U.S. rugby job was 'testing’

Press, 8 April 1978, Page 4

U.S. rugby job was 'testing’

A former All Bieck, Stan Hill, returned to Christchurch from California yesterday after perhaps the most testing coaching assignment he hat had. He had to coach players whose only knowledge of rugby was what they had been taught by other players who had a background mainly of American football. Mr Hill said this meant that the techniques of American players had never improved. More important was the wrong notion that American football and rugby had something in common. They were very different games. In American football, only two of three pleyers ran with the ball: the rest were guards or “dummies.” “Look at the forwards: most of them had been line blockers and had never handled a ball," said Mr Hill. “So I had to try to teach them to run. handle,

and kick the bail. In the backs It was the same problem, only worse, and 1 had to start from scratch. “The first five-eighth* would run until he wa« tackled The. second five, If he ever got the ball, would do the same They couldn’t get the ball to the wings. They were hard to teach.” One of Mr Hill's more Interesting task* was to coach women players. Some of them, mainly students, had been very good Mr Hill spent most of his coaching time on the Pacific coast. He had felt for much of that time that he was not achieving a great deal until at the end of his visit a combined team from two sides he had coached played a London club side, Osterley, and won, 24-7. “Naturally it was billed as an international and they ware pretty excited at the result.”