Clubs – Zurich Geezers & Zug (Combined with Baden Bandito’s)

 

Lakers Objectives:

 

            Attack – Drive effectively. Drive at speed, win the ruck in the dump, early half, ball with minimal time on the ground, runner receiving the ball on the advantage line. Drive for 5 and scoop and run on the last.

 

            Exception – If we receive the ball near their line with 5 or 6 touches up our sleeve we can only score off 2nd phase plays.

 

            Defence – Roll back in defence to set up to practice shutdown

 

            Strategy – Play 2 sets then rotate in or out one position.  

 

 

We as the Lakers proposed to all clubs for more game time. After our loss in Cologne, we came back and set ourselves objectives as individuals and as a club. One of those objectives was to improve on the base fundamentals of driving and having a go to play when we need to swing the momentum back. The other objectives was looking at our 2nd phase play and looking at a base shutdown defence structure and combinations.

 

In 31 degree heats, we were going to have to work hard. For the first time in the history of being involved in this club, I saw a mindset and attitude of putting the wins and losses and personal objectives aside, and focusing on the bigger picture. We started driving and to be honest it was hard to fault what we were doing. We were making yards, winning the rucks, ball off the ground, receiving on the advantage line, and the results showed. We weren’t scoring off the back ends of each set, but we could see there were gaps galore and we were turning the ball over on their line and making them work it out of their corner. 99% of any rugby codes points come off the back of possession and more importantly good field position. It was awesome to see the hard work and the results and the understanding of this part of the game. Its about growing and maturing as players and a club and I think this aspect we grew a lot. We will continue to factor in this part of the game plan, and focus on getting it running well before Frankfurt.

 

Our shutdown defence, worked really well I thought. We didn’t really get tested that much, but in the times we did I thought it worked well. I would like to see this against a bit more structured attack to really test us. I saw opportunities in our shutdown and they were:

1. More communication from everyone. Talk has to be non stop.

2. Better understanding of scenarios when you are a mid

3. Quicker when going up to make the touch

4. Other mid needs to know when to engage or to let his/her partner make both touches

5. More pointing on who you’ve got

6. Focus and communicate on who “You’ve got” and not focus on anyone’s player or job

7. Learn to just go and not hesitate and trust your inside player will be there.

Over all, as I said, we didn’t let any tries in because of a failed shutdown, but the above points need to be really tested and improved.

 

The last point was our second phase play. After watching on the weekend, I realised second phase play isn’t only an execution aspect of the game, but it’s a discipline. It’s a mindset of not settling and risking the last pass for the 40% chances!! We need to build a mindset that if we aren’t looking for the 99% chances then we aren’t working hard enough. But in saying this, it was good to see when the occasion came to perform a second phase, we could see what we did wrong. The next stage will be getting disciplined. Then it will be followed by location and where we start executing this, and the final stage of this will be the execution itself.

We will be targeting this at training up to September and using the friendly and swiss cup games as practice.

 

 

Summary

 

            Really happy with the drive and our shut was solid. The idea of this friendly game time is fantastic but its only as good when its played in good spirit but most importantly to have official refs there made all the difference. Well done guys, on achieving and moving forward on objectives. Massive thanks to the Geezers & Zug and a massive thank you to Knoxy and Matt for their time. It was a very successful day with plenty more to come. Lets keep rolling on in Baden this week.