Ireland’s plan: Sealed with a Kiss

Don Revie would have loved modern professional sport. It seems remarkable now, in these days of hi-tech performance analysis data, that the late Leeds United manager was derided in the 1960s and 70s for preparing his dossiers on opposition teams.

What was once infamous, though, is now the norm and rugby is no different, as evidenced by Ireland’s defence coach Les Kiss coming armed with a laptop computer, sheafs of notes and more than a few folders when he sits down to explain to the Irish Examiner just exactly how he prepares to prepare Ireland’s players for Test matches, and more specifically to stop the opposition from scoring against them.

“If I fill you in on these it might give you an idea of how I go about it,” Kiss says, shuffling his documents and opening his laptop.

From the off, it is clear that when Ireland’s defence coach watches a game of rugby, he is not doing so perched on a barstool with his mates and he is definitely not watching the match through the same prism that most of us see it.

And what a lot of games he watches in the line of duty. Aside from his weekly dose of live action observing an Irish province or two in RaboDirect Pro12 or Heineken Cup play, Kiss watches video of the other provinces’ games he’s missed, as well as all the other European matches he can get access to and all the Super 15 matches, in addition to all the Tests involving the Six Nations countries and Southern Hemisphere quartet.

It is all for a cause, of course, that Kiss trawls through hours of video footage. It is in Ireland’s cause, trying to pinpoint the plays he can, with the team’s video analysts Mervyn Murphy and Eoin Toolin, turn into bitesize clips that the players can digest and arm themselves better with to stop opponents crossing their line.

That makes for an awful lot of trawling on the part of Kiss, but it’s something he’s more than happy to do.

“I enjoy watching rugby but you do watch it differently. As coaches, we’re sometimes overcritical and don’t get to enjoy games but I guess I’m always looking at nuances and the little things that are coming out which are stretching a defence, or stretching our defence and which could be good to use in our attack. So you’re always looking at a game from a coaching perspective. I think it’s in your bones really.

“And on the odd occasion I actually have a glass of wine or a beer in my hand as I analyse a game at home, you can’t avoid that sometimes,” Kiss says, almost bashfully.

“Sometimes that even gives you a bit of a light bulb moment.”

Kiss’s otherwise forensic approach is based on a simple objective to locate some predictability about an opposition’s style of play in order to prepare for those eventualities and possibly exploit any weaknesses that system may have.

“What I’m trying to do is find a pattern. Find the regularities, the common elements that keep coming through so that I can build a thought pattern for our players about the methodology that an opponent works to.

“When you look at a game, there’s not a huge lot of variables but there are ways that teams shape their attack and you can build up little ideas about their common things, those things that point back to a system or pattern.”

Kiss demonstrates by opening up his ‘Wales’ folder on the laptop. You can be sure his opposite number, Shaun Edwards, is armed with exactly the same amount of intelligence on the Irish ahead of Sunday’s opening encounter between the sides in the 2012 RBS 6 Nations championship, but for reasons of national security, it is agreed that specifics regarding the match are not repeated.

The defence coach’s caginess about how much information should be divulged is understandable, particularly given Wales head coach Warren Gatland’s proud boast last week that in beating Ireland in the World Cup quarter-final last October, his players had not let Ireland play and basically shut down the men in green. So the D Notice is in effect and frankly this is just as well, for the diagrams and the language Kiss uses to demonstrate his work are beyond mere civilians such as this correspondent.

To a squad of professional Test rugby players, however, this stuff is gold dust, ammunition if you will, with which to neutralise the opposition come game day.

“I’m trying to build those awarenesses (of key opposition patterns of play) so that we’re armed in essence about how our defensive structure should work. So I try and pick up as many patterns as I can to read the cues and put it all together to tell the players what is highly likely to happen in certain situations.

“But always, when I’m presenting this information I have this statement: shit happens. You can’t prepare for everything and sometimes someone doesn’t get tackled right, another player comes out (of the line) at an angle, there’s a bounced ball. Those things can happen and to me, how you deal with those is truly what should define you as a team. You need to be prepared but also expect the unexpected and your response to those things, your handling of those things are the true things that define you. We’re prepared for that.”

Wednesday is the big day to present the defensive plan to the players ahead of a Sunday game while he and kicking coach Mark Tainton, both of whom now have added responsibility along with analyst Murphy for back play as a whole, work together on kick-off attack and kick-off return play.

“All of it threads at some stage but the big meat of it is on that Wednesday.”

When it comes to presenting his carefully assembled body of intelligence to the players, Kiss is extremely mindful of overloading them with information. He keeps his briefing succinct and instead gives them visual presentations through various clips packages assembled from different games, highlighting “go-to plays” and variations on that theme while also pinpointing possible “disconnects” and areas to exploit.

The more footage he finds of a certain play over a given period of the forthcoming opponents’ play, the more likely the Australian will focus on it in training.

“I’m starting to build those things in the players’ minds and then it’s all just about attaching our system to what their attack is.”

Kiss also compiles a preview of the opponents’ attacking play, comprising various clips labelled with phraseology, akin to lineout codes, only the Irish players understand.

“Each team has a unique language,” Kiss concedes, before moving onto to his diagrams. “I’ve got three or four major multi-phase shapes, rough diagrams I draw myself which are essentially just talking about Wales’s patterns.”

It may still sound like information overload for just one aspect of Ireland’s play but while Kiss is busy accumulating his data, he is just as mindful about how he conveys it to the squad.

“I think you can get too wrapped up on the opposition, so I reckon one of the most critical skills in coaching is being able to filter information, only pulling out the relevant stuff. The art of knowing what to leave out is critical but we’re all guilty at different times of that.

“So I’m just painting a picture in their minds and when you pattern it you don’t need the same amount of detail, you lessen it.”

Come matchday, Kiss has refined his message down to a few key “creative” words that will convey a week’s worth of key plays and essential tasks for his defenders.

“I stick things up on the walls and you also lean on their expertise, the stuff the players contribute during the sessions that may evolve over a couple of sessions and I’ll chuck those up there as well, whatever the word may be to convey the elements they use in their game. Most teams usually have key points on the walls of their dressing rooms.”

And also by kick-off, Kiss and his fellow coaches have already begun work on the next Saturday’s match in Paris against France.

“We’ll always do some work going forward towards the end of the week. We’ve done the bulk of the work for this weekend, now we’re reviewing training and repeating our messages and talking about key things with the players, but there’s always forward thinking to plan for next week, to say, ‘okay, that’s where I’m going’, getting an idea of the patterns.

“So we’ll start looking at France, then we have the week off before Italy and that will give us some breathing space. But it’s important also not to get too far ahead of yourself. Every Test team has something that can really challenge you.

“Like Wales, sure you can focus too much on them but there is a reality. It’s our first game, a big game for both teams, they’re in good form, it’s going to be tough and we need to be on the ball.

“So hopefully we’re going to have just the right amount of information.”

And where Kiss is concerned, it will not be for the lack of man hours or effort.

Still comfy on that bar stool?

Putting defence into words

By matchday, Ireland defence coach Les Kiss has refined his instructions down to a few key messages and uses specific words to unlock the vast amounts of information the players have accumulated over the course of a week’s hard training. Those triggers remind the players about whole defensive structures for certain plays and reinforce key parts of the Irish game plan.

Their value is not to be underestimated as Kiss suggested when he shared some insights into Ireland’s famous World Cup pool win over Tri-Nations champions Australia at Auckland’s Eden Park last September, a game that left us with an iconic image of Wallabies scrum-half Will Genia being lifted off his feet by Stephen Ferris and, powerless, carried several yards towards his own line.

“I guess we knew that (Will) Genia, (Kurtley) Beale and (Quade) Cooper liked time and space on the ball, so one of our keys was to rob them of time and space and the opportunity to move into attack.

“So the choke (tackle) worked well for us that day, we actually had some good chop tackles as well and a good poach. So we varied our tactics quite well although it looked like we only did choke tackles in the game.

“But we had a broad range of tackle and pressure points we could put on, which is nice for us and in that game one of the critical things was we needed to ensure that the (pace) of Genia trying to get the ball out was as slow as possible. The few words that it came down to, I wouldn’t like to say, because we’ll use it again and it suits us.

“But you look at their games against New Zealand and Samoa earlier in the year, they put pressure on the breakdowns and the Australians find it tough to deal with that.

“Australia like to be tackled at the legs, and they can turn, hit the ground, turn the ball back and just get the ball back quickly. So we didn’t give them that. We gave them a different world to handle.

“Now, they can handle it, no question, but they have to earn it.

“I guess that focused our guys and made up that pressure early on that they were creating and it just kept getting higher and higher and they just kept building it.

“So there was a distinct way to play Australia, I think, anyway.”