The Mitchell Plan

JOHN MITCHELL is on the phone as he swings his car into the driveway of his suburban Hamilton home. New Zealand’s head rugby coach is hardl ever off it these days. Eventually, he ends the call and we head indoors.

Mitchell drops the mobile on the chest-high kitchen-dining room divide where, instantly, it starts to vibrate, dancing across the bench top before coming to rest perilously close to the edge.

The house phone begins to ring but Mitchell chooses to ignore it as he does every time it rings over the next hour-and-a-half and he busies himself making cups of tea and coffee, hunts out a packet of chocolate chip cookies and then settles himself down on one of the two comfortable couches in the family room.

The sun streams into the room through glass doors that open onto the pool, an addition to the eight-year property upon Mitchell's return from a tour of duty that started with a one-season appointment as Ireland assistant coach in 1995 and ended with him working as second-in-command to England's Clive Woodward.

Home life is a rare luxury for Mitchell in these World Cup countdown days. The expectations of a nation may be resting on his broad shoulders but he seems pretty relaxed for the man charged with bringing the Webb Ellis trophy home after 16 years.

So, how does the All Black coach cope with the stresses of a build-up to the World Cup, the tournament that will decide the best rugby team in the world, to be played out across the playing fields of the Kiwis' neighbours and arch rivals Australia?

Stress doesn't seem to be a word Mitchell comprehends. "I'm looking forward to it," he says. "The World Cup is not new to me," as he makes reference to his time with England and his work with the now Mighty Whites in the 1999 tournament.

It proved a learning curve like no other and despite England falling at the quarter-finals, going down 21-44 to South Africa, Mitchell soon found himself taking over the helm in his native New Zealand.

He hadn't expected to get the top coaching job so soon after his return to New Zealand and said he applied for the post "purely to show people I was interested".

But his life changed dramatically at 11pm on October 1, 2001 when he received a phone call to say he'd been appointed All Black coach. It was a sleepless night.

"Straight away, I opened up my little red book and started planning," he recalls.

Only a month later, he was leading the All Blacks on a whistle-stop test tour of Scotland, Ireland and Argentina.

It was an exacting experience and he says he was more observer than coach on that trip. His real planning began at Super 12 stage in 2002.

In the early days, one of Mitchell's main concerns was players' lack of what he describes as "a three-month conditioning base," and that there were squad members who hadn't had that base for eight years.

"Some of the guys had played 80 games over a two-year period. I decided these guys needed to have a conditioning base and I wanted to look at new talent. That's why last year's tour to Britain, where we took a younger crew, was pre-planned. And it's been a win-win situation because some players now have that conditioning base and others have come through thanks to the opportunity they received."

Mitchell takes nothing for granted and he can't afford to. Since the win in the inaugural Rugby World Cup back in 1987, New Zealand has disappointed at the grand tournament. He knows his rugby-mad nation is desperate to once again get their hands on the game's top prize.

So why have World Cup victories proved so elusive for New Zealand?

"I think our fault has been that as a country we look too much to the past. For me, the World Cup is about identifying our own plan for now. The game has changed. There's no comparison between today's game and the one of years ago.

"With the All Blacks we have a framework that suits us and we've gone into each match with different tactics because each opposition has different strengths and weaknesses and through the amount of footage you can see, you can identify those and work out ways to combat them.

"That's one of the pressures of modern day coaching. You can't afford to be the same each week.

"This generation of players are exposed to all the mod cons and you've got to try and keep them excited, otherwise they turn off pretty quickly.

"Through technology you've got the ability, or you should have, to come up with different things."

But, as he points out, it isn't always easy to put such theory into practice.

"Super 12 rugby is a competition that is played in such wonderful weather and at the end of it New Zealanders have a high expectation of their teams throwing the ball around. But then the weather caves in. The two Junes I've experienced with the All Blacks have thrown up some of the most atrocious weather I've ever seen in my life.

"Here, we tend to play test rugby at 7.30 at night, and down in the deep south, and it always compromises the recycling and transferring of ball."

He shakes his head and says bluntly: "We keep things really simple in June."

But of course the planning never stops. "We try out some things. People never know what we try out and only we know what we are doing. Some things come off and some things don't. June is really like the foundation to going into the Tri-Nations."

And, for this year, working towards the World Cup.

If Mitchell seems at ease about his imminent World Cup adventure, he is also comfortable with the relatively inexperienced squad he has chosen to try and capture rugby's Holy Grail.

Only four of the 30-strong squad are aged 30 or over, Tana Umaga and Justin Marshall in the backs and front-rowers Dave Hewett and Mark Hammett being the veterans.

ONLY half a dozen have been to a previous World Cup and 12 of the players have notched up less than 10 caps each. Canterbury hooker Corey Flynn goes into the tournament without even one test under his belt.

But rawness at rugby's top level does not bother Mitchell. "Caps are irrelevant really. In fact, I think you're more vulnerable the more caps you've played because professionalism is about what you have to offer now.

"I think there are a lot of guys who've possibly lived off their reputations for a long period and got away with how they were playing because of who they are," he says.

"We've created an attitude where we don't care what you've done in the past," Mitchell says. "It's about now and the particular skills we need in terms of going ahead as a team. If you're not prepared to take on these skills then there's no place for you in our team."

Team, for the All Black coach, is key to his rugby ethos and he has worked hard since his appointment at ending the emphasis on individual players, replacing it with team effort something he makes no apologies for.

"When I first came back to New Zealand and I looked at all the marketing and commercialism surrounding the All Blacks, I saw posters of superstars and posters of legends against the current team. That wouldn't excite me if I was a current player.

"We seem very focused on past heritage and what I call individualism.

"To me, individualism doesn't win you tournaments. Yes, you've got to have the X-factor, the kind of players who can create something from nothing, but it's team-work that will bring you home. We've been team building for almost two years now and this year's selection, which is the final curtain in terms of heading to the World Cup.

"We had a good look at character and that's certainly been part of the selection criteria what sort of person they are.

"I don't know whether it's been through the objective nature of our selection process but somehow the chemistry is good, it has been from day one, and I suppose it is those positives along the way that build belief."

If there is a downside to his team-only crusade it comes at a personal level.

Mitchell's distinctive clean-shaven head dominates newspaper pages and magazine covers.

There are articles about him rather than interviews with him, writers attempting to get inside the mind of the man widely regarded as taciturn, the thinking man's coach even if they're not quite sure what his game-plan is.

There are billboards covering the sides of buildings emblazoned with the coach's nickname, the current catch cry: 'Mitch we never doubted you. Yeah right!' in reference to the pressure he was under after the early season loss to England.

However, on a practical level, from this week the squad go into working-week training camps.

The first is in Whangarei, to be followed by Gisborne and New Plymouth before the All Black roadshow moves to the South Island centres of Nelson and Methven.

These towns are away from main centres, the idea to make the camps more relaxing as well as spreading the All Black gospel to a wider audience. One training per week will be open to the public.

"In the cities we have to go to training sessions by bus but this way they can take a bike if they want to," says the coach.

"We'll be polishing everything up and look to bring in a bit of variation. But we'll be progressive in terms of moving towards the World Cup. We've got plenty of time before the four pool games, which will be really physical.

"It's really important to get the timing right, such as the introduction of contact. We're looking at the players who've played most of the mileage so far this year, the Auckland and Canterbury guys, Super 12s. There have been seven tests to date which all adds up to over 20 fixtures already.

"In the first week after the Tri Nations final there was no rugby. The guys did active rest training, things such as squash and basketball, and now we can head into quite heavy conditioning.

"It's important to try and get the preparation spot-on, to get a really good balance of work and getting home during this build-up. It can be quite boring. I know that from 1999 when the preparation and volume of training was too early and too long. Nowadays the players get a lot of time at home.

"A World Cup tournament is not about volume, it's about being fresh and reorganising. A lot of the volume will be done during this next six weeks."

New Zealand's first World Cup match is against Italy on October 11 and presuming they get past the Six Nations minnows and Wales, Canada and Tonga, a quarter-final meeting against tournament favourites England, or South Africa, is the likely scenario.

Many pundits are predicting the winner of a New Zealand-England encounter will take home the 2003 World Cup. Mitchell says he doesn't care when they come up against England and adds with a smile, "but I imagine both countries would like to delete each other pretty quickly".

He also rates France highly.

"If you want to be world champions, you've got to beat them all," he says.

New Zealand hopes he has selected the fire-power to do just that.