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O'Connor 'rebuilds from scratch' with legendary kicking coach during time off

Australia's James O'Connor (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Australia’s James O’Connor has used this hiatus from rugby during the coronavirus pandemic to improve his kicking, working with esteemed coach Dave Alred. 

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The 29-year-old recently shared clips on Instagram of himself working alongside the kicking coach, and explained how he had to rebuild his kicking style.

He said: “He (Alred) challenged me to break apart my whole kicking game and rebuild from scratch. Never easy for the ego to accept change, but it was a pleasure to be mentally challenged in this way.”

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British Irish Lions Tour 1997: South Africa vs British Lions (2nd Test)

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British Irish Lions Tour 1997: South Africa vs British Lions (2nd Test)

Alred has worked as an elite performance coach with competitors from a variety of sports, from golf’s Luke Donald to number of other international kickers such as Jonathan Sexton and recently Beauden Barrett. 

Perhaps Alred’s most iconic pupil was former England flyhalf Jonny Wilkinson, who stands as one of the greatest and most consistent kickers the game has seen, with a record haul of international drop-goals, and the second-most points in history.

The 50-cap Wallaby even said “No wonder Jonny Wilkinson achieved what he did in the game with this approach!”

Alred has been working with the Queensland Reds since 2018, but the entire squad may not have bore the fruits of his labour just yet.

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In the absence of O’Connor earlier this season, Brad Thorn’s side lost narrowly to the reigning champions the Crusaders in Christchurch, in a game defined by bad kicking by the visitors.

Three different kickers failed to convert any of their four tries, spurning eight points which would have given them the win. 

A revolutionised O’Connor may change the fortunes of the Reds in the future, who have had a mixed start to their campaign.

However, there is still a lot of uncertainty as to when the season will resume as a result of the pandemic, or whether this instalment of the competition will be abandoned entirely. 

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Earlier today SANZAAR released a statement in which they were critical of “misleading information and speculation” surrounding the future shape of Super Rugby.

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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