+34
Les Kiss has guided the Wallabies to five Tests without defeat as they prepare to face the All Blacks, crediting his league background and a backyard spirit for the turnaround.
Wallabies coach Les Kiss has guided the team to five Tests without defeat in just two months, and next Saturday they face the All Blacks.
The turnaround follows a win over the back-to-back world champion Springboks last week. Kiss, a former league winger with the North Sydney Bears, Queensland and the Kangaroos who never played union, has surprised many with his success. He believes the game is played with the mind and heart as much as the technical stuff. Kiss said he is a good learner who has taken lessons from across his football and sport career.
Lessons From League Coaching
In league he was coached by Frank Stanton, Chicka Norton and most particularly Steve Martin, who coached the Bears in the early 1990s. From Martin he learned to repeat habits of skill. The biggest thing he brought from league to union is to do one thing supremely well rather than trying ten things half-arsed. He wants innovation that challenges the opposition without getting overcomplicated.
Kiss described rugby skills as a pyramid, with base skills at the bottom and more esoteric skills at the top. The first part of coaching is to get the foundation skills rock solid before adding the rest. In games he refuses to be a slave to shape or structure. Structure must serve the team rather than the team serving it.
He said the game plan should be only a rough guide, not a GPS on autopilot, and players should play what they see. Kiss is not a statistics fiend even though stats are necessary. He reviews numbers to understand trends but does not put them in front of players or make them the be-all and end-all. He recalled that Eddie Jones, at the height of his powers, looked at only two statistics when selecting players.
Finding the Key Performance Indicator
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 measure applied. Kiss compared this to Moneyball, about American baseball, where the Oakland Athletics manager played by Brad Pitt worked out that the only thing that truly mattered in selecting players was whether they could get to first base.
In every sport and position you must find the most important thing a player does and work with that. When Kiss worked with the Waratahs, he focused with Phil Waugh and Nathan Grey on winning the back-end of the tackle. A big tackle means little if the ball-carrier releases the ball quickly anyway. If you can tackle hard and keep your arms around the ball-carrier so it is a shit-fight to release the ball, you win the tackle.
Holding it up for six seconds or more destroys the opposition momentum. Their halfback must help release it, throwing out their whole alignment and seriously disturbing how they play. Kiss rejected technical gibberish such as channels, red zones and drift-and-shoots, which he said have more moving parts than a Hills Hoist in a cyclone. He wants players to charge and play what they see in front of them.
He wants the Wallabies to play in the Wallaby way, not a transplanted foreign way, to play like Australians. That is why he keeps talking about the backyard spirit, recalling growing up playing sport in the backyard or park with mates, with a base of brutal competitiveness. If a player is transactional and focuses only on the technical, he is no more than that.
Building a Wallabies Team Spirit
Kiss wants players who are thinking, feeling, sensing and understanding what is around them so they can pull off the manoeuvre that gives them an advantage and breaks through. When Kiss started, he wanted to see if he could make a difference in how the Wallabies play. The players have latched onto it, and the results show it.
Beating the Springboks last Sunday in Perth was extraordinary, even though the last 15 minutes were extremely messy with so many yellow cards, which suspend players for 10 minutes, that the Wallabies had to put up a First XI against their Test XV. Kiss said that final 15 minutes, winning despite only having 11 players out there, showed one part of who they are: they care deeply and will fight for each other.
This is a spirited team that understands the privilege of playing in the Wallaby jersey and how you have to fight for it. The most important thing for Kiss was how they played in the first 65 minutes. The message was be bold, be brave, be us, and they did exactly that, testing the Springboks all over the field.
For the first time since he has been there, once they had their foot on the Springboks throat they did not let them off. They kept going and kept scoring, a sign of the ruthlessness he wants against the All Blacks.
brisbanetimes
smh:This story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
Les Kiss All Blacks Springboks Rugby Coaching
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News: You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
US President claims FlyDubai incident linked to Iran | Morning News Bulletin 02 October 2026US President claims FlyDubai incident linked to Iran; A dual UK-Iranian citizen arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts; And in sport, the Wallabies carrying high hopes a year out from the Rugby World Cup.
Read more »
Dan Carter tells Wallabies to learn from 2023 World Cup failure before home tournamentAll Blacks great Dan Carter says the Wallabies must embrace the lessons of their disastrous 2023 World Cup campaign as they prepare for a home tournament, with the All Blacks' 2007 setback a template for turning failure into titles.
Read more »
Zinedine Zidane Faces Italy in First Home Game as France CoachZinedine Zidane faces Italy in his first home game as France coach, after opening with two 1-0 wins. Italy seek to recover from a 2-0 defeat to Belgium.
Read more »