Came across this article recently on site called Rugby Heaven – it shows the work tht the pro coaches put into video analysis and the importance they see in it.
As his troops slept around him Chiefs coach Ian Foster used the long flight to South Africa to pore over hours of video footage of the Bulls, acutely aware that every minute needed to be used wisely in this week of preparation for the Super 14 final.
The Chiefs eventually arrived at their Pretoria hotel yesterday.
That gave them less than five days of local conditions to prepare for their first tilt at the title, facing the top-ranked Bulls at Loftus Versfeld.
No-one in the squad looked more tired than Foster. But that was no surprise. The bleary eyed coach had spent most of the trip with his laptop on and images of the Bulls players flickering away in front of him.
It is no surprise that publicly he will not divulge what he was looking for or what he found. The stakes are too high for that and the Chiefs do not want to surrender any advantage to a Bulls side that appears to have everything stacked in its favour. But in these days of video analysis he will have been looking for detail, little patterns to emerge among the general conclusions that have become increasingly apparent since the Chiefs met the Bulls at the same venue five weeks ago.
