It takes a lot of time to become masters of attack

05 April 2016 - 02:18 By Brendan Venter

The Super rugby season is now a third of the way through, and unsurprisingly, the Stormers and Sharks, who both enjoyed byes this past weekend, head their respective conferences. I'm not surprised by the coastal sides' success this season, because they are the two most conservative teams in South Africa - by a country mile.Despite talk of evolving their attack, with Robbie Fleck in particular following that line in press conferences, the fact of the matter is they employ a low-risk style of rugby, defend well and apply boot to ball with regularity.In terms of kicks from hand, the Stormers and Sharks have a combined tally of 262 kicks.If you are a Sharks or Stormers supporter and want to see a running brand of rugby, at the moment, you're not going to get it.The Bulls and Cheetahs are at the opposite end of the spectrum.Nollis Marais and Franco Smith have decided to keep the ball in hand, but their sides are struggling. The reality is that running the ball from your own in-goal area is not going to get you results. Show me a team that has been successful at employing a ball-in-hand approach in their first full year together in Super rugby and I'll list the names of countless others who have fallen short.It takes at least three years to develop and implement an effective attacking strategy. And every time there is a coaching change, the process starts all over again.To put it into context, Fleck is in his first season as a Super rugby head coach having been mentored by Rassie Erasmus and Allister Coetzee, while Gary Gold has reached his second season at the helm.The majority of supporters want to see their teams give the ball air, play with width and score tries. While the coastal sides have managed a combined tally of only 21 tries, Fleck and Gold's pragmatism is laudable. They are building a winning culture, respecting the scoreboard and working behind the scenes to sharpen their attack.Attacking flair is much like a vintage wine in that it improves over time.The Brumbies team of the late 1990s and early 2000s was perhaps the finest example of a well-rounded attack. Their backline included players such as George Gregan, Stephen Larkham, David Knox, Joe Roff, Rod Kafer and Andrew Walker. The Canberra-based side's attacking blueprint was so impressive that a number of teams tried to take a page out of the Brumbies' playbook.Former Springbok coach Harry Viljoen was so hellbent on ameliorating South Africa's attack that he convinced SA Rugby to recruit Australian Tim Lane as backline coach. Viljoen also famously instructed the players not to kick in his first Test match in charge.However, what Viljoen and many others failed to realise was that the Brumbies' brilliance was not in the playbook. Instead, it was about the playing personnel and the time that they had spent together. The aforementioned backline was a case in point of a group of players that worked together for an extended period of time, who had an innate understanding of each other's intentions on attack and, as a consequence, they ran beautiful lines and deft angles.One hopes a similar philosophy is being adopted here...

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