In just two months, Les Kiss, the Wallabies coach, appears to have turned the team around, going five Tests without defeat. Next Saturday, they play the All Blacks.
Fitz: Les, congratulations on how well the Wallabies are going. That was an extraordinary feat to beat the back-to-back world champion Springboks last week. So let me ask the obvious question on behalf of the rugby community: How the rucking ruck is a leaguie – whose whole rucking career was on the wing for the North Sydney Bears, Queensland and Kangaroos, and who has never played union – doing so well as a Wallabies coach?
LK: [Laughing, sort of.] I’ve never been asked in that way. Look, I tell you what, though. I’m a good learner. I’ve learnt things from all over, through my whole footballing and sport career. In league, I was coached by great people like Frank Stanton, “Chicka” Norton and most particularly Steve Martin, who coached the Bears in the early ’90s.
Fitz: What did Martin teach you that you’re applying to the Wallabies now?
LK: He made us repeat habits of skill. If there’s one major thing I got from rugby league that I brought to union, it is do the one thing supremely well. Don’t try to do 10 things, because they’ll be half-arsed. Innovate, so you’re throwing new challenges at the opposition, but don’t get overcomplicated.
Fitz: So, if we think of rugby as a set of ever more complicated skills, arranged as a pyramid – with the base skills on the bottom and the more esoteric skills at the top – the first part of your coaching is to get the foundation skills rock solid, before you add the rest?
LK: Yes. And in the actual game itself, don’t be a slave to shape, a slave to structure. Yes, there has to be a structure to your overall play, but it should serve you. You shouldn’t be subservient to it, if that makes sense.
Fitz: I’ll translate for the reader. He means your game plan should be only a rough guide to the Promised Land, it’s not your GPS system on auto-pilot. Play what you see, not what the coach told you to do in the dressing-room before the match. So you’re not a statistics fiend, either?
LK: No, we’ve got to have stats, but I’m not one to put them in front of players. It’s important that I run my eye over the numbers to understand trends. But it should not be the be-all and end-all of why you do stuff.
Fitz: Back in the day, when Eddie Jones was at the height of his powers – before he went mad and we had to shoot him – Eddie said to me that there was only two statistics he looked at when selecting players. After being tackled, he wanted to know how long it took them to get back in position to go again. After making a tackle, the same. How many seconds does it take? He took that as a measure of their will to win, to get going. Is that the sort of thing you believe?
LK: Yes, I’d be very much aligned with that. If you remember the book Moneyball, about American baseball, the manager of the Oakland Athletics – played by Brad Pitt in the movie – worked out that the only thing that truly mattered in selecting players was could they get to first base? In every sport, in every position, you have to find the most important thing they do, and work with that. When I was working with the Waratahs, the thing I did with Phil Waugh and Nathan Grey – and they were brilliant at it – was not just can they make the tackle but can you win the back-end of your tackle?
Fitz: Um, I’m as lost as the readers. What do you mean?
LK: It’s fine to do a big tackle on someone, but if they get the ball back quickly anyway, little damage is done to their attack. If you can tackle so hard and keep your arms around them in such a way that you can work your way through the mind and body and soul of the ball-carrier – so it’s a shit-fight to release it – we win the tackle. If you can hold it up for six seconds or more, you destroy their whole momentum. Their halfback has to go in and help release it, and now they’ve got someone else coming in to play that role and their whole alignment is thrown out. Get that stuff right and you seriously disturb the way the opposition plays. It was one measure that really lit up the world of the contested ball.
Fitz: It seems to me from watching the Wallabies closely, and hearing you speak, you don’t get lost in “channels”, “red zones”, “drift-and-shoots” and technical gibberish with more moving parts than a Hills Hoist in a cyclone, but you want your charges to charge, to play what they see in front of them?
LK: I want them to play in the Wallaby way, not in a transplanted foreign way, to play like Australians. We’re Australian. That’s why I keep talking about “the backyard spirit”. When we were growing up and playing sport in the backyard, or in the park with your mates, there was a base of brutal competitiveness. Find a way to win! Play what you see!
Fitz: Again, this is sounding old school. “You’ve got to rucking want it, you bastards!”
LK: I believe this game is played with the mind and heart as much as the technical stuff. If a player is transactional in everything he does, and focuses only on the technical, he’s no more than … than …
Fitz: An automaton?
LK: Yes. We want our players to be thinking, feeling, sensing, understanding what is going on around them, so in the middle of a war of attrition, they can pull off the manoeuvre that will give them the advantage and allow them to break through. When I started, I just wanted to get out there and see if I could make a difference in how the Wallabies play the game. The boys have latched onto it.
Fitz: They certainly have. Beating the Springboks last Sunday in Perth was extraordinary, even if the last 15 minutes was extremely messy with so many yellow cards issued to suspend players for 10 minutes, that the Wallabies had to put up a First XI against their Test XV!
LK: Well, that final 15 minutes, being able to still win despite only having 11 players out there, showed one part of who we are, and that is they care deeply and they will fight for each other. This is a spirited team that understands what a privilege it is to play in the Wallaby jersey and how you have to fight for it. But the most important thing for me was how they played in the first 65 minutes. We said “be bold, be brave, be us”, and they did exactly that, testing the Springboks all over the field. And then on top of all that – in the first time since I’ve been there – once they had the foot on their throat, they didn’t let them off. They kept going, kept scoring more tries. They were great.
Fitz: Coach, I’m moved. “Be bold. Be brave. Be us.” That was the game plan?
LK: That was part of the mindset. They understand that, the boys. When you talk to them in that language, it lights them up, makes them feel alive. The thing is to liberate them. Bring out their Australian-ness and have a go.
Fitz: You’re talking my language! Is there a particularly inspirational story from Australian sport, or particular sportspeople, that you draw inspiration from?
LK: I love Wally Lewis and Shane Warne. Wally understood the nature of the game at any point, and worked out the way to get through to win. With our key game players, I always talk about what’s the nature of the game, what’s the state of the game, how do we adapt to what’s happening? And of course, Wally could actually change the state of the crowd in the Colosseum by what he did – act in ways that got the crowd all fired up – and that could change the game his way, too, as his team reacted to the crowd. He was a master at that.
Fitz: And Shane Warne?
LK: No matter the pitch, the conditions, the batter, he found a way. That’s why I’m saying don’t be a slave to the shape. He was never a slave to the wicket. He wasn’t a slave to conditions. He was always trying to find a way to work it out, and he had a wonderful way of being able to just slowly but surely chip away on a player’s confidence. And the players around him, they believed that Warnie was going to get something to happen out there, even if it took eight overs or 10 overs or whatever. But then he’d take them apart. I just love the way that he went about that in an ambitious – arrogant in a way – fashion. He was bold, he was brave, he was us.
Fitz: OK, to specifics. Somebody well known to me has been saying that it has been crazy not to take advantage of Joseph Aukuso-Suaalii’s capacity to leap high in the air by having him constantly contest for the high ball. It is like nothing we’ve ever seen, but has only been scantly used. I can’t help but notice since you’ve taken over, he’s doing that and it’s working – including leaping high to cleanly take our first kick-off against South Africa. So have I got it right for once?
LK: [Laughing.] Perhaps. I also think putting him on the wing helps him successfully contest all high balls because he can roam more and is naturally aerial.
Fitz: Now, it’s a bleeding obvious question, but as you go into the All Blacks next week, what approach are you taking? Those mongrels have been beating us for the last 25 years, keep the change!
LK: Well, the first step is park what we did last week. Take the confidence from it, and get the sweet spot of understanding, but just keep going, working hard towards it. We know New Zealand are going to be a formidable challenge at a venue they haven’t lost at in over 50 Tests.
Fitz: Looking ahead to November’s spring tour, what’s your feeling on taking the two new recruits from league, “Marky-Mark” Nawaqanitawase and Angus Crichton?
LK: I think Angus is in a position of managing that foot injury still. They’ll both be considered. Marky-Mark’s probably “closer to the mark” if I can use that term in terms of being available because he’s fully fit.
Fitz: Your time in serious football spans five decades. Have you ever seen a footballer with more sheer talent than Marky-Mark?
LK: For someone who can turn “morsel moments” into something extraordinary – make something out of nothing and light up his teammates – he’s just incredible.
Fitz: Ok, thanks, Coach. Remember: Be bold, be brave, be us!
LK: [Laughing.] On it.
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Peter FitzSimons is a journalist and columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.From our partners
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