Scotty Stevenson: Coaching, practising? What game are they playing?

Dave Rennie's coaching style seems to have worked pretty well at the Chiefs. Photo / Getty

I heard a funny thing the other day. A bloke on the wireless was talking about Super Rugby coaches. He was of the belief - and I swear this is true - that, at this level, you don't have to really coach players. You simply have to be "a man manager".

Well, blow me down, I thought. Finally someone has got this all figured out. To coach a team in one of the toughest leagues in world rugby, all you have to do is understand disparate personalities and set a few expectations. I rang my mum - she'd raised two diametrically opposed sons, so this would be a doddle - and told tell her to prepare her CV.

I got so excited by all of this that I thought I would test the theory. So I went to Hamilton where the Chiefs, with two titles and a playoff appearance to show for their last three seasons, must be setting the standard for "man management".

Alas, there seemed to be no "man management" at all. There didn't seem to be much management of any type. Instead it was all boring detail stuff. And who really needs that when a hug and a quiet word would do?

I watched intently, fascinated by the fact they could be so wrong in their approach. There was a giant television set on one side of the field, and the team had gathered around it to see exactly where they had failed to follow the system against the Blues last weekend.

How the coaches expected that to work was beyond me. I watched as the entire team stared at the screen, nodding sagely and offering feedback, and answers to questions. I mean, surely a pat on the back would have sufficed. There can't be any real need for bar graphs.

Then things got worse. The team walked back on to the field for a drill designed to fix the minor issue identified in the graphical representation of the real-time statistics gathered from the game.

Baloney. I screamed on the inside. This will never work. But I let them fall into this age-old trap of believing that Super Rugby players might benefit from detailed skill sessions. Oh, if only they knew the truth.

They went at it for a good 15 minutes, making small adjustments, improving with every move, starting again when things didn't go to plan. Three coaches watched on as the team worked through this solitary piece of the puzzle, unconcerned with the wider context of the imaginary match. One couldn't help but think they were slightly delusional.

Worse was to come. Real-time counter-attack drills were peppered with pointers on where to stand, how to get back, what to look for on the click, when to run and when to kick and where to aim for both.

Damn it, where was the messaging on having a great culture, and the pep talk on the greatness of the wider Chiefs region?

And don't get me started on the players. Guys like Sonny Bill Williams, who seemed to require no man management at all. Or at least that's what it looked like as I watched him talking animatedly with one of the coaches about a theory on a different angle to take on a standard Chiefs set piece play. You can imagine my shock when he said he would show his coach a clip to illustrate the point.

And there were Aaron Cruden and Andrew Horrell working on cleaning out a ruck - a ruck. And there was Rhys Marshall working on one type of lineout throw, and there were the McKenzie brothers working on one type of exit kick, and there was a group of tight forwards revisiting a minor scrum issue, and everywhere across the only green patch of grass in all Waikato there were small pods of players in deep discussion as they put the finishing touches on the Tuesday session.

Well, that's it, I thought, as I left the Ruakura base and headed back up the highway to Auckland. It's obvious that the Chiefs coaches are still under the illusion that being the demigods of detail is the way to go about this business. I chuckled to myself as I thought of the bloke on the radio. If only he was there with me. What on earth would he have made of all that?