by Paul Cook –
Getting interview time with one legend of the game is a pretty good day at the office for this part-time scribe, but a chat with two in the same afternoon is cause for minor hyperbole. That it happened to be off the back of a defeat for the team they are now affiliated with, making that actually the fifth defeat in a row for the team they are now affiliated with, was the only downside. But hey, when Toutai Kefu and Brad Thorn are in town, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, right?
Now forming two-thirds of the Queensland Country coaching ticket in this year’s NRC, with Kefu as head coach and Thorn joining last year’s overseeer Jason Gilmore as an assistant, they were at Concord Oval last Saturday to run the rule over their youthful charges as they took on the Western Sydney Rams. With both sides winless, it loomed as a potential battle to avoid the dreaded wooden spoon.
But not only was the seemingly evergreen Thorn there to continue his coaching apprenticeship ahead of a supporting role with the Reds in 2017, with a few injuries in their jumping ranks, he was also there in a playing capacity. Dusting off the boots once more to join the fray in the 67th minute, the former dual code international ended up completing a full quarter as the game continued for eight minutes of added time, before the home side snatched victory from the jaws of another defeat with a last-gasp penalty try to win 50-46.
Considering Country had led the contest 38-12 after 34 minutes, the defeat was a particularly bitter pill to swallow and for Thorn, a mixed bag of emotions. There was the dejection and frustration of letting a first victory slip through their hands, ameliorated to a certain degree by the addictive buzz of competitive sport coursing through his ultra-combative veins once again.
When I sat down with the great man in the sheds afterwards, a half-finished VB in his hand and the warm glow of a medicinal post-match shower still evident, he was suitably sanguine about the experience.
“Obviously, for the team I was disappointed,” he told me. “Both sides were fighting it out for their first win and I’m really proud of our guys. We’ve got a lot of young boys in the team and they just didn’t quite close out the game, and that’s a lesson. For me personally, I love being out there and I was quietly pleased with my body because there was a lot of scrummaging at the end, it was a real tussle. It ended up being about 20 minutes that I was out there with the overtime and I haven’t played in 15 months and I’m 42 in February, so I was just pleased to hang in there.
“I’m not worried about the contact, the only thing you worry about as you get older is your calves and your hammies because they age and you don’t want to get embarrassed by going out there and pulling a calf after two minutes, especially when you haven’t done any scrummaging or tackling. Apart from that, I was happy to play and I pretty much just went out there and got into it.”
“He went alright,” Kefu joked. “The boys have been looking forward to playing with him the last month or so. He brings a really good mental attitude and that’s something we could definitely use at the Reds, that fortitude and mentality that he has. Hopefully that’s something he can instil over the coming years. Around Ballymore he’s held in high regard and he’s a no-fuss guy. He loves simple things and he just goes about his job, he doesn’t like the fanfare. But I think it’s good that we can have him around, and he can appreciate that.”
On the subject of the game and the result however, the Bledisloe-winning Wallaby was less jovial. Given the manner in which his side’s game had played out, from 26pts up to a 4pt loss, he agreed with my assertion that it had to be Country’s most disappointing reversal so far.
“Yeah, I’d say so. I’m biased but if you look at the two teams – and I’ve watched all their games – I think we’re a 20pt better team than them, so to lose is very disappointing. It should never have come down to it being that close. We were up by two or three tries at half-time and should have put that game away. We were in the driving seat and we let ourselves down.
“I think it was a combination of a few things. We stopped doing stuff that we had been doing well, we lost our way mentality-wise and the referee didn’t help at crucial times either. I actually thought the ref was poor and the two touchies were poor, they missed some things too. Credit to the Rams, they slowed us down a bit and it was a stop-start game. But we’ve still got to look at ourselves and at what we can control, because it was definitely a game we should have won easily.”
Five games and five losses at an average of 50pts conceded per match, does not exactly make for pretty reading. But a look at some of the key indicators stats-wise, suggests this group is not that far away from turning the corner. They have made the most clean breaks in the competition, beaten more defenders and made the most metres. Evidence then of an evolving attacking approach that is perhaps only lacking a killer’s ruthlessness to put their opposition to the sword.
“You’ve got to stay positive and keep moving forward,” insists Kefu. “We’re doing some really good things but we need to address a few of the hiccups we’re having along the way, such as the lapses in concentration, which has been pretty evident in a lot of our games.
“We create opportunities and we’re trying to play a different way to what the boys have ever played before. We want to play up-tempo and with quick-phase ball and they enjoy that, it challenges them in terms of skills and fitness. But we just haven’t had that full 80 minutes of concentration yet.”
But if results haven’t exactly gone to plan, the grooming of a batch of potential next generation Queensland Reds is firmly on course, according to Thorn.
“The NRC, mate, I’m just really pleased Australia has done it,” he enthused. “You’ve got the Currie Cup, the Mitre 10 Cup and over in England, the Championship underneath the Premiership, and that’s also paid, so Australia needed this. For example, I’ve got a young lock there, Izack Rodda, who’s got a league background but he’s getting valuable experience in this comp. He’d hardly called the lineout before but he’s doing it all the time now and doing it well, and he’s become a senior forward even though he’s only 20 years old.
“We’ve got Taniela Tupou, another great talent who’s just turned 20, but he’s hopefully got 15 years in front of him, so he’s green, and another guy is Lukhan Tui, who is playing well and getting exposure with Brisbane City. I think in total, across the two sides, there’s something like 16 guys who are under 20. I know that if you look at the ladder, you see that we’ve lost five games but there’s some good stuff going on as far as guys playing footy and hopefully progressing.”
Being 19 or 20-years-old and trying to forge a pathway for yourself in professional rugby, then turning around to find Brad Thorn standing beside you ready to go into battle, must be comfort indeed. For the 2011 World Cup winner, the chance to impart some of his knowledge and experience onto younger team mates had become par for the course as his distinguished playing career finally draw to its professional conclusion. But his enthusiasm is evident when it comes to discussing the interaction with his young protégés.
“For the last 10-15 years I’ve always been an ‘older player’, so something I’ve always liked doing is mentoring,” he affirms. “This next level of coaching is more of that and I actually get paid to do it now! I love seeing all these guys having a go and I feel like there’s some good potential coming through. I really liked it when ‘Simmo’ [Rob Simmons] came back and played with ‘Rodders’ a few weeks ago (against the Rays), that’s really good when guys like that can come back. I can coach it, but that onfield stuff, those quiet little chats from an older player to a younger one are invaluable.”
He offers another example from his time out in the thick of the action against the Rams.
“Late in that second half we had a couple of throws go haywire so I talked to ‘Rodders’ and suggested we go for a throw that’s a guaranteed win, and then we get back into the game. Some of the backs were calling for some other trickier moves but I said ‘No, let’s get our hooker back in the game and let’s get our lineout functioning again’ and that’s a little lesson that a 20-year-old learns from. Next time there’s a bit of pressure on he might say ‘Ok, I’ll go to one of my stock calls that I know will get us guaranteed ball.’
“We had another guy do a no-arm tackle. Maybe you get away with at school or in under 20’s, but as you get higher and higher, it costs you, so there’s learnings to be taken there for next time. You’ve just got to do everything right. I’m just giving you a little window of the education that’s going on around these guys.”
But for all the goodwill towards his new role, and to the benefits of Australia’s third tier competition, he did sound out a warning to those hoping to see an automatic transition from NRC to Super Rugby and onto the Wallabies. As he sees it, in the desire to create a competition that would draw in the rugby diehards as well as targeting a potentially new and traditionally non-rugby audience, the tweaks to some of the laws have meant that entertainment has come at the sacrifice of some of the basic tenets of the sport.
We are in danger of growing a generation of excitement machines, but not necessarily match-winners.
“I thought we played some good footy out there but there were times where we just needed to be a bit more patient and build the phases,” says Thorn. “There were times where we got turnover ball too, and we should have put the ball down their end and been smarter, but in this competition, everyone just runs.
“For me, I would prefer the competition to be played under exactly the same conditions as test and Super Rugby, because that stuff doesn’t work at the next level. I’m not so worried about the entertainment, I want guys to be better players, and there are two key words – game sense. For example, we’ve moved the ball ok, and everyone’s up, so let’s put them down in their 22, let’s have a hard chase and worst case scenario, they have to kick it out and you take the lineout.
“To me it’s like cricket with the Twenty-20 and fifty over games, and Australia battle with test cricket all of a sudden because they’re trying to hit quick runs,” he continues. “Sometimes you’ve got to guts out a morning session, it’s not about scoring runs, it’s about hanging in there, and finally you start to get some momentum – that’s test cricket. With test rugby and Super Rugby, it may not look like it from the sideline, but there’s more to it than just ‘I’ve got the ball, let’s move to the space and run.’ There’s tactical kicking, box kicking and smart football, moving it wide to bring wingers up and then kicking down their channel.
“I’d just prefer the game to be black and white rugby because that’s what you’re prepping for. I played with Dan Carter, and the amount of times he got us out of trouble with a big boot into touch when we were deep inside our own 22, and he made sure it went out on their 40 to take the pressure off. He’s not just skip-passing and trying to get us to run 100 metres. When you look at the top teams in the world, you want that game awareness, those smarts about how you play the game. It’s not just ‘We’re running no matter what’.”
With two rounds to go, the NRC ladder has an unfamiliar look to it – and an uncomfortable one if you happen to live north of Tweed Heads. Two-time Premiers Brisbane City are currently languishing alongside their Country cousins in the bottom two with only win to show for their efforts thus far, and with the Reds going into 2017 off the back of another disappointing Super Rugby season, and with another head coach at the helm in Nick Stiles, that isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered. But for coach Kefu, performance most definitely outweighs results as he looks to provide Stiles with a batch of Super Rugby hopefuls.
“This year I thought they evened the squads up a bit and I think we’ve had our strongest squad at Country so far,” he offered. “It still hasn’t helped us in terms of results but in this competition, I think coaches have got to look at coaching to improve players, we shouldn’t always coach to get a result. I know at the top end of the sport, the bottom line is the result but I could give you a list of a handful of guys who I think have improved immensely in terms of catch and pass and in terms of fitness.
“I’m happy about that, that’s a really good goal for me and look, results come and go, as long as these boys improve individually and enjoy their footy, that’s all I can ask for, and that’s the concept of this competition. This is the development stage for a lot of these players and we’re falling behind in international standards as a rugby nation in terms of our basic skill levels. If they walk away 10 weeks after this and say ‘I’ve improved as a player’, that’s a win-win result for me.”