U23 NASC Marfu v Midwest Video Highlights

From June 15th's Midwest U23 v MARFU U23 match ... great game all around! Scroll down for more

Cool overhead view of a wheeling scrum ...



Montage of all the games tries & the phases that lead up to them ...

Women's NA4

In case you haven't heard the rumors, it's true - there WILL be a women's North America 4 competition, and right now team names are being discussed. One of the folks at USA Rugby thought it might be a great blogging topic.

The men's program, in keeping with the Eagles = birds of prey theme, went with "Hawks" and "Falcons". What do you guys think? Should the women use those same names? Anyone got any other fantastic, creative, appropriate idea? Any ideas that will stimulate energy and get people fired up? Let's see some comments!

A brief update post NASC

My mind is still a swirl after this weekend. The MARFU U-23s won the NASC this year, fighting through two incredibly hard games and mounting a somewhat miraculous late game comeback to do it. As I started to think about what to even blog, it occurs to me that I'm really just not ready for that data dump. All sorts of topics come to mind - the criticality of taking points when you can get them (both wins were by only two points), the importance of trusting your team leaders to do most of the actual leading, trusting depth, playing games, and finding the faith to do what appears
impossible. Oh, and while video is effective for statistics and tactics, it's really hard to get a feeling for a teams intensity or physicality. SoCal was INTENSE.

So - let's leave that for now, and in the interest of all the players involved in the championship match, I'll make some corrections to the various accounting that are out there (I may have reported some inaccuracies in my fog of excitement that also resulted in me losing everything that was in my pockets from jumping up and down so high).

The scoring went like this:

SoCal 5 (5-0)
SoCal 5 (10-0)
MARFU 3 (10-3)
SoCal 5 (15-3)
Socal 5 (20-3)
MARFU 5 (20-8)

HALFTIME SCORE - 20-8 Socal
SoCal 5 (25-8)
MARFU 5 (25-13)
MARFU 2 (25-15)
MARFU 5 (25-20)
MARFU 5 (25-25)
MARFU 2 (25-27)

SoCal's try scorers were Kelly Griffin (15) and Alexis (XL) Volen (10)
MARFU's try scorers were Kate Daley (5), Vanesha McGee (5), and Liz Inkellis (10)
MARFU's kicker was Emily Tunney, and accounted for 7 points (1 pk, 2 conversions).

So perhaps tommorrow, maybe I'll blog about something coach-like.

PS - I just received this from the U23 manager .... Congrats to all the players on the NZ list, you guys are going to have the time of your lives!

2007 NEW ZEALAND TOUR PARTICIPANTS:
Ahrendt, Kirsten
Benlian, Amber
Berg, Libby
Boone, Phoebe
Bydwell, Emilie
Daley, Kate
Drey, Kassie
Forestal, Sydney
Goodman-Levy, Dani
Griffin, Kelly
Hughes, Brea
Kohanski, Tess
Lear, Kristy
McBride, Tara
McCarthy, Schmarrah
McCormick, Kati
McCoy, Tiffany
McGee, Vanesha
Potter, Jillion
Reddick, Naima
Schlarb, Elaine
Smit, Melissa
Travers, Jess
Tseng, Jossy
Tunney, Emily
Turley, Shaina
Vargas, Krissy
Villa, Sheri
Wilson, Sarah

Alternates:
Ansel, Tonya
Black, Katy
Crapster-Pregont, Meg
Duggan, Jillian
Mathews, Kara
Volen, Alexis
Worman, Alison

Left vs Right (rugby, not politics)

I received an inquiry from a coach with a left-handed fly-half today. She is looking for information about how to minimize the impact this has on the player's game, specifically the kicking game.

The conventional wisdom, as least what I've been exposed to, is that it's not so important whether you are left or right dominant, as long as we are are coaching our players to do everything from both sides. In that perfect world we dream of, players should all be able to pass and kick equally well from both hands and both feet.

Now - I also know there's lots of really detailed information floating around out there about left footed vs right footed kickers, that there's some visual math we can do that goes something like this:

If a (left or right) footed kicker puts a ball down the (left or right) side of the pitch, the ball will spin (clockwise or counterclockwise) and will then bounce (in or out) of touch if it hits the ground just inside the line.

Request #1: Is there someone out there who can describe this in terms we can all understand?

I've also heard coaches talk (and have reserved my opinion) about how you should choose wings to play specifically right and left, based upon the idea of handedness that goes something like this:

Since the majority of players are right handed, it stands to reason that players will be more successful moving the ball all the way to the wing on the left side side of the pitch, since they will be more effective passing left (since we use the right hand to pass left). Assuming this is true it is more likely that you will get the overlap on the left and need a player to turn the corner. The right wing will more than likely engage in more contact (since the ball theoretically would move slower when the ball goes down the line on the right). So, when choosing wings, turn-the-corner speed = left wing, win-the-contact = right wing.

Yet another idea is that the wings play left and right based on their "footedness", rather than handedness, and that the whole left right thing maps the the kicking problem above.

As if that's not all of it, several coaches swear by the idea of playing one type of wing on the right because the blind side is more likely to be attacked on the right, vs the left.

Request #2 - Would someone in the know explain the left/right wing selection?

The left-right thing goes on - should we kick to the left side of the field because its harder to move the ball right after the receipt? Some coaches play left and right flanker rather than open and blind, and so on and so on and so on.

The original original request was about helping the left handed fly-half developing the right handed kicking and passing skills - any recommendations beyond the standard "always train both hands and feet?"

Thanks in advance, i hope to see some interesting comments!