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Podslam 77: What’s In A Number? with Andrew Blades

Steve Timms September 4, 2012 23

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I’m joined by Scott Allen for a great chat with World Cup-winning Wallaby tighthead and current Wallabies forwards coach Andrew Blades for a chat about the national team.

We’re then joined by Matt Rowley to discuss the team for the Australia versus South Africa TRC Test in Perth this weekend.

We also unveil the winner of our competition to give away a pair of PLATINUM tickets to the Perth Test. Congratulation to GaffaCHinO from the Perth Bayswater Club in Perth — enjoy the Test.

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POSTED IN » 3rdtier, All Blacks, Argentina, Podcast, Rugby, South Africa, WA Premier Grade, Wallabies
About the author: Steve Timms View all posts by
Steve Timms, He likes watching the odd game of Rugby, occasionally writes about it.. Proud member of the original Mudchooks.


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Discussion

  • james

    Scott Allen for a job with the Wallabies.

  • Jimbojones

    Great interview guys. Appreciate you pursuing answers to tough questions. Would make Kerry O’Brien proud. Some revealing and scary insights into the wallaby game plan and forward play. The strategy regarding the line outs is very concerning and a weakness or opportunity for improvement that does not seem to be acknowledged by the wallaby coaching staff. Blades’ responses did not instill me with much confidence in their strategies.

  • Tim B

    Great to hear from Blades and get a very open look in to what the thinking is in the wallaby coaching staff. Some answers cause concern though like “we decided as a team decided to adopt that tactic”. Does that mean we agreed as a team that we had defensive weaknesses in the back line so we couldn’t trust the guys who were there or just that Robbie told us to do it so we had to?

  • bludge

    was it just me or did blades come across as completely unsure of what he was doing and with no conviction in his work? god knows how many times he said um. isnt this the guy that thinks woodcock is rubbish? he sounds like he’d be scared to coach his sons high school team

    • http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/ Matt Rowley

      To be fair we did (unintentionally) sideswipe him a bit with our pretty drastically different stats (which Scott has since double checked)

      • Scott Allen

        We sent the question (which includes the stats) in advance to the ARU as required.

        They didn’t pass the question on to him so if there was any sideswipe it came from the ARU, not us.

        • http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/ Matt Rowley

          OK OK!!

          (but he didn’t really have that much time…)

        • bludge

          the questions were great. the fact that he was squirming and unsure…. not so great. he should at least be so sure about what he’s doing that he can talk firmly to those points, right? thought you guys did well.

  • gaffachino

    thanks for the tickets boys!

  • ooaahh

    I agree Blades came across incompetent. Great questions Scott. Timmsy almost jumped in about 5 times, glad he gave you the room to ask them. Good to see the wallabies coaches contributing also. God I hope we win this week.

  • Pedro

    I can’t understand how someone whose job it is to run the set pieces wouldn’t remember how we went in the last couple of tests. I mean, why wouldn’t they be reviewing at least those parts of the match until they were all over what happened.

    Great interview guys.

  • Kiap

    He was saying he didn’t know how effective their tactic was of removing a forward from the lineout to defend in the backline. Well, how about finding out? This whole side is playing dumb and is being coached dumb. Timani 6 inches taller than Messam and never used. Australian rugby used to be smart rugby. No more.

  • Jets

    I thought it was a really good interview. I think Blades has to be commended for ageeing to come on and talk about what is happening inside the camp.
    I have to agree with most people though that his answers to the questions in regards to the lineouts were puzzling. How could he fall back on the stats that he was given even after watching the game again. Surely if you are coaching and have a stat of we turned their ball over twice at the lineout you would want to watch the game to identify what the team did well so you could repeat it. He must have not thought it was that important.
    In my personal opinion Blades is a good scrum coach. It is obviously an are of the game he has thought long and hard about and after playing in the front row has a great understanding of.
    He doesn’t seem to understand the intricacies of the lineout and also seems to have some deficiencies in terms of team tactics.
    The statement he made about playing an extra player in the backline was odd to. He asks the question in regards to this working or not as though he doesn’t know the answer. I haven’t watched a replay of the game but I can tell you emphatically that it didn’t.
    Blades seems like he would be a great person to have in his previous role as Academy scrum coach. He can teach up and coming players all of the skills required to play in the front row and help them progress to being the best scrummages they can be. He seems, like all of the Australian coaching staff at the moment, to be tactically deficient. To be successful at international level you have to make the right tactical choices and I think it is evident to most people that this isn’t happening with the Wallabies at the moment.

    • Scott Allen

      Only having six players in a full lineout certainly makes it harder to defend against seven but there are still two pods of three players available to defend so I question whether this was the real reason the Wallabies chose not to contest so many lineouts.

      I’ve also checked the number of times this situation occurred where the Wallabies were one man short. In match one in 5 of 11 full All Black lineouts the Wallabies defended with only six men. However in match two where the Wallabies failed to contest 42 per cent of All Black lineouts outside the Wallabies 22 there was only one lineout where the Wallabies were short in numbers.

      • Old Weary

        Thanks to Blades to coming on. First ARU coaching staff, and god knows they have been (rightly/wrongly) dragged over coals on this site. Really hope we can get more.

        Scott – very well done for putting the tougher questions to him. Backing up your pieces with true questions is good to see.

      • bludge

        just listened to this again, and blades is saying he doesnt know how the stats work, whether its clean catch in the lineout etc that counts, and whatnot… wtf?

        does this mean that they just take the stats, numbers on a sheet, without even knowing what they mean, and say ooh look lineouts are good, lets work on scrums… really? do they not look at the tape at all? shouldnt he be specifically identifying HOW the lineouts do or dont work and working on the small details? fucking incredible

  • Mart

    Was it me or did this sound like the George Bush camp talking about 9/11 and the Iraq war. All positive things and oblivious to any blunders?
    Were we watching the same game?

  • Colonel Smouch

    Just to digress a little – is there any inside info on this potential 3rd Tier development or just a bit of hype?

    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/potential-1-million-rugby-union-revolution-led-by-balmain-rugby-club-channel-10-and-fox-sports/story-e6freuzi-1226466173702

  • RedsfanDan

    Does anyone else find it a little strange that the Wobs pay for a private company to provide them with stats but seem to either

    a) Clearly define the kind of stats they want collected i.e. Explicitly state what a lineout turnover is, what a dominant scrum is, what a missed tackle is etc. so that when the stats are handed over the coaching staff knows exactly what they’re looking at.

    b) verify the stats on their own. I didn’t need to watch the match again to know that we did NOT win 17%, or nearly 1/5, of the ABs lineouts and if someone had’ve told me that, I would’ve been very suspicious and gone back to look for myself.

    I hope this is not indicative of the rest of the coaching staff as, to me, it shows an unacceptable level of laziness and lack of attention to detail.

    I guess it goes to show that humans, in general, are not good at working with percentages and fractions.

    • RedsfanDan

      er there should be a ‘not’ in front of my two points…>_>

    • Scott Allen

      Verusco set their own parameters. Then when you get the data you can edit it or add your own measures to it.

      Until this year Verusco provided stats to national and super teams in NZ and AUS. This year NZ awarded the contract to Sportsdata but AUS is still using Verusco for Wallabies, Super Rugby, Shute Shield and Brisbane Premier.

      Agree with your concern that no-one thought, gee that doesn’t sound right, let’s check it out!

  • Tommy

    Great questions Scott. Agree that blades did not sound convincing At all. You would be guaranteed that link would have been clearer, more concise and more confident if you had asked him the same questions.

  • Scotty

    oh yeah, who doesn’t just bump into Michael f**king Lynagh down the street?!?!
    just a normal saturday morning down the park…

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