England, I suspect, are happy with the truth being blurred. I’m not suggesting anyone is telling lies. Oh no. Not even, in that elegant phrase, that they are being economical with the truth. It’s just that understandable assumptions are not being corrected.
Consider this. In fairly rapid succession Twickenham announced the arrival of a new strength and conditioning coach, Tom Tombleson, who was lured away from the New South Wales Waratahs shortly after they won the Super Rugby title.
Tombleson joined up with Stuart Lancaster for the recent training camp at Loughborough, after which Tom Wood was reported as saying the England players had been told they needed to increase their fitness levels if they wanted to beat the best on home soil next year. Then, this week we hear that England have booked themselves in for two weeks of high-altitude training before the World Cup and that Lancaster had arranged to take an expanded national squad of about 50 players, plus coaches and support staff, to Denver, otherwise known as the Mile High City.
Well, the inference was obvious. England were just back from a tour of New Zealand where they lost all three Tests because they weren’t fit enough. I don’t think so. I would suggest you have to take things one step further if you want the truth. It is not that England players are not physically fit – for a few years now, good relations between Twickenham, Team England and the clubs have seen to that. It is more a mental thing.
Go back to what Wood said after Loughborough, where the focus was on the difficulties in making the switch from club rugby to Tests and where the England players had been shown stats that suggested they could be playing eight minutes longer at international level. Not even Heineken Cup matches bridged the gap and, of course, the All Blacks coped better than anyone.
It was not that they were physically fitter. The difference was mental. At extremes of endurance, the All Blacks were better at taking the right decisions. And this is Lancaster’s problem. To learn how to cope, his players have to experience regularly the extremes they faced on tour and the game in the northern hemisphere isn’t built that way.
Whereas in New Zealand they want the ball in play for longer, the northern hemisphere is more set-piece orientated. Take the lineout. In the Premiership the line forms, the calls are made and the ball is thrown to its target. In New Zealand the lineout is “pre-called”. The forwards arrive and immediately get the ball. It may not sound much but it is the philosophy that underpins their game.
Consider Conrad Smith’s winning try at Eden Park. Aaron Cruden’s decision to tap a very kickable penalty with the scores level and the clock almost run out would have resulted in the tea cups flying around most coaching areas. Not the All Blacks because, as it turned out, Cruden was thinking more clearly under stress and that tipped the game.
So where does Lancaster go if he wants to beat the All Blacks in a year’s time? The answer has to be in-house.
New Zealand are lucky because their union are the paymasters and they call the tune. I remember at the start of the runup to 2011, Wayne Smith saying that he and his boss, the All Blacks head coach, Graham Henry, called all the Super Rugby teams, the coaches, and the referees together and told them how they would play to help the All Black cause at their “home” World Cup. Lancaster can’t do that. He can’t tell Leicester to ditch a style that has won them all that silverware.
Probably the best he can expect in the northern hemisphere is that the latter stages of European and some of the Six Nations games take his players to those levels. Wood said that the France game at the start of last season’s Six Nations had 46 minutes of ball in play time, the highest he had known. However, other than that the answer has to be in‑house and this, I suspect, is one of the reasons behind England’s mile high fortnight.
Forget the lasting effects of training at altitude. A fortnight in Denver isn’t long enough to make a difference other than to avoid the boredom – the stir craziness – that comes with the endless periods in camp that are part of World Cups.
However, training at altitude does test endurance. If it takes 70 minutes at Pennyhill Park before the minds of players start to play tricks, then the same thing can probably be achieved in half that time if you are a mile high. Do that for 14 days and you are getting somewhere.
Again, listen to Wood talking about New Zealand. “It is not so much about fitness as mental sharpness, about smelling blood and putting the throttle down. The All Blacks do that better than anyone else. When they have got you, they have really got you. It is a mental thing.”
Quite.
