Chiefs 2023
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Not only is Rona uncontracted with the Hamilton-based club, he isn’t even a fulltime injury replacement player, either. In fact, he’s on such a short-term gig that he’s not even guaranteed to be with the team through till the end of the season.
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@ARHS said in Best players in SR this week:
Chiefs had used Trask, Tiatia and Ioane at fullback, and Narawa once, and they were not up to scratch in 15. Stevenson was not used in the latter half of season. Lowe, Nankivell and Tupaea were used on the wing. ENS was horribly inconsistent - but is improved now. Narawa and Stevenson were always the best choices in my view, but were under-utilised. The complaints last year were valid. Having a consistent back three, with a suitably qualified fullback has brought out the best in all of them.
Narawa was outstanding in 2022, he clearly benefited from his consistent selection and backing from McMillan (his former BOP coach). That trust was already there and Narawa's growth obviously benefited from that existing relationship he had with him.
ENS, Narawa, Stevenson were all available last season, so there had to be a coaching element to it? Could they have required more consistently in selection (which McMillan has certainly brought in 2023) to build the player's confidence and develop cohesion through creating solid combinations - notice how the Hurricanes performances under Holland have been adversely impacted by the frequent chopping and changing of players throughout his four years, particularly 2021/2022.
Razor has frequently referenced Ben Darwin's cohesion-index as a key driver of his approach for team selections in past interviews, I'm pleased to see McMillan has been following the same approach in 2023.
GAINLINE analytics, the data analytics company he co-founded, has two metrics for measuring cohesion: Team Work Index (TWI) and the Key Cohesion Markers (KCM) that mark “the quantity and intensity of linkages within a team”. The higher the cohesion number is, the more likely the team is to be sustainably successful (their metrics are applied across sports and industries).
So far, so straightforward. Partnerships matter all over the field. A halfback pairing that plays with each other week-in, week-out at club level is likely to translate their relationship well into Test level. The same goes for a midfield pairing, or a front row.
But Darwin’s conclusions stretch considerably further. The response to a team playing badly, he suggests, is to play the same team next week. And the next week. And the week after that. He argues that, “the most important thing in the short term is to actually understand what you have in front of you: in chaos, great players can look terrible. As an organisation, in the long-term, the only way to win is through long-term stability.” Even if it means losing in the short-term, he adds. “The only way to win is maintain stability and lose, and that’s where teams get unstuck.”
Warming to his subject, he adds: “Teams who have settled get time to work on the extra stuff and often times the extra stuff gets regarded as causative and it’s actually not. For example, we looked at the study, “Tactile Communication, Cooperation and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA”, which assessed the impact of touching teammates on performance. Many teams have been trying to introduce touch into their practice with little to no impact.
“What is most likely taking place is not causative but correlative: those that trust each other, through shared experience will be comfortable to touch each other, but they will also know each other’s role and have a stronger shared tactical understanding.” Too often, he says, we see outcomes of stability as causative rather than the stability itself.”
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I thought Gideon Wrampling made an outstanding contribution last night.
Article seems a bit premature but I imagine he'll be in Scott Robertson's plans going forward...
Another World Cup dark horse has emerged for the All Blacks
A young Chief could force his way into the national selection frame with more minutes under his belt.
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@kiwi_expat
Pay wall. What was it implying? Surely not Wrampling for this WC? -
@kiwi_expat who is the article about?
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@barky1 said in Chiefs 2023:
Pay wall. What was it implying? Surely not Wrampling for this WC?
Weird, it's not paywalled for me?
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@kiwi_expat It's a rugbypass plus article. Pay-walled.
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@Stargazer said in Chiefs 2023:
@kiwi_expat It's a rugbypass plus article. Pay-walled.
Yes, but I can view the whole thing. I'm still confused.
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@kiwi_expat said in Chiefs 2023:
@Stargazer said in Chiefs 2023:
@kiwi_expat It's a rugbypass plus article. Pay-walled.
Yes, but I can view the whole thing. I'm still confused.
Maybe you have a related account? Or it has AI-AR and can detect via your ph/laptop camera the Razor poster on your bedroom wall, unlocking itself for the real fans..
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Oh, it's because I'm logged into an account I made a while ago and forgot about, the user icon is very obscured from view.
Since when did the subscriptions become free?
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@Stargazer said in Chiefs 2023:
@kiwi_expat It's a rugbypass plus article. Pay-walled.
No they have dropped the pay part since it was sold to world rugby, I think you just need to be logged in with an account. Free to create
