I’m lucky enough to work alongside some Rugby people every now and again and it has been a massive privilege to get to know many of the World’s best rugby players and coaching minds through my role in “Our Legend” holidays and events.

One of my rugby mates hit headlines in last weekend’s 3rd round of the 6 Nations Rugby tournament. The brilliant and innovating Italy Coach, Conor O’Shea.

Conor has only been with Italy for a few months but in that time has overseen a fantastic victory against South Africa and this week headed up the coaching team that came up with the tactic which rendered all the England players completely helpless for a full 40 minutes.

Exploiting loopholes

The “cat amongst the pigeons” tactic came when the Italian tackling player rolled away and his fellow players chose not to contest the conventional ruck area. This effectively allowed the Italian half-backs to stand in what would have been “offside positions” blocking the normal distribution routes of the England scrum half.

England were clueless, arguing between themselves, making mistakes as their frustration built and England went into the half time break with a 5-point deficit.

Some people criticised Italy for ruining the game.

For me, their coaching staff had found a gap in the rules then built a strategy: The players then executed it perfectly. Great work.

Adaptable leadership

The Italian approach also opened up a crack in this present England team. Their lack of leadership on the field.

England Coach, Eddie Jones alluded to this back in the Autumn Internationals. At that point he challenged his squad to develop some internal leadership in different positions on the field.

Jones fears were well placed as only James Haskell showed any initiative and leadership qualities at all by asking the referee about the relevant law. Dylan Hartley seemed clueless as captain and the other England players failed to come up with a strategy to cope with the Italian approach.

England only got back on track during half time when Eddie Jones and his coaches fed the players a counter-strategy at half time. The forwards then adopted a pick and go approach attacking central gaps rather than down the fringes of the conventional ruck-area.

England did this well in the 2nd half of the match but the lack of on-field speed of thought and leadership was startling. If they were playing against an out-of-the-box thinking New Zealand or Australian XV then the points gap at half-time could well have been 15 points and the game finished as a contest.

Jones will have to work hard to identify and develop some spontaneous on-field leaders if he is to reach his 2019 World Cup winning goal.

“What if” cricket sessions

It’s so much fun creating “what if” sessions.

These are particularly good in middle practices where you can create “randomness” with harsh umpire calls decisions, “dodgy” Duckworth Lewis calculations that swiftly shift the nature of the scenario, the fielding side being restricted to only seven or eight fielders, making bowlers bowl with wet cricket balls or using old soft balls that don’t go anywhere off the bat nor feel good in the hand.

These are a few examples of “what if’s”. You can make up and drop in heaps of your own to see how your players react.

All of these “what if” variables create challenging situations that require spontaneous thought, strategy and action from players.

Effective review after the practices will help to develop connected decision making and create leaders all over the pitch.

Im sure that Eddie Jones will start applying random “what if” events into practices to see how his team react in the spur of the moment.

Is it worth you brewing up your own “What If” list to create leaders and help your team to deal with random events far better than the present England Rugby Team.