay attention to it.
“Giving away 15 penalties in a game, that’s not good enough. They only scored one try but they kicked five penalties. YOu can’t afford to do that at international. Going into the World Cup, we’re facing four teams that are kicking 90 per cent of their goals. You’ve got get a lot more accurate in that area.”
– Tonga captain Nili Latu and coach Mana Otai also took questions about their team’s preparations. In late June, Otai said some of his players were under pressure from their clubs (big finger pointed at France) to make themselves unavailable for national team selection. It’s an on-going frustration for the Pacific Islands sides, as players, earning good salaries abroad that they wouldn’t dream of at home, are put under pressure to ‘retire’ from international duty. It makes for a challenging situation for a team that rarely gets to spend much time together.
Tonga coach Mana Otai, who faces many challenges in selecting the best lineup possible (Photosport/Radio NZ)
“Like Canada, we don’t have that many test matches and given our players come from all over the globe, having a build-up like the Pacific Nations Cup is vital,” Otai said. “Every six months we come together, all with different styles and plays. We’ve got to de-learn some of them and put in what we want them to do.”
What’s the Tongan brand of rugby?
Tonga captain Nili Latu at a 2013 press conference (Getty Images)
“We’re from the Friendly Islands,” Latu said with a wink. “We bring a lot of smiles and a lot of passion into rugby. That’s what we’re trying to sell.”
“It’s a good question,” Otai said. “We often ask ourselves, what is our point of strength? I’d like to think that’s where we should always start from. I like to think we’ve got the physicality – that’s always been our point of strength.
“There’s our aggression and belief as well. There’s also the struggles that we grow up with. There’s the passion. You talk about the logistics, the finances, it all pulls us together. In knowing how much struggles we have and knowing how much this team means to our country.”
“It’s a constant reminder that in life, you’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got.”
On the need for better discipline, especially in reference to Otai’s accusations of referee racism after Tonga lost to Canada in 2013, a game which featured two yellow cards to Tonga and a sending off in the first half for prop Eddie Aholelei, the Tongan coach was honest:
“Of course. I was in the centre of that. I think it was what they call ‘lost in translation.’ My word was interpreted differently. Coming to your question – of course, every coach wants consistency in all aspects of the game. I think our physicality and our emotions and the passion which I spoke about before, I think it’s about controlling that and using that for positive effect,” he said. “We do tend to let our emotions get the better of us but they opportunities for us. It might be a weakness for some but should we improve that we’ll become better players.”
Tonga lost to Fiji last weekend in Suva 30 – 22.
– Ticket sales have been sluggish for Friday night’s game. With the Lions also playing at BC Place, you wonder if there’s some spillover effect, though I tend to believe there’s little crossover between the two fan bases. There are lots of tickets available for Wednesday’s triple-header at BMO Field as well. It’s a strange thing, you’d think after the sevens success of the Pan Ams and the overall momentum of the Rugby Canada program, you’d think there’d be more buzz. Rugby Canada is doing plenty of
