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Waratahs coach Rob Penney's stark warning to his professional players

(Photo by Tony Feder/Getty Images)

NSW Waratahs coach Rob Penney has questioned his winless team’s defensive work and made a couple of changes for Friday’s Super Rugby clash with the Lions in Sydney.

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Young winger Mark Nawaqanitawase returns in place of Cam Clark and Lachlan Swinton regains the blindside flanker spot from Jed Holloway, who is on the bench alongside uncapped back James Ramm.

Penney plans to persevere with Nawaqanitawase and five-eighth Will Harrison, but admitted more setbacks for the 0-3 Tahs might force him to choose more experienced players.

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“I’ve got a side of me that is nurturing, that has a degree of empathy for the young blokes and the position that they are in, but that’s not bottomless.

“There will be a point if things don’t improve that changes will need to be made,” said Penney, aware his side have already conceded 14 tries and 99 points.

While poor ball retention and decision making has hurt NSW, Penney said there were moments in games where he questioned his team’s work ethic and their commitment to each other.

“There are times when the talentless tasks of working hard and committing yourself totally to whatever you’re involved in at the time isn’t happening,” Penny said.

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“That’s reflected in being opened up a few times in defence, and that’s caused a large degree of frustration on both sides, players and management

“You can make a whole lot of excuses for those things but if you don’t work really hard and put your body in a position to be able to make a defensive effort, or carry the ball hard and look after the pill, then there’s a whole lot of guys out in clubland that could do that effectively and with passion,” Penney warned.

“They are the sort of tasks that we’re really disappointed that we’re not able to achieve more consistently. There’s some pretty basic stuff around our defence that we’ve just got to get right.”

NSW Waratahs: Kurtley Beale, Mark Nawaqanitawase, Alex Newsome, Karmichael Hunt, Jack Maddocks, Will Harrison, Jake Gordon, Jack Dempsey, Michael Hooper, Lachlan Swinton, Rob Simmons (capt), Tom Staniforth, Harry Johnson-Holmes, Robbie Abel, Angus Bell. Res: Damien Fitzpatrick, Tom Robertson, Tetera Faulkner, Jed Holloway, Ryan McCauley, Mitch Short, Lalakai Foketi, James Ramm.

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Waratahs head coach Rob Penney ahead of clash against the Lions:

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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?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

43 Go to comments
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