Rugby: Shroud of secrecy for the serious stuff

By WYNNE GRAY

SYDNEY - Prying Australian eyes forced the All Blacks to abandon their original plans yesterday and head for a final serious Tri-Nations training session in secret.

They intended to train at a park near their Manly hotel, but several previous practices at the local ground attended by earnest notetakers with connections to the Wallaby camp convinced them that the game plan and tactics had to be trialled elsewhere.

So they jumped on a bus and went to a secluded ground several suburbs away where they were able to run through their entire portfolio of plans for Saturday's fascinating contest at Stadium Australia.

Scrummaging was a priority because loosehead prop Carl Hoeft said they had done little solid work on that during their first few days in Sydney.

The Highlanders' frontrow has been retained for this test after tighthead Kees Meeuws proved his fitness in a full match against Scotland.

Both props have struggled with leg injuries this season, while Hoeft has also favoured a tender hand after several breaks to small bones.

With hooker Anton Oliver, the trio is after retribution for last year's struggle against the Wallabies in Sydney.

"They got into us a bit last year," Hoeft recalled. "It was my first match back after my calf injury and the game did not go according to plan. They ran us ragged really."

There may be fewer scrums under the law changes this season but that, said Hoeft, meant it was even more crucial to make sure there were no slip-ups in that area.

"We have not done as much scrum training as we have in the past, but we are going for more quality rather than slogging out 50 or 60. We are probably going for half that number and getting everything dead right."

At the start of the season there were some long sessions to make sure combinations were in sync, but then it was more remedial concentration and application.

Hoeft will mark new Wallaby tighthead Fletcher Dyson, someone not rated in the top group of Wallaby test prospects this season until the departures of Andrew Blades and Patricio Noriega, and his impressive first-season Super 12 work after transferring to Queensland.

"I came up against Fletcher Dyson in the first game of Super 12 this year. He is a solid prop, a good scrummager and, with Michael Foley and big Richard Harry, they are a formidable frontrow," Hoeft said.

How important will the first scrum be?

"Depends what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to work on a few things. If you get on top of someone in the scrum you have got a psychological edge on them and I think they know that."

Scotland had a huge pack which posed some difficulties, but the Tri-Nations was where the test year moved into an even tougher level.

"This is what we are going to be judged on," Hoeft said. "There was a lot of speculation about Scotland and Tonga but when it comes down to it we are going to be judged on how we go against Australia and South Africa."

The internal judgments come from the coaching staff and the computers which trace the impact of each player in every test. Hoeft laughed when he said the stats revealed he had not made as many tackles in the second test against Scotland as the first at Carisbrook, but he had touched the ball a lot more.

There was nowhere to hide now during a game of rugby and that played a huge part in the All Blacks new approach.