Dork Lard wrote:
eldanielfire wrote:
Dork Lard wrote:
With a strong bench, could you not take that team and make it well drilled for the first time ever in this current era, and make them seriously competitive ? The cardio had not been a problem during the past 6 years, we never saw France break down physically and it wasn't fatigue but cluelessness that lost them all those games, and if the fitness isn't elite either the guys if anything when they do get tired, get tired because they're playing aimless one-off Rugby where other teams are focused and channel their efforts through the collective.
The players are coming in, every month there's a brand new face, and the U20 are full of interesting young talent, and at club level the French are doing well every year.
That's an out of date perception. Fitness isn't just about not being huffing towards the end of the match. Constantly playing rugby will ensure that. A really good fitness level means during the intense, high workrate sections of the match your brain isn't just focused on getting to the next ruck or waiting for a break in play, but that you are still able to think with clarity, absorb information on the game in front of you, process it and make the right decisions. Basically cluelessness at test level can be largely down to fitness.
Being "well drilled" might resolve some of it, having a series of responses to certain situations helps it, but it doesn't resolve it and doesn't help with dealing with unique situations, broken play, being in a unusual position, adapting to tactics and changes the opposition make as well as surprises. That by far has been a huge part of Eddie Jones success with Japan and England as well as having them well drilled among other things. England today aren't playing the bets ever Rugby I've seen from them, they are however playing some of the cleverest and hardest to beat rugby. They seem to be able to out adapt opponents even when their attack is not firing.
I know what you're saying man, but I assure you it really hasn't been a 'chief concern' let's say for France over 6 years. Cardio's not the best, but doesn't constitute an actual problem either. Again it's so much more linked to every player for himself playing heroball, one off individual initiative, than actual cardio issues. If you look at how they defended vs Scotland just that last game they looked more individual than collective, and when you're disorganized as a team you've got to make up for that by being virtually twice as active on both ends (def & off.).
I made a post about this in detail recently, so will just reiterate this part: France trained for 3 months straight before the '15 WC purely on physio and it SURELY wasn't fitness that explained not being competitive vs Ireland and NZ. I mean if you watch the xv de France over 6 yrs, cardio's not been the problem, or through your scope France have not looked clearly worse later in games than in the early stages.
Basically: Fitness isn't the best, but it's certainly far from being a chief problem; it's not like watching Italy as they break down physically, and murtherfore (what ?) the French clubs have at least made the Euro final every year, if not won it. Fr clubs have often run English or Celtic clubs right off the park, each season.
I guess like England you did the wrong of fitness training. A good analysis of where Lancaster went badly wrong with England;s fitness, despite focusin on it is here:
http://the1014.com/eddie-jones-england-fitness/Quote:
he fitness that Jones requires is entirely different to the fitness regime of the England squad in 2015. The fitness of England in 2015 was abysmal. After their World Cup training camp in Denver, they didn’t look sharp, fit or conditioned. They looked slow, lumbering and incredibly lethargic.
Their Chief Instructor was an ex Royal Marine. And as fit as the Royal Marines are, their training is geared much along the lines that my military training is. Carrying heavy loads over long distances at high speed. This was also combined with heavy weights and traditional strength training to hone their obvious size advantage.
Whilst this is a way to get very fit, which I can attest to. It doesn’t get you rugby fit.
They seemed to train for endurance, rather than intensity. The hours spent doing traditional lifting and gaining mass backfired. It slowed them down. When the games went to a higher tempo in the World Cup, we saw how they struggled, how they unraveled.
This wasn’t just mental fragility, it was confusion about how they wanted to play. As they grew more and more exhausted their decision making went downhill, and they panicked.
The All Blacks know that no team is fitter than them, this adds to their mental fortitude. They know they can go toe to toe with teams, keep in the hunt for 60 minutes, and then outstrip them in the last 20. If the game is already won in the first 60, even better.
The way they do this is by taking the game to another gear. This, in turn, demands a higher intensity form of fitness. A very highly focused cardiovascular and anaerobic fitness emphasis. This is something that Jones has remedied quickly.
Eddie Jones
To state how badly England were conditioned post-2015 you only had to listen to Jones in an interview given in 2017.
When asked how he rated England after the World Cup when he first got hold of them, he stated; “Very poor mate, very poor, I couldn’t believe it, you expect teams like England to be better than Japan and that wasn’t the case. They’d go 20 minutes and have to stop they were so exhausted”. This was in reaction to his training regimen. A regimen that is focused on highly intense, short sharp sessions with 20-second water breaks.
In the early days, they used to be up at 6am every morning for a long run to boost their aerobic capacity. Then they would run their intensive and anaerobic training with their game run-throughs.
May i also say that fitness training itself can be weirdly draining in individuals. I believe Joe Schmitt when it comes to fitness and S&C actually has individual plans for each player because they respond differently to it. Just increasing fitness regimes doesn't always work to make you fitter for the game. Some can leave you fit in the wrong way, some are so intensive your body is just drained and others work for some and not others.