by Nigel Melville
Nigel Melville Direct

This is one of the more interesting parts of the Rugby World Cup for me, lots of games in rapid succession for a coach to compare different styles of play. I think I have written before about international teams reflecting the persona of their individual Countries, the French play one way, the English another, Tonga, Russia, Samoa, Fiji, they do have defined ways of playing, and they all have different ways of doing things.

At this World Cup, turning slow ball into fast ball is becoming interesting watching, all teams are running up against this problem from time to time, and there doesn't appear to be a common solution.

Lets go back a step - there are some big strong defenses out here, ball carriers are getting stopped on the gain line, the contest for the ball is often creating slow ball, and while the contest is going on vital seconds pass and the defense re-aligns for another collision - on the gain line.

To be honest, I hate all this organizing the 'pick and go' but if that's how the team can develop fast ball, great, but pick and go has to go forward - and rarely it does because there are a stack of defenders waiting on the side of the ruck. So we go from slow ball to slow ball and the whole game seems to stop in its tracks..

The there are those who are being a little more creative, New Zealand trusting their forward runners to catch a ball from their halfback and drive forward, where the defense is less cluttered, this has worked well at times, but running at a Japanese defense is a little different to the South Africans..will they therefore return to pick and go..interesting to watch.

Another alternative is to put the ball behind a decoy runner and get the ball wide, its risky though, a good back line will pick that up and the ball carrier gets caught behind the gain line - guess whose not happy about that - the forwards of course!!

I haven't got a solution, maybe someone reading this has, and that brings me back to the box kick, maybe that's another reason for more box kicks?

Someone emailed me asking to show them how to coaching the box kick, I may go find a ball and a camera and post something tomorrow if it stops raining!! Don't ask me to show you how to pick and go - its just not my thing!!
 

With an impressive resume as player, coach and administrator, Nigel David Melville took over as CEO and President of Rugby Operations of USA Rugby, the National Governing Body of the sport in America, in 2006.  In addition to his full time job promoting the sport in the U.S., Melville has launched his own blog, Nigel Melville Direct, to further the discussion and his passion for what it will take to make the U.S. a great rugby playing nation.

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