Brent Janse van Rensburg's secret to winning SuperSport Rugby Challenge

Griquas coach Brent Janse van Rensburg won last year’s SuperSport Rugby Challenge with the Pumas without losing one game despite playing against the satellite teams of all four of the Super Rugby franchise sides.

He tells us what it takes to win the competition.

Get the right people in the room

You can’t win a championship with the wrong people in the room. They will beat down the team’s ambitions every day. On-field talent, although always important, cannot be the only variable. Squad strength, through obtaining people driven by sound character and the desire to serve the team is key. You can’t compromise on that, and coaches who settle for selecting only on talent won’t get the required consistency in performances on field, and winning competitions becomes unlikely.

Culture

There is more to rugby than a game plan. People play the game, and the culture or environment impacts the drive of individuals and facilitates talent to come to the fore. Teams will rarely win a competition if they aren’t invested totally into the cause, and there isn’t the presence of a togetherness or happiness, which ends up being the glue or fuel within the environment that one cannot function without. This needs to be discussed and developed intentionally and not just in your pre-season. Regular top-ups to realign, making the purpose meaningful, are imperative.

Challenge standards

The best in the world ARE the standard, HOLD the standard, PUSH the standard and are not scared to drive standards effectively. We have a saying “no dentists”. We don’t want for the tooth to rot completely and then be forced to go to the dentist. We identify the problem early and avoid the removal of the tooth. This only happens when people are prepared to have open and honest discussions and present solutions to maintain and improve standards  or game related issues required within the team. Spending time on giving the players the soft skills in how to challenge one another, to ensure the communication when challenging each other, allows for positive outcomes.

Focusing on “finding a way”

Educating your team on required knowledge to handle anything that is thrown at them during the game is important. To win a competition players need to understand what solutions are available to them, finding a way always to respond to various scenarios they may be confronted with. Getting yellow or red cards, chasing a game in the dying moments, etc, should not be something that flusters you, for instance. You need to prepare for it. This was a big focus for me at the Pumas and this was how the team handled the last 3 minutes of last year’s final, stringing together over 30 phases and following that with a drop goal to win the competition.

 Consistency is key

Considering the format of the competition, one needs to ensure that you find ways to continually adapt, improve, reset and be mentally up for each challenge every week to be at your best consistently throughout the competitions. Every week is an opportunity that must be appreciated and taken. Being able to manage any damage (and invariably there will always be some challenges) and still pull through wins on your worst day of performance is important and one usually wins the competition on those days as the margins are small en route to winning a competition. Consistency is also important in your style of play and not making drastic changes every week – this breeds confidence.

Continuity in selection

Maintaining continuity in selection is imperative. Being able to get through the competition with a good bill of health and ability to select the strongest possible combinations weekly, avoiding injury enforced changes is key. If changes are made to selection, if not forced through injury, they must result in improvement. If they don’t result in improvement, then there is no point in altering just for the sake of altering, unless you have the luxury to develop players and serve the bigger picture of a franchise for instance.

Metrics based training 

Preparing a team to meet match physical demands and training in areas of importance, considering the shape of the game is crucial. The game is about playing at intensity and being able to outlast opponents and finding ways to achieve that in your program must be a focus. The days of training at low intensity for long periods with drills that do not compliment critical areas of the game are long gone. Being effective from transitions attack to defence or defence to attack, counter and the sources from where most tries are scored is important. Your conditioning program and structure of the “how”, regarding your on-field coaching program cannot be taken lightly.

- SuperSport