(07-24-2021 08:58 AM)fsquid Wrote:  Another thing I noticed Friday emphasizes is winning the kickoff after the score. Fuala’au puts it right at 10M for contest.
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And he has guys who get there quickly to poach the ball. His whole game is quick, quick, quick. I don't know how much was inherent with him and how much he was forced to adopt it when he coached Kenya, where his players were all small but fast.

As I said, that style fit us pretty well because we were a small school without a lot of depth. We didn't want to get into big pileups because that's where you get people hurt.

We did something similar on defense, where when the ball went to ground instead of piling on, we stayed on our feet and focused on organizing the defensive line and attacking the first pass out of the ruck. First time we did that, against Texas, their fly half was obviously accustomed to having plenty of time to sort things out when she got the ball. My fly half got there as soon as she got the ball and she didn't know what to do. That game was probably the highlight of my coaching career, and became the platform that we built everything that followed on. We went from a startup program that struggled to get enough people to show up to play a match to national sweet-16 appearances, first in 7s and later in 15s. Of course, nothing makes you a better coach than having an all-American player show up.