Brumbies

Brumbies plan to mimic Wallabies

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The Wallabies scrumming performance against England last weekend has inspired the Brumbies into a transformation of their own scrum.


New scrum coach for the Brumbies Bill Young admits that the Brumbies pack was statistically the worst in the last Super 14 season so he says that he will employ some of the same tactics used by the Wallabies.


“Hats off to [Wallabies forwards coach] Michael Foley, he’s done a great job and I think what we saw against England on Sunday morning was a starting point which Australian rugby can base itself on and move forward from and the Brumbies are certainly part of that,” Young told the Canberra Times.


“In Al Baxter I think the Wallabies have a No.3 showing confidence, which gives the best possible chance of moving forward in the front row and in the scrummaging.


“With the Brumbies we’ll use a lot of the stuff Foles has brought in but I’ve also got some different ideas which we’ll introduce that I’m confident will lead to a far stronger scrum next Super 14 season.”


Luckily for the Brumbies competition for Brumbies places in the front row next year will arguably be the fiercest since the club’s entry into Super 12 competition in 1996.


Guy Shepherdson, Nic Henderson and Ben Alexander have all featured in Wallaby teams and Salesi Ma’afu played 10 games for the Brumbies last season as well as earning a call-up for the Barbarians.


Stephen Moore who won man of the match in Saturday’s Twickenham test will almost certainly be the starting hooker.


Coach Young says that the club has the potential to become a force in 2009 after they have slipped from being former Super Rugby champions twice (2001 & 2004) to finishing in ninth place in 2008.


“I don’t want to change too much, just tweak the things to suit our guys’ games,” he said.


“It’s about individual strengths and weaknesses, having the guys understand what their own weaknesses are and making changes to fix them.


“It’s ridiculous to think we’ll go from having the worst scrum in the competition to the best scrum in the competition in a season, but we’ll make the guys aware of where change is needed so we can launch our new attack.”


The Brumbies’ first game of the 2009 Super 14 will be against the Otago Highlanders in Dunedin on February 13.

 

Super14.com

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