Lochore not worried by long lay-off

Press, 14 May 1987, Page 38

Lochore not worried by long lay-off

By

DAVID LEGGAT,

of NZPA, in Wellington The All Black coach, Brian Lochore, is far from concerned that his team will go into its opening World Cup rugby match with a fortnight’s Inv-nff hphind it.

iay-uii uciiniu n. When New Zealand faces Italy in the cup opener at Eden Park on May 22, it will have had no match practice since the final All Black trial at Whangarei last Saturday. But that does not worry Mr Lochore who feels it could even work to his team’s advantage. He pointed to the heavy commitment for most of his players in zonal matches, two All Black trials and the South Pacific championship which involved the Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury players as evidence of their early season match hardness. "I believe they’ve had a lot of big rugby lately. Most have been playing almost twice a week for a month, said Mr Lochore yesterday. “I’m delighted they’ll have a little bit of a break until we play the first game in the World Cup.” The All Blacks will assemble in Auckland on Saturday, along with the other 11 countries competing in pools two, three and four in New Zealand. That will leave five days to prepare for the opening match. “We’ll have a chance to work

together for maybe five practice runs. They won’t be easy or light. They’ll be as hard or easy as we want,” Mr Lochore said. He has laid down no guidelines for the work he wants from his players this week. That will be an individual decision for the players. “I’ve told the players that if they feel tired to just do some freshening up work. If they want to, they can throw their boots away and do something a bit different.” Mr Lochore is confident there will be no problems with the fitness of his players for the opening

match. “I think they’ll be okay. I’ve no doubt they’ll be very close to peak fitness.” All Black teams traditionally find difficulty performing to their peak in the opening test of home series. Coming together as little as three days before the first test does not leave much time to gel players into a cohesive unit. With that in his mind, Mr Lochore told the teams in the final trial — for which he coached the virtual test-strength Probables team — that he expected a test match attitude towards the game. He got it, with the Probables opting to take shots at goal from penalties even late in the match by which stage the result was beyond doubt, much to the anger of the crowd. “I don’t think we’ll be at our absolute peak for the first game,” Mr Lochore said. “The general idea was to have some sort of shakedown together. This is why we played the way we did in Whangarei. So we won’t be starting cold in Auckland.”