Jacques Nienaber says that Leinster are constantly looking to evolve in order to avoid a fall like that of Manchester City.
The Irish province are riding high this season having won their opening seven games of the United Rugby Championship season and claimed back-to-back Investec Champions Cup wins.
However, the former Springboks head coach warns that in high-performance sport, things can change in a heartbeat and used Pep Guardiola’s side’s struggles this season as an example of that.
This comes after Leinster’s underwhelming performance, albeit in victory over Clermont in round two of the Champions Cup. The Irish province emerged 15-7 victors but did so unconvincingly with their lineout in particular struggling.
Nienaber: “As coaches can always do more”
Neinaber echoed the thoughts of Leo Cullen’s remarks with the latter stating after the match that “We need to look at ourselves as coaches.”
The South African said: “As coaches can always do more, as a leadership when you don’t get a performance like that, you must always start with yourself. That’s how my brain works – I can’t talk for Leo and I can’t talk for the other coaches.”
While Nienaber felt as though Leinster didn’t hit their standards against Clermont, he still wanted to celebrate the win as one never quite knows when the victories could dry up.
“You must always cherish victories because there will come a time when you don’t get them and then you kind of wish that you celebrated them more,” he added.
“If you look at Man City, things can change in a heartbeat so you must always cherish victories because they’re not a given in pro sport.
“The disappointment is that if we look at our performance measured against the standard that we set ourselves, I don’t think that was on par.”
To further elaborate his point, the South African mentions a ‘performance clock’ measuring the rise and fall of high-performance teams with 12 o’clock being the optimum and six being rock bottom.
Performance clock
As Leinster aim to end a three-season trophyless run, the coaches are looking to avoid arrogance and complacency by being more creative.
“You must always be mindful of not getting into the fall,” he added.
“12 o’clock is where you win trophies and 11 o’clock you’re in finals and you’re there and thereabouts. I can only talk about last season but we’re there or thereabouts, we’re playing in finals, in knockout games, trying to fight on two fronts – where, probably, it will definitely be easier if we decide to prefer one competition above another one.
“It’s a little bit easier then because you get natural breaks. If you fight on two fronts you have to keep going, going, going. But we are there or thereabouts.
“So it’s, ‘if this is the way we do it at Leinster, this is the way we’ve always done it, this is the way we did it in conjunction with Ireland and we’ve been successful like this in the last six years, so there’s no need to change because you’re one of the top clubs’ but you are the hare that they chase – you’ve got the crosshairs on your back.
“If you don’t evolve in your leadership and playing style, your plans and creativity, teams are always going to catch up to you.”
One of the ways Leinster are looking to stay ahead of the curve is in their preparation of the new laws that will be adopted in 2025. That being the ‘shot-clocks’ on scrums and lineouts and the Irish province adopted new tactics against Clermont to get a headstart on the laws that were trialled during the Autumn Nations Series.
“It is something that we have been working on in training, speeding up that process. We tried new, creative things and that is what we did this weekend. It’s not just the speed, we felt we had to bring in creativity within our lineout,” he said.
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Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/jacques-nienaber-things-can-change-in-a-heartbeat-as-leinster-boss-warns-of-man-city-esque-fall
