Shaun Edwards Article

pajunior

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/nov/23/england-rugby-leaks-shaun-edwards

I don't normally get annoyed at this sort of things but could Shaun Edwards be more smug. Wales didn't do anything exceptional at the world cup. They lost to South Africa, beat a below average Fiji team, beat a good Samoan team who had a 5 day turn around and then beat Ireland. None of that is ground-breaking stuff.

Everything I've heard coming out of Wales has been about how amazing their WC performance was, it really wasn't otherwise they would have beaten France.

Anyway useless rant over.

The first thing to question is how a side who less than six months earlier won the Six Nations and had come within a game of a Grand Slam could, at the World Cup, slip to the levels portrayed in Tuesday's leaked reports.

The first reaction is disbelief; that all three parties, players, clubs and the Rugby Football Union, have their vested interests and that they have been allowed to colour the evidence. That could be true, especially where players are allowed to give evidence with a guarantee of anonymity. My guess is that most courts would say the value of anyone's word depends to a large extent on who is giving it.

However, taken at face value and allowing for understandable selectivity in the reporting, the suggestion appears to be overwhelming; that long before England lost to France in the quarter-finals, they had lost the unity that any rugby squad has to have. Disputes between sections of the players and among members of the coaching staff over money and about the effectiveness of the backroom team are, if true, about as difficult a situation as it gets.

Above all other games, rugby depends on teamwork. If one of the 15 guys on the field is not pulling his weight, behaving like a cog in the machine, then the whole lot grinds to a halt. And you can extend that to include coaches, management, medics, analysts. There are bound to be disagreements in any party of 40-plus, but in a rugby squad, and particularly one going away for an extended period to a World Cup, there has to be a general feeling that you are all pulling together and going in the same direction.

I don't know what happened in the England camp because I wasn't there, and I don't intend second-guessing anyone. However, on the evidence being portrayed, it seems that the England situation was the mirror-opposite of what was going on with Wales. Whether that was luck or good management is for others to decide, but I like to think that the Welsh players were pointed in the right direction and then took over a lot of the driving themselves.

The Wales way is not the only way; there are a million ways of getting coaching wrong, just as there are a million ways of getting it right. Making it right for a specific team is the clever bit.

It's no great secret, because some of the key characters have written books about the last World Cup, but back in 2007 the England camp was split over training techniques – between the more traditional and the more game-orientated, shorter, sharper approach we had at Wasps. Reading the Times, there are clear suggestions that a similar lack of unanimity prevailed in New Zealand. Overlay a level of complaint that always arises when a team are not playing well, and you get a fertile breeding ground for many of the issues raised in the three reports.

Wales went the other way, but then again we as a coaching unit had been together a lot longer and had learned from the highs of the 2008 Grand Slam and the lows when we slipped off the standards we had set ourselves. However, through the high and lows, I would argue that Warren Gatland never lost sight of where he intended Wales to be by September 2011 or how we intended getting there.

We knew how we wanted to play and, learning from England's Clive Woodward in the run-up to 2003, Warren deliberately created a programme that regularly pitted us against South Africa, Australia and New Zealand so we knew what to expect from the best and how our game stacked up against them.

Then, this time borrowing from his time at Wasps, when we picked up on an idea that came from Ireland, Warren scheduled two intensive camps in Poland where cryotherapy recovery chambers set at minus 120C allowed the workload to be raised to quite brutal levels. Not only did that give a superb foundation to the squad's fitness levels, but just as important it did wonders for their collective mindset.

They bought into the work ethic. Not only bought into it but, led by some of the younger guys, ran with it, pulling more experienced guys along in their slipstream. Soon a non-drinking, or rather a non-binge-drinking culture developed (contrary to some stories, nobody objected to a glass of beer after a match) and Wales arrived in New Zealand very much a squad that was super fit and united in what we intended to do and how we intended doing it.

d-gal

pajunior wrote: »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/nov/23/england-rugby-leaks-shaun-edwards

I don't normally get annoyed at this sort of things but could Shaun Edwards be more smug. Wales didn't do anything exceptional at the world cup. They lost to South Africa, beat a below average Fiji team, beat a good Samoan team who had a 5 day turn around and then beat Ireland. None of that is ground-breaking stuff.

Everything I've heard coming out of Wales has been about how amazing their WC performance was, it really wasn't otherwise they would have beaten France.

Anyway useless rant over.

What? They were the second best team in the WC by a long long way and should have beaten a French team with 14 men.
The coaching was excellent and they brought on Davies, Priestland, North, Warburton, Faletau so well. If that was Ireland we would still be playing Ryan Jones, Stephen Jones, Martyn Williams and Tom Shanklin!

pickarooney

d-gal wrote: »

What? They were the second best team in the WC by a long long way

Yet they finished fourth.

Hippo

d-gal wrote: »

What? They were the second best team in the WC by a long long way and should have beaten a French team with 14 men.

That's precisely the point. If they really were that good then they would have beaten France.

conor1979

d-gal wrote: »

What? They were the second best team in the WC by a long long way (they finished fourth) and should have beaten a French team with 14 men.(eh, they didn't)
The coaching was excellent and they brought on Davies, Priestland, North, Warburton, Faletau so well. If that was Ireland we would still be playing Ryan Jones, Stephen Jones, Martyn Williams and Tom Shanklin!

You mean drop players that weren't on form? TOL and Lukie ring a bell?

d-gal

pickarooney wrote: »

Yet they finished fourth.

I think we all agree that they were better than the French and at the 3rd place play-off I thought they were just devastated and mentally drained

Hippo wrote: »

That's precisely the point. If they really were that good then they would have beaten France.

Think that is harsh, they played exceptional for a team that lost their captain and star player so early on in the match. The only fcuk up they made was bringing on Jones and he bottled it for a drop goal on more than 1 occasion.

conor1979 wrote: »

You mean drop players that weren't on form? TOL and Lukie ring a bell?

D'arcy, DOC, Earls (For Trimble) ??? We have all agreed in the past that Kidney has been terrible for this. Standing by some players even tho they wouldn't have played a decent match in months.


The main point I was making was that Wales did fantastic this year. They destroyed us in the QF. Before the World Cup we expected them not to make the QF and they put together a team that played very effective rugby. It has shone through into the club sides and it is a pity in Ireland it is not doing the same. (Instead it's Leinster/Ulster playing well and then being restricted Internationally)
Welsh rugby looks much brighter than Irish rugby at the moment yet when you look at the talent comparsions we are much better. We are optimistic but with the management set-up we have I don't think we will reach our full potential

leeroybrown

I don't really see any problem with Shaun Edwards' piece. He quite rightly points out that England got their preparation completely wrong and that the mentality of the group wasn't what was needed to succeed. He compares this to his Wales team who had a relatively successful tournament, played good rugby and (in my opinion) were unlucky not to make the final.

They picked a lot of young players who played well, the picked a young captain who apart from one bad tackle was great, they offloaded most of the traditional trouble makers, their preparation seems to have suited their squad. I think they can afford to be relatively happy and try to add that extra few percent to build on it.

Podge_irl

No one expected Wales not to qualify for the quarter-finals. People thought it would be tough but they should always be beating Samoa at this level. Ultimately, the only team of any note Wales defeated was ourselves

CatFromHue

Podge_irl wrote: »

No one expected Wales not to qualify for the quarter-finals. People thought it would be tough but they should always be beating Samoa at this level. Ultimately, the only team of any note Wales defeated was ourselves

I wasn't so sure they would to be honest. They'd been pants for the previous year. If the linesman hadn't made a balls up on a quick throw they'd have lost 3 games in the 6 Nations, they also only drew with Fiji last year too. Group D was a very tough group (the toughest in WC history maybe!) only made easier by Fiji being predictably unpredictable and rubbish.

Mister Dread

Second best? I'd have them behind all the teams they lost against and the winners. So that's SA, australia, France and new Zealand. 5th is about right. They did a job on us and thats about the height of it.

Webbs

Mister Dread wrote: »

Second best? I'd have them behind all the teams they lost against and the winners. So that's SA, australia, France and new Zealand. 5th is about right. They did a job on us and thats about the height of it.

The loss to SA was from a team that until then had little confidence having had a poor 6nations and no real performance of note for probably 12month or more. The performance gave them confidence to push on from there beating Samoa and Ireland teams they would have lost against a few months earlier.

The loss then to France was just one of those games as they were without 3 of their most influential players (Priestland, A Jones and Warburton) for the majority of that game, were down to 14 and still managed to outplay the French team and only through S Jones having a rabbit in headlights they would have been through to the final. The 3rd/4th game was and is the most pointless game to make a judgement from so will ignore that.

All the pundits pretty much agreed that Wales played the best rugby after NZ, they have brought through some great new talent and for Wales the future looks bright (though this may be yet another of their false dawns)

Ciaran-Irl

d-gal wrote: »

I think we all agree that they were better than the French and at the 3rd place play-off I thought they were just devastated and mentally drained

Since when are you a spokesperson for 'we all'? I don't think anything of the sort. Lets judge your status of 'shop steward for the masses' from the replies of support you get in this thread, shall we?

d-gal

Ciaran-Irl wrote: »

Since when are you a spokesperson for 'we all'? I don't think anything of the sort. Lets judge your status of 'shop steward for the masses' from the replies of support you get in this thread, shall we?

Jesus take it easy like :rolleyes: I was simply going by the discussion of the match thread of Wales vs France and majority thought Wales were the much better team. Plus pretty much every pundit said Wales deserved to be in the final.
Wales played magnificent rugby in the WC and were a joy to watch, future looks extremely bright for them

Podge_irl

Webbs wrote: »

The loss to SA was from a team that until then had little confidence having had a poor 6nations and no real performance of note for probably 12month or more. The performance gave them confidence to push on from there beating Samoa and Ireland teams they would have lost against a few months earlier.

Yet they still lost. I would rank our beating of Australia as better then anything Wales accomplished.

All the pundits pretty much agreed that Wales played the best rugby after NZ

France in the final played the best rugby of anyone after NZ (and potentially even ahead of NZ). I'm pretty convinced that Wales would have been beaten out the gate by NZ, but France put in a phenomenal performance. Either way, we'll never know because Wales lost to France. Just like they lost to South Africa and Australia.

leeroybrown

Podge_irl wrote: »

Yet they still lost. I would rank our beating of Australia as better then anything Wales accomplished.

It's tournament rugby. At the end of the day Wales beat us in the QF then lost to France in the SF. Personally, I'd rank both of those victories above us beating Australia. Wales did a number on us and France somehow hung on to win against 14 men despite a poor performance.

Podge_irl

leeroybrown wrote: »

It's tournament rugby. At the end of the day Wales beat us in the QF then lost to France in the SF. Personally, I'd rank both of those victories above us beating Australia. Wales did a number on us and France somehow hung on to win against 14 men despite a poor performance.

I largely agree. However, if we're talking pure results then Wales lost 3 games, and only beat Ireland as teams ranked above them. If we're talking performance then we were the only team to beat a SH nation. Either way, Wales most certainly don't come out anywhere near the "second best team" in the tournament.