Joe Schmidt has pulled off a momentous coup by seducing legendary All Blacks coach Mike Cron to join his new Wallabies backroom team.
The 69-year-old is one of the most highly regarded scrum coaches in the game, having played the role with the New Zealand national team for 15 years.
Cron joined Sir Graham Henry's All Blacks in 2004 and remained in the role until the end of the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
“Scrum Doctor”
Henry described him as an “extraordinary coach” and “probably the most knowledgeable scrum coach in world rugby”.
“He was never satisfied and was always looking for new coaching methods and ideas to strengthen his players. “It's not enough,” added 2011 Rugby World Cup winner Mike Cron.
“Mike has brought tremendous value to every program he has been involved with and brings a wealth of knowledge to our coaching group,” Schmidt said.
Cron, nicknamed the 'Scrum Doctor', will join a coaching staff that includes Rory Fisher and Eoin Toolan for the start of the Wallabies' 2024 Test season.
He was hugely popular with the All Blacks, with former New Zealand Rugby CEO Steve Tew calling him a “national treasure” and “one of the best rugby coaches in the world”.
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Cron was promoted to New Zealand's forwards coach in 2012, a role he held until 2019, and was highly praised by legendary player Richie McCaw.
“Mike's ability to connect with all of our players is outstanding, so he understands how best to help them improve their skills,” McCaw said.
“He is also a very innovative person who tries different things during training to solve problems that players may experience during matches.”
Since leaving the All Blacks set-up in 2019, Cron has worked as a set-piece consultant for World Rugby.
scrum thinker
He is one of the leading experts in the scrum and continues to look for new and innovative ways to improve his team's set-piece capabilities.
“It may sound completely stupid, but you're teaching Scrum and you don't know what the strongest push position is biomechanically. So the breakthrough moment for me was when the human body was in a horizontal position. That's when I discovered the strongest possible position. It's like winning the lottery for a coach,” Cron said. rugby journal In an interview in 2022.
“Now I have the knowledge. I knew this was the strongest position biomechanically, and I could identify with it. For example, I could get on the squat rack and do a deep squat. Suppose you are doing
“You know when you stand up and find your sweet spot and release from there, but if you pause there, that's the angle I'm talking about. I could liken it to being there.”
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