Getting his kicks from preparation
MARK TAINTON made 300 first-team appearances for Bristol, scoring over 3,000 points and collecting U-23 and A caps for England. He was kicking coach on England’s tour to Argentina in 1997, then went back to Bristol to coach.
A game against Munster was his first step towards his move to Ireland. “We came over to play Munster in 2002 while Alan Gaffney was managing them,” says Tainton.
“He then sent Ronan O’Gara over to Bristol for a kicking session with me, and from that I got more and more involved with Munster. Eddie O’Sullivan called me in to help with the Ireland kickers before the 2003 Six Nations and I’ve been involved ever since.”
Kicking practice with Ireland means Tainton sees a lot of one player in particular during training sessions.
“With Ronan, a lot of our work is about getting him to concentrate on the process. We’ll focus on technique, getting that right, rather than trying to get massive distances on each kick at goal. We’ll work on kicking out of hand, trying spiral kicks and punts and so on.
“We’ll work on drop-outs, and trying to make sure we get the best hang time for those, and we’ll finish off with a series of drop-goals taken from various points along the 22.”
It’s not uncommon for kickers to have their technique broken down by coaches and rebuilt with a view to improvement. But Tainton doesn’t subscribe to wholesale tinkering with a player’s technique for the sake of it.
“All players have a slightly different technique, and what you’re trying to do is set up a process they can work with, whether they miss the kick or not. The player needs to trust in that process whether the kick goes over or not, because process determines outcome, as we say.
“Also, we try to get players to separate playing and kicking, so that when they’re taking a kick at goal, then that becomes a totally separate part of the game; that helps particularly if they miss the shot, because they can then get back into ‘playing’ mode immediately.”
All that being said, Tainton says it’s still possible to isolate certain aspects of kicking and work on them.
“You can still pay attention to certain things, certain aspects of how a player kicks. For instance, the angle at which the player approaches the ball is always important, and the player may be coming at the ball head-on or at too much of an angle.
“The way they plant the supporting foot is obviously going to have a bearing on accuracy and placement, and so is the movement of their upper body when they’re taking a kick — if there’s too much movement from the waist upwards, that takes away from the player’s accuracy. So those are all important factors to keep in mind.”
So which is more important — brute strength or perfect contact? Raw power or the correct technique?
“Obviously the perfect kicker would mix very good technique with power and strength in the kick. In general terms, however, a kicker with better technique will always be more accurate than someone relying on brute strength. Technique is always going to be more reliable.
“If someone’s kicking the ball very hard, if they’re forcing their kick, he’ll have far more movement of his upper body, and that has an obvious knock-on effect on their accuracy.”
In the search for excellence, Tainton often looks beyond rugby.
“I look at other sports all the time to see if I can take something from them to help our kickers. I’ve been involved in American football in the past, and they analyse players’ kicking techniques in unbelievable detail, down to the nth degree — possibly too much at times — but you can always find something in their approach to help.
“It’s not always about learning something for ourselves either. Sometimes I’ll watch a soccer game and I’ll be looking at the goalkeepers taking kick-outs or returning back passes and think ‘he needs a bit of work’. In fairness, though, I think a lot of professional goalkeepers have improved hugely in their kicking, you can see they’re more comfortable with dealing with ball coming back to them in particular, so they’re obviously getting more specialist kicking coaching.
“It doesn’t have to be a kicking sport for me to look at it closely, either. What often fascinates me are basketball players when they have to take free-throws. It’s a similar enough situation to a goal-kick in rugby in that you’re stepping outside the game for a closed skill for a few seconds. I’m always interested in what’s going through a basketballer’s mind at the free-throw line, what they’re visualising in order to succeed, to see if that can benefit our kickers in turn.”
Ronan O’Gara has spoken of his admiration for New Zealand out-half Dan Carter, the acknowledged top number 10 in the world. Tainton, not surprisingly, focuses on the All Black star’s kicking style.
“Someone like Dan (Carter) has a pretty relaxed style, and it works well for him. We mentioned power versus technique earlier, and he’s a good example of the combination of both — he’s a fairly big lad, so he’s got good strength, but his technique is good also, so he’s a very accurate kicker — and a very reliable kicker, which is the main thing.”
Last Sunday Ireland had a pretty reliable man at number 10 as well: Paddy Wallace’s 26 points against the Pacific Islanders delighted Tainton.
“We’re very happy, Paddy worked very hard in the three weeks we had the lads in camp, and it paid off for him on Sunday.
“In training I deal with Paddy slightly differently (to Ronan). He’s not a regular kicker with Ulster, but he’s a good natural footballer so his technique’s pretty good anyway. Once he finds a technique that works well for him it’s important that he trusts it and doesn’t change it, so we worked on making sure every kick he took was identical, no matter where he was kicking from.”
Is there much of a difference between them?
“Neither Ronan nor Paddy are power kickers, you won’t see them coming into the ball at huge pace. In terms of difference, supporters may notice that Ronan leans the ball slightly to the right for a sweet spot, while Paddy leaves the ball up straight and slightly forward, so he’s making contact slightly higher up. But generally their approach and follow-through are pretty similar.”
Tainton’s attention to detail isn’t confined to the alignment of the ball, either. A casual reference during the conversation to the balls being used for the autumn internationals and Tainton’s remarks show the forward planning: “The balls at the World Cup will be the same as the ones we’re using for the autumn internationals, they’re Gilbert balls. The only difference will be the markings on them, so it’s good preparation.”
Preparation. The name of the game.
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