Ben Smith breaks down the importance of aerial dominance in Super Rugby

Highlanders assistant coach and former All Black Ben Smith has weighed in on the importance of perfecting the high-ball skillset ahead of the Super Rugby Pacific season.

Teams now use the box kick, and in-play midfield kicks more frequently than before, giving head coaches and assistants more work to do in working on securing their own possession and winning back the opposition’s.

Smith, whose aerial expertise as a player was one of his huge strengths, is now looking to improve the Highlanders’ ability in the air for Super Rugby Pacific.

The Dunedin-based Super Rugby franchise has a number of exciting young outside backs, with the likes of Caleb Tangitau, Stanley Solomon, Xavier Tito-Harris and Jacob Ratamatavuki Kneepkens all in the deep south.

Speaking to media in Dunedin last week, Smith explained that the high-ball part of the game is the backs’ set piece, and they really relish the challenge to improve the skillset ahead of the new competition.

“I really like that part of the game that they’ve opened that up, and they’ve made that challenge in the air, sort of 50/50 around being able to compete and go after it,” Smith said ahead of last week’s pre-season encounter.

“I suppose the forwards do a lot of scrummaging, and that’s their set-piece. And now for the backs, I suppose, around the high ball and getting after that, that’s sort of our set piece around going after the high ball.

“If you can do that really well, then I reckon it sets up your game to be able to, yeah, to attack off the back of it. So that’s been a big part of the preseason, really getting confident in the air, around what we want to go after.”

“It’s a hard one, because you want to make sure that you’re getting quite a few reps, especially live reps, where it’s a lot different when it’s live and you’re actually you’ve got fully commit to those contests.

“So that’s been a bit of a balance over the last few weeks around how much we actually go up in the air. But going forward, it’s a trained skill that we have to be really good at.”

The 84-Test former All Black pinpoints Tito-Harris as one player to look out for, especially with his physical attributes on show.

“I’ve been really impressed with our wingers around going part in that part of the area, being able to get up, compete and I suppose it’s it’s being able to fully commit and not being afraid that you the way that it is at the moment, you’ll get something wrong.

“But it’s being able to commit in that area and we’ve got some wingers like you mentioned Xavier before, his vertical hops is some of the highest in our team.

“So someone like that, Caleb, those kind of guys around what they’re able to do is pretty exciting for us going forward in the competition.”