Rugby: Bulked-up, faster and stronger
Across New Zealand gyms are reverberating with the clash of dumbbells that have never been so heavy. Stop watches are flashing times that few ever thought possible. And scales are recording figures that are just downright scary.
No wonder that All Black coach Graham Henry is quietly excited. He knows the three-month conditioning window afforded 22 hand-picked test stars has opened new ways for his team to play.
When his side assembles in early June to play France, he will have charge of what will unquestionably be the biggest, fastest, fittest All Black team ever assembled.
The All Blacks of 2007 will bear virtually no physical resemblance to the All Blacks of 1987 who secured New Zealand's only World Cup success. In fact, the All Blacks of 2007 will look radically different from the All Blacks of 2006 so dramatic have been the physical advances made by the "protected 22" in the last six weeks.
Jason Eaton has packed on 8kg. Mils Muliaina is five kilos heavier than he was in December. The seams of Keven Mealamu's shirts appear to be having a hard time holding back the advancing mass of muscle and Ali Williams, once a sapling, looks more an oak tree.
Everywhere are bulked-up, fuel-injected All Blacks waiting to be released on unsuspecting adversaries.
The rest of the world should be concerned. The conditioning programme still has six weeks to run and that, according to former All Black fitness coach Jim Blair, is a very long time in the life of an elite athlete.
"If you took a guy off the street and put him through the same programme as the All Blacks, he would make some improvements. But he would be starting from a much lower base so he would maybe go from being at 40 per cent of his athletic potential to say 60 per cent.
"But with the All Blacks, who already have been doing a lot of training, they are probably starting at 80 per cent.
What they are doing in this conditioning programme is jumping into the final 20 per cent so the idea is that they are achieving their full potential.
"There are some physiques that no matter how much training you do, will always be skinny. But with the types of physiques the players have, they can put on muscle quite easily and they will react to strength training."
Maybe the rest of the rugby world should be more than just concerned. Maybe they should be afraid. Very afraid. The All Blacks of 2006 were good enough to rack up nearly a half century against France in Lyon.
By September this year the potential of Henry's All Blacks will be even greater. Joe Rokocoko and Sitiveni Sivivatu are reputedly faster. Most of the big units in the forwards are stronger and almost every man has the ability to operate on full capacity for longer.
The athletic base is in place for the All Blacks to make a quantum leap in terms of the pace and physicality with which they play the game.
"A lot of the guys are producing personal bests in terms of the weights they are lifting," says Henry. "The idea is that we will have bigger, faster, stronger athletes. The guys will be able to run faster and run quicker for longer and that gives us some major positives on the field.
'We are trying to produce explosive athletes and they form the foundation stone of what we are trying to do. We will try and do the things we are already doing, but hopefully, do them better. We will be doing all those things with bigger, faster athletes.
"But we are always learning and there might be opportunity for us to tweak our game here and there."
Henry's a dark horse, capable of some radical thinking. The tactical variations on view this year could be more than just tweaking.
Last year the All Blacks frequently posted Ali Williams and Chris Jack on the flanks. Both men were there to create the option of the cross-field offensive kick. More often than not, though, they were used to carry the ball up the touchline where they were fiendishly difficult to bring down and adept at freeing their arms to get the pass out of contact.
This year, with so many mobile and skilled forwards, we can expect to see more ploys designed to leave bigger All Blacks running at smaller opposition backs.
And we can definitely expect to see more of what we saw in Lyon where the All Blacks pulled off rugby's version of Muhammad Ali's Rope a Dope.
Wave after wave of French attacks were smothered by a black wall until eventually the world's second-best side were outnumbered at the tackled ball and exposed to the All Blacks ruthless counter-attack.
As a consequence of the conditioning programme, the chances of the All Blacks getting to the breakdown first have increased. The chances of them winning the collisions at the tackled ball have increased and the chances are that in the final 10 minutes of any game it will be the All Black back row dictating the outcome.
No one stands a chance of defending turnover ball that is shipped quickly to Rokocoko, Muliaina and Sivivatu.
"The whole point of being fit is so that you can forget about it when you are playing," says Blair. "You don't want to be saying to yourself 'I won't run over there because I might not make it back again'. These guys will take enormous confidence out of being stronger and being able to run faster for longer.
"The other good thing about the conditioning group is that it will provide that little bit of a prod for the rest of the group.
"Apart from one or two guys, no one is certain of being picked and professional teams need that element of competition. Everyone will be looking over their shoulder and teams need that wee bit of fear.
"I think it will be a real eye-opener when these guys come back and play," Blair says.
Seems like the rugby might be more eye-popping than eye-opening.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/s...ectid=10425670
5:00AM Sunday February 25, 2007
By Gregor Paul
